PR  4873  F6  1869b 
UNiyERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA,    SAN    DIEGO 


3   1822  01383  2514 


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WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 


A    BIOGRAPHY. 


By     JOHN     FORSTER. 


IN    EIGHT   BOOKS. 


BOSTON: 
FIELDS,    OSGOOD,    &    CO., 

SUCCESSORS   TO    TICKNOR   AND    FIELDS. 
I869.       . 


AUTHOR'S    EDITION. 


University  Press:   Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co., 
Cambridge. 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK    FIRST. 

1 775 -i  797.    jet.  1-22. 
WARWICK,  RUGBY,   OXFORD,  AND    SWANSEA. 

I.  Introductory,  1,  2. —  II.  The  Landors  and  the  Savages,  2-5. —  III.  Birth 
and  Childish  Days,  5-8.  —  IV.  At  Rugby  School,  8-19.  — V.  At  Ash- 
bourne, 19-24. —  VI.  At  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  24-31.  — VII.  Before 
and  after  Rustication,  31-35.  —  VIII.  First  Published  Book,  35-37. — 
IX.  A  Fair  Intercessor,  37-41.  — X.  A  Moral  Epistle,  41  -43.— XL  Re- 
treat to  Wales,  43  -  48. 

BOOK    SECOND. 

1797- 1805.      JET.   22-30. 

AUTHORSHIP   OF   GEBIR  AND  EARLIEST   FRIENDSHIPS. 

I.  Gebir,  49-G4.  — II.  Some  Opinions  of  Gebir,  64-70. —  III.  Doctor  Parr, 
70-76.  — IV.  Attack  of  the  Monthly  Review,  76-85. —  V.  Sergeant  Rough, 
85  -  92.  —  VI.  Corresponding  with  Parr  and  Adair,  92  - 103.  —  VII.  At  Paris 
in  1802,  103-107. —VIII.  Poetry  by  the  Author  of  Gebir,  107-112.  — 
IX.  Walter  Birch,  and  Succession  to  Family  Estates,  112  -  119. 

BOOK    THIRD. 

1805-1814.      JET.    30-39. 
AT   BATH  AND  CLIFTON,  IN   SPAIN,  AND   AT   LL ANTHONY. 

I.  Life  at  Bath,  120-124. —II.  Robert  Southey,  124- 130.  — III.  First  Letters  to 
Southey,  130-133.— IV.  In  Spain,  133  -  142.  —  V.  Letters  to  Southey  on 
Spain  and  Spaniards,  142-149. —  VI.  Letters  on  Keharaa  and  Roderick, 
149-163.  — VII.  The  Tragedy  of  Count  Julian,  163- 186. —  VIII.  In  Pos- 
session of  the  Abbey,  186-196.  — IX.  Marriage  and  Life  at  Llanthony,  196- 
214. —  X.  Public  Affairs,  214-233.— XL  Private  Disputes,  233-247.— 
XII.  Departure  from  England,  247  -  255. 


iV  CONTENTS. 

BOOK    FOURTH. 

1815-182I.      JET.    40-46. 
FIRST   SIX    YKAKS  IN  ITALY. 

I.  From  Tours  to  Milan,  256-260.  — II.  At  Como,  261  -271.  —  III.  At  Pisa, 
271-275. —  IV.  At  Pistoia,  275-279.  —  V.  Again  at  Pisa,  280-292.— 
VI.  On  the  Way  to  Florence,  292-298. —  VIL  Retrospect  and  Prospect: 
a  New  Literary  Undertaking,  298  -  314. 

BOOK    FIFTH. 

1822 -1828.      JET.   47-53. 
THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS. 

I.  Friends  in  Italy  and  England,  317-323. — II.  The  Manuscript  on  its  "Way, 
323-326.— IIL  A  Publisher  found,  326-332.  — IV.  What  the  First  Vol- 
ume contained,  332-347.  —  V.  What  the  Second  Volume  contained,  347- 
364.  — VI.  How  the  Book  was  received,  364-369.  —  VII.  The  Southcy  Cor- 
respondence, 369-388.  — VIII.  Family  Letters,  388-401.  — IX.  New  Scries 
of  Conversations,  401  -415.  —  X.  Contents  of  the  New  Series,  415-432. 

BOOK    SIXTH. 

1829- 1835.      ST.   54-60. 
AT  FIESOLE. 

I.  Closing  Years  in  the  Palazzo  Medici,  433-441.— II.  Mother's  Death,  441  - 
443. —  III.  Ordered  to  quit  Tuscany,  443-447.  —  IV.  The  Villa  Gherardes- 
Cha,  447-454.  —  V.  England  revisited,  454-465. —VI.  Again  in  Italy  :  Old 
Pictures  and  New  Friends,  465-477.  —  VII.  Examination  of  Shakespeare 
for  Peer-Stealing,  477 -489. —  VIII.  Pericles  and  Aspasia,  489-498.— 
IX.  Self-banishment  from  Ficsolc,  498-503. 

BOOK    SEVENTH. 

1836-  1857.      JET.   6l  -82. 
TWENTY-ONE   YEARS   AT   BATH. 

I.  New  and  Old  Friendships,  504-513.  —  II.  The  Pentamcron  of  Boccaccio  and 
Petrarea,  513-523.  —  III.  Writing  Plays,  523-537.  — IV.  Reviewing  a  Re- 
viewer, 537  -  548.  —  V.  Visits  and  Visitors,  549  -  556.  —  VI.  Death  of  Southey, 


CONTENTS.  V 

556-563.  —  VII.  Last  Series  of  Conversations,  and  some  Letters,  563-572. 
—  VIII.  A  Friend  not  Literary,  and  other  Friends,  572-579.  — IX.  Reviews, 
Colleeted  Works,  Poemata  et  Inscriptiones,  and  Hellenics,  579  -  592.  —  X. 
Summer  Holidays  and  Guests  at  Home,  592  -  605.  —  XL  Deaths  of  Old 
Friends,  605-611.  — XII.  Fruits  gathered  from  an  Old  Tree,  611-627.— 
XIII.  Silent  Companions,  627-647. — XIV.  Last  Days  in  Bath,  and  Final 
Departure  from  England,  647  -  653. 


BOOK    EIGHTH. 

1858 -1864.      JET.    83-89. 

LAST  SIX  YEARS  IN  ITALY. 

I.  In  his  Old  Home,  654  -  658.  —  II.  At  Siena,  658  -  660.  —  III.  In  Florence, 
660-666.  — IV.  Five  Unpublished  Scenes,  being  the  last  Imaginary  Conver- 
sations, 666-671.— V.  The  Close,  672-678. 


INDEX 679 


Note.  —  All  the  letters  quoted  in  this  book  are  from  original  sources,  and,  with  a  few  excep- 
tions specially  stated,  have  not  before  been  printed. 


BOOKS     I. -IV. 


in:iil!ll  l|l!r^i:fi:ni-ri'iii^fi  li! :;  -JIMSL,^" '1 


LANDOR'S   BIRTHPLACE   AT   WARWICK. 


I775-I82I. 


Certain  references  that  occur  in  this  volume  might  be  misleading  with- 
out a  mention  of  the  fact  that  the  commencement  of  it  was  written  in  the 
winter  of  18G5,  and  that  the  English  Edition  of  the  first  four  books  was 
printed  off  in  the  summer  of  18G7.  The  completion  of  the  book  has  been 
necessarily  delayed  until  now. 


WALTER    SAVAGE   LANDOR. 


BOOK    FIRST. 

1775-1797.     Mt.  1-22. 

WARWICK,   RUGBY,  OXFORD,   AND   SWANSEA. 

I.  Introductory.  -  II.  The  Landors  and  the  Savages.  -  III.  Birth  and  Childish 
Davs  _IV  At  Ru°by  School.  —  V.  At  Ashbourne.  —  VL  At  Trinity  Col- 
lege Oxford  —  VII.  Before  and  after  Rustication.  —  VIII.  First  published 
Book.  —  IX.  A  fair  Intercessor.  —  X.  A  Moral  Epistle.  —  XL  Retreat  to 
Wales.  , 

I.    INTRODUCTORY. 

I  am  not  insensible  to  what  is  generally  taken  to  be  expressed,  in 
matters  of  literature  as  in  many  other  things,  by  great  popularity. 
The  writer  whom  crowds  of  readers  wait  upon  has  deserved  his  fol- 
lowing be  it  for  good  or  ill  ;  and  the  desire  to  read  without  the 
trouble  of  thinking,  which  railways  have  largely  encouraged,  and  to 
which  many  modern  reputations  are  due,  has  not  prevented  the 
growth  of  other  reputations  that  will  outlive  the  contemporaries  who 

conferred  them. 

But  with  this  popular  literature,  which  in  some  form  always  exists, 
changing  its  form  with  the  age,  there  has  existed  at  all  times  a  litera- 
ture less  immediately  attractive,  but  safer  from  caprice  or  vicissi- 
tude ;  and  finding  its  audiences,  fit  however  few,  the  same  through 
many  ages.  England  has  been  very  fortunate  in  it.  Its  principal 
masters  have  been  the  men  who  from  time  to  time  have  purified, 
enlarged,  and  refixed  the  language ;  who  have  gathered  to  it  new 
possessions,  extending  its  power  and  variety  ;  biit  whose  relation  for 
the  most  part  to  their  reading  contemporaries,  far  from  that  of  the 
petted  or  popular  favorite,  has  been  rather  that  of  the  thoughtful  to 
the  little  thinking  or  the  learned  to  the  little  knowing.  _  They  have 
been  too  wise  for  the  foolish,  and  too  difficult  for  the  idle,  lhey 
have  left  unsatisfied  the  eager  wish  for  the  sensational  or  merely 
pleasurable,  on  whose  gratification  popularity  so  much  depends  j  and 
they  have  never  had  for  their  audiences  those  multitudes  oi  readers 
who  cannot  wait  to  consider  and  enjoy.  Taking  rank  with  this  rare 
class  is  the  writer,  Walter  Savage  Landor,  of  whom  I  am  about  to 
give  some  account. 
1 


2  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  w?*^ 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  speak  otherwise  than  frankly  of  his  char- 
acter and  of  his  books.  Though  1  place  him  in  the  first  rank  as  a 
writer  of  English  prose;  though  he  was  also  a  genuine  poet;  and 
there  is  no  exaggeration  in  the  saying  of  one  of  his  American  ad- 
mirers,* that,  excepting  Shakespeare,  no  other  writer  has  furnished 
us  with  so  many  or  so  delicate  aphorisms  of  human  nature  ;  his  faults 
lie  more  upon  the  surface  than  is  usual  with  writers  of  this  high 
order.  It  was  unfortunate  for  him  in  his  early  years  that  self-control 
was  not  necessarily  forced  upon  a  temperament  which  had  peculiar 
need  of  it;  and  its  absence  in  later  time  affected  both  his  hooks  and 
his  life  disastrously.  Even  the  ordinary  influences  and  restraints 
of  a  professional  writer  were  not  known  to  him.  Literature  was  to 
him  neither  a  spiritual  calling,  as  "Wordsworth  regarded  it,  nor  the 
lucrative  employment  for  which  Scott  valued  it.  Landor  wrote  with- 
out any  other  aim  than  to  please  himself,  or  satisfy  the  impulse  as  it 
rose.  Writing  was  in  that  sense  an  indulgence  to  which  no  limits 
were  put,  and  wherein  no  laws  of  government  were  admit  ted.  If 
merely  a  thing  pleased  him,  it  was  pre-eminent  and  excellent  above 
all  things ;  what  for  the  moment  most  gratified  his  will  or  pleasure 
he  was  eager  to  avouch  wisest  and  best,  as  in  the  tiling  that  satis- 
fied neither  he  could  find  suddenly  all  opposite  qualities;  and  though 
a  certain  counterpoise  to  this  was  in  his  own  nature,  his  opinions 
generally  being  wise  and  true,  and  his  sympathies  almost  always  gen- 
erous and  noble,  it  led  him  frequently  into  contradictions  and  extrav- 
agance that  have  deprived  him  of  a  portion  of  his  fame. 

There  is  one  person  who  better  than  myself  could  have  done  what 
I  am  about  to  attempt.  The  younger  of  Landor's  two  surviving 
brothers,  the  Rev.  Robert  Eyres  Landor,  wotdd  on  every  account  have 
been  the  best  biographer  of  one  to  whom  he  is  not  more  closely  akin 
by  birth  than  by  a  curious  similarity  in  his  genius.  But  while  this 
yet  was  possible,  the  occasion  had  not  arisen  ;  and  what  Landor  him- 
self desired  I  should  do  is  now  undertaken  at  the  further  request  of 
both  those  brothers,  who  have  given  to  it  all  necessary  help.  Of 
what  kind  this  has  been,  the  leader  will  have  ample  means  of  judg- 
ing ;  and  if  the  early  portion  of  the  biography  should  awaken  any 
interest  in  him.  he  will  find  it  to  have  been  chiefly  derived  from  the 
characteristic  and  pleasing  letters  of  Mr.  Robert  Landor. 


II.  THE  LANDORS  AXT)  THE  SAVAGES. 

Landor's  father  was  a  physician.      "  It  was,  I  believe,  not  unusual," 
his   brother  writes  to  me,  Bpeaking  of  ninety  or  a  hundred   years  ago, 

"for  even  the  eldest  sons  of  private  gentlemen  to  engage  in  some 

profession   during  their  fathers'  lifetime,  if  their  fathers  were  not  old. 
The  regular  army  could  afford  but  little  room  for  them.     Perhaps  the 

*  Professor  Lowell. 


t 

JET.  1-22.]  THE   LANDORS    AND    THE   SAVAGES.  3 

greatest  number  -were  educated  in  your  profession,  as  best  qualifying 
them  to  manage  the  business  of  after  life.  But  some  preferred  medi- 
cine. Our  father  took  his  degree  at  Worcester  College,  Oxford,  and 
succeeded  Sir  Charles  Shuckborough,  an  old  Warwickshire  baronet. 
A  still  older  baronet  many  years  after,  who  lived  in  the  adjoining 
parish  to  Ipsley  Court,  was  first  Doctor  and  then  Sir  Charles  Throck- 
morton. The  different  branches  of  the  medical  profession  were  kept 
much  more  distinct  a  hundred  years  ago  than  at  present.  After  the 
death  of  his  father  and  his  own  succession  to  the  two  Warwickshire 
estates,  our  father  resigned  his  practice,  and  lived  part  of  the  year  at 
Ipsley  Court  and  part  at  Warwick." 

At  Warwick  was  born  Dr.  Walter  Landor's  most  famous  son,  the 
first  issue  of  his  second  marriage.  Of  the  six  children  born  to  his 
first  marriage,  with  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Mr.  Wright  of  War- 
wick, all  but  one  died  in  childhood  ;  and  this  daughter,  on  whom  had 
been  settled  the  bulk  of  her  mother's  fortune,  married  a  Staffordshire 
cousin,  Humphrey  Arden  of  Longcroft.  Doctor  Landor's  second  wife 
was  Elizabeth  Savage,  eldest  daughter  and  co-heiress  with  her  three 
sisters  of  Charles  Savage,  the  head  of  an  old  Warwickshire  family,  the 
bulk  of  whose  property  had  been  transferred  to  a  younger  branch  who 
bore  the  name  of  Norris.  The  paternal  fortune,  not  very  large  even 
before  it  was  divided,  the  eldest  daughter  shared  with  her  three 
sisters  ;  but  after  her  marriage  to  Doctor  Landor,  two  estates  in 
Warwickshire,  Ipsley  Court  *  and  Tachbrooke  (clearbrook),  were  be- 
queathed to  her  by  the  representatives  of  the  Norris  branch  of  her 
family,  two  great-uncles,  very  wealthy  London  merchants  ;  and  so 
much  of  the  original  land  of  the  Savages  of  Tachbrooke  was  thus 
restored.  The  condition  of  strict  entail  to  the  eldest  son  accom- 
panied the  bequest,  as  if  the  object  were  to  revive  so  far  the  con- 
sideration and  condition  of  the  old  family;  and,  Doctor  Landor's 
paternal  estates  in  Staffordshire  being  in  like  manner  entailed,  there 
remained  for  the  younger  children  that  might  be  born  to  his  second 
marriage,  apart  from  any  possible  bequests  from  other  relatives,  or 
prudent  savings  by  their  mother,  only  the  succession  to  a  smaller 
estate  in  Buckinghamshire  left  equally  to  her  and  her  three  sisters  by 
the  same  Mr.  Norris,  after  expiry  of  the  life-interest  in  it  of  another 

*  In  a  letter  to  me  of  August,  1852,  Landor  described  Ipsley  Court,  which  with  his 
Lanthony  estate  has  descended  to  his  eldest  son,  as  having  been  purchased  by  Mr. 
Samuel  Savage  early  in  the  last  century,  with  some  farms  and  a  park.  "  He  never 
resided  there;  and  his  steward,  the  rector  of  the  parish,  took  down  the  noble  old  house, 
leaving  only  the  two  wings,  one  of  which  my  father  inhabited,  adding  a  dining-room 
of  thirty  feet  or  more.  The  whole  length  exceeds  ninety.  The  opposite  wing  contains 
offices,  stables,  coach-houses,  &c.  These  wings  were  added  in  the  time  of  Charles  II. 
Nothing  can  be  less  architectural.  The  views  are  extensive,  rich,  and  beautiful.  My 
father  cut  down  several  thousand  pounds'  worth  of  oaks;  my  mother  as  many.  It  is 
about  forty  years  since  I  saw  the  place ;  but  there  are  still,  I  hear,  oaks  of  nearly  a 
century's  'growth."  I  must  in  candor  add,  that  his  earliest  allusions  are  less  compli- 
mentary. In  a  letter  to  his  sister  Elizabeth  from  Florence  in  1830,  he  asks  about  the 
new  tenant  of  Ipsley,  and  hopes  he  has  taken  it  for  many  years.  "  Never  was  any 
habitation  more  thoroughly  odious,  —  red  soil,  mince-pie  woods,  and  black  and  greasy 
needle-makers !  " 


4  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  ^775*97." 

descendant,  from  the  same  family,  the  Countess  of  Conyngham.  This 
estate  was  called  Hughenden  Manor,  and  is  now  the  property  of  Mr. 
Disraeli. 

Well  born  aa  Walter  Savage  Landor  thus  was,  on  the  side  of  both 
parents,  no  title  can  yet  be  established  for  such  claim  to  high  con- 
sideration or  remote  antiquity,  on  the  part  of  either,  as  from  time  to 
time  has  been  put  forth  in  biographical  notices  of  him,  and  even  in 
his  own  writings.  For  here  the  reflection  has  to  be  made, —  strange 
in  its  application  to  such  a  man,  —  that,  possessing  few  equals  in 
those  intellectual  qualities  which  he  was  also  not  indisposed  to  esti- 
mate highly  enough,  he  was  not  less  eager  to  claim  a  position  where 
many  thousands  of  his  contemporaries  equalled  and  many  hundreds 
surpassed  him.  I  had  on  one  occasion  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
restraining  him  from  sending  a  challenge  to  Lord  John  Russell  for 
some  fancied  slight  to  the  memory  of  Sir  Arnold  Savage,  Speaker  of 
Henry  the  Seventh's  first  House  of  Commons  ;  yet  any  connection 
beyond  the  name  could  not  with  safety  have  been  assumed.  When 
he  says,  in  one  of  his  Imaginary  Conversations,  that  his  estates  were 
sufficient  for  the  legal  qualification  of  three  Roman  knights,  lie  is 
probably  not  far  from  the  truth ;  but  it  is  much  more  doul  itful 
whether  any  one  of  his  forefathers  of  either  family  possessed  in  land 
an  income  equal  to  his  own  before  it  was  squandered  by  him.  Be- 
tween the  two  classes  of  the  untitled  gentry  of  England,  his  family, 
by  both  father  and  mother,  held  a  place  of  which  any  man  might 
have  been  proud  ;  but  it  was  not  exactly  all  he  claimed  for  it.  To 
the  rank  of  those  powerful  commoners  of  a  former  age  who  were  not 
less  than  the  noblest  either  in  name  or  influence,  it  did  not  belong ; 
but  it  ranked  with  the  highest  and  oldest  among  that  class  of  private 
gentlemen  who  stood  between  these  and  the  yeomanry,  —  men  of 
small  hut  independent  fortunes,  equally  respectable,  and  educated 
not  less  well  ;  and,  during  several  generations,  the  property  of  both 
Landors  and  Savages  had  thus  been  held  and  handed  down  by  their 
oldest  children.  There  is  pleasant  allusion  to  these  matters,  and  to 
his  lirother's  occasional  weakness  respecting  them,  in  one  of  Mr. 
Robert  Landor's  letters. 

"It  seems  that  the  family  was  seven  hundred  years  old,  and  sev- 
eral notices  of  my  brother's  death  repeat  the  same  tale.  We  may  go 
back  about  half-way,*  hut  no  further.     Some  of  us  enjoyed  provincial 

*  The  reference  here  i-  to  the  Savages;  tin1  Landors,  as  will  lie  seen  towards  the  close 
of  the  letter,  being  more  certainly  of  older  date.  Family  deeds  in  Mr.  Henry  Landor's 
possession,  witnessed  by  Robert  de  la  Lande  and  Peter  de  Bracebridge,  must  have 
dated  before  the  statute  of  Quia  Emptores  (1268) ;  and  Mr.  W.  II.  Bracebridge,  writing 
to  Mr.  Henry  Landor  Beven  years  ago, throws  some  light  <>n  the  claim  to  a  more  remote 
antiquity.  "In  Dansey's  'Lives  of  the  Crusaders'  (p  60)  I  find  our  names  again 
together,  viz.  that  of  •  Robert  de  la  Lande,  of  that  family  which  held  manors  in  War- 
wickshire,' ami  of  Peter  de  Bracebridge,  (who)  took  upon  him  the  Bign  of  the  cross, — 

of  a  family  of  this  nai 1  consideration  in  Warwickshire.'    'this  was  in  1191.    It  is 

also  stated!  by  Dansey  that  at  the  siege  of  \.cn  (when  an  assault  was  made  on  that 

town),  the  English  and  Germans  attached  ladders  to  the  walls;  whereupon  the  Pagans 

cords  to  them,  and  tried  to  drag  them  over  the  walls;    whereon  Ralph  Telli,  Hum- 


MT.  1-22.]  BIRTH    AND    CHILDISH    DAYS.  5 

honors  and  offices ;  and  Walter  believed  that  a  certain  Arnold  Savage 
was  the,  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  of  that  name.  One  of  my 
churchwardens  had  a  sister  with  whom  I  searched  the  parish  regis- 
ters for  certain  ancestors  of  hers.  Finding  only  parish  officers,  not 
one  of  whom  rose  higher  than  a  yeoman,  the  lady,  who  was  indeed 
very  handsome,  assured  me  that  they  were  descended  from  Julius 
Caesar  quite  directly ;  and  was  much  pleased  on  learning  from  me 
that  this  Julius  was  descended  from  lulus,  the  son  of  zEneas,  the  son 
of  Venus  ;  and  thus  I  could  account  for  beauty  in  herself,  both  divine 
and  imperishable.  She  was  forty ;  and  I  gained  the  character,  soon 
lost  again,  of  extreme  politeness.  I  related  this  anecdote  to  my 
brother,  who  could  not  apply  it.  In  a  translation  of  Rabelais  pub- 
lished about  fourteen  years  ago,  I  found  the  word  Landor  *  applied  to 
such  fools  as  were  supreme  among  all  other  fools ;  and  a  long  note 
was  required  to  enumerate  their  varieties.  Till  then  I  did  not  be- 
lieve that  any  language  could  contain  so  many  opprobrious  terms,  so 
whimsical  and  contemptuous.  The  last  time  that  my  brother  was  at 
Biiiingham  I  tried  to  read  the  long  list  of  them,  but  was  interrupted 
by  such  loud  screams  as  must  sometimes  have  shaken  both  your 
library  and  mine.  There  was  not  only  astonishment,  but  delight,  in 
his  laughter.  When  I  suggested  that  probably  our  ancestor  was  the 
greatest  fool  among  all  those  who  accompanied  the  Conqueror,  and 
thus  acquired  the  highest  place  and  name,  he  accepted  the  priority. 
But  then  he  might  have  reserved  for  himself  the  power  to  escape. 
For  it  appears  that  our  name  originally  was  Del-a-La'nd  (De  la 
Laundes)  ;  and  my  brother  Henry  has  in  his  keeping  some  old  writ- 
ings conveying  an  estate  signed  and  sealed  in  that  name.  When  it 
was  that  so  many  Norman  names  gained  English  terminations,  as 
must  have  been  the  case,  the  heralds  know  best." 


III.    BIRTH  AND  CHILDISH  DAYS. 

The  family  identity  of  fools  and  Landors  does  not  seem  long  to 
have  survived  the  laughter  of  Rabelais.  Some  of  the  name  did  good 
service  in  the  civil  wars  of  Charles  and  Cromwell ;  and  Staffordshire 
had  a  stout  Whig  Landor  for  its  high-sheriff  in  the  reign  of  William 
the  Deliverer,  whose  grandson,  falling  off  from  that  allegiance,  stood 
up  as  stoutly  for  the  Jacobites,  and  whose  great-grandson  was  the 
leading  physician  in  Warwick,  when,  on  the  30th  January,  1775,  in 
the  best  house  of  the  town,  facing  to  the  street,  but  overshadowed  at 
the  back  by  old  chestnuts  and  elms,  the  eldest  child  of  himself  and 
Elizabeth  Savage  of  Tachbrooke,  christened  Walter  and  Savage,  was 
born.     The  other  children  of  the  marriage  may  at  once  be  named. 

phrey  de  Pell,  and  Robert  de  la  Lande  and  Roger  Glanville  mounted  the  ladder  and 
put  out  the  Greek  fire  which  had  been  thrown  on  it,  but  Telli,  mounting  higher,  cut 
the  ropes  with  his  sword  "  (p.  122). 

*  The  word  "  landore,"  the  reader  need  hardly  be  told,  is  not  a  fantastic  name,  but 
the  old  French  word  for  a  heavy  fellow. 


6  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  xjw-^' 

They  were  Charles,  Henry,  and  Robert  ;  Elizabeth,  Mary  Anne,  and 
Ellen  :  born  respectively  in  1777,  17.^0,  and  1  7M  ;  in  1770,  177s. 
and  1783.  The  three  daughters  died  unmarried  ;  Charles  and  Robert 
entered  the  Church,  after  taking  their  degrees  at  Oxford  ;  and  Eenry, 
who  had  been  at  Rugby  with  Walter  and  Charles,  and  desired  to  have 
gone  like  them  to  Oxford,  had,  upon  his  brother  Robert  obtaining  a 
scholarship  to  that  university  from  Bromsgrove  School,  to  yield  to  his 
father's  doubt  whether  his  income  coidd  properly  support  all  three  sons 
at  college,  and  himself  to  enter  the  office  of  a  London  conveyancer. 

It  was  the  elder  brother's  misfortune  in  his  youthful  days  that  lie 
alone  should  have  wanted  the  healthful  restraints  which  the  others 
underwent  of  necessity.  No  care  with  a  view  to  a  profession  had  any 
need  to  find  a  place  in  his  thoughts.  He  stood  first  in  the  entail  of 
the  family  estates  ;  and  if  he  could  confine  his  desires  within  such 
limit,  and  live  meanwhile  on  his  father's  allowance,  he  had  simply  to 
qualify  himself  for  improving  or  wasting  them.  This  he  too  well 
knew ;  and  though  his  father,  as  he  observed  in  Walter  the  develop- 
ment of  unusual  intellectual  promise,  would  eagerly  have  imposed 
upon  him  coiTesponding  duties  and  obligations,  the  attempt  only  led 
to  disagreements,  and  the  unsettled  wayward  habit  was  never  after- 
wards reclaimed. 

Landor  once  proposed  to  send  me  reminiscences  of  his  life.  He 
had  been  reading  the  delightful  fragment  of  the  days  of  Southey's 
boyhood,  and  the  fancy  struck  him  to  write  from  time  to  time  some 
such  recollections  of  his  own.  But  he  went  no  further  than  his  sixth 
year,  finding  the  difficulties  beyond  that  date  to  be  insuperable;  and 
unfortunately  his  letters  were  so  carefully,  for  better  preservation, 
slipped  into  some  book  at  the  time,  that  they  are  net  now  to  be  dis- 
covered. It  was  in  vain  I  urged  him  to  cpntinue  what  he  had  been 
eager  to  begin.  He  had  satisfied  himself  of  the  propriety  of  abstain- 
in--.  He  had  found  that  though  in  boyhood  we  stand  alone,  we  are 
afterwards  double  in  more  and  better  than  the  Platonic  sense,  and 
that  no  instrument  is  fine  enough  for  the  amputation.  I  pressed 
him  no  further. 

There  remains  no  remembrance  of  Landor's  infancy  or  childhood, 
therefore,  beyond  such  expressions  as  he  now  and  then  himself  let 
drop  in  old  age.  Writing  in  1853  from  the  house  in  which  he  was 
born,  and  which  his  sister  Elizabeth  occupied  till  her  death  in  the 
following  year,  when  the  last  witness  of  his  childish  days  passed 
away,  lie  mentions  having  picked  up  from  the  gravel-walk  the  first 
two  mulberries  that  had  fallen, — a  thing  he  remembered  to  have  done 
just  seventy-five  years  before.  Tachbrooke  alternated  with  Warwick 
in  these  child  memories.  From  his  seventh  year  he  had  associations 
with  the  Tachbrooke  garden  ;  and  when  near  his  eightieth  year  he 
directed  the  now  owner  of  the  house,  his  brother  Henry,  to  the  exact 
Bpol  where  he  would  find  the  particular  apple-tree  of  one  of  their 
boyish  adventures,   "close  upon   the  nut-walk,  and  just  of  the  same 


iET.   1-22.] 


BIRTH    AND    CHILDISH    DAYS. 


size  and  appearance  as  it  was  seventy  years  ago."  To  this  old  place 
he  was  indeed  especially  attached,  and  his  allusions  to  it  were  inces- 
sant. It  was  the  scene  of  his  earliest  games  and  sports,  where  his 
"heedless  childhood  played,  a  stranger  then  to  pain";  where  his 
boyhood  too  soon  had  run  through  its  few  happy  days ;  and  where 
often  he  wished  that  he  might  find  his  final  rest.  These  are  the 
expressions  continually  applied  to  it  in  letters  to  members  of  his 
family,  while  his  memory  still  could  go  back  even  beyond  his  seventh 
year.  To  his  brother  Henry  in  1852  he  exclaimed:  "Dear  old 
Tachbrooke !  It  is  the  only  locality  for  which  I  feel  any  affection. 
Well  do  I  remember  it  from  my  third  or  fourth  year ;  and  the  red 
filberts  at  the  top  of  the  garden,  and  the  apricots  from  the  barn-wall, 
and  Aunt  Nancy  cracking  the  stones  for  me.  If  I  should  ever  eat 
apricots  with  you  again,  I  shall  not  now  cry  for  the  kernel." 

As  soon  as  he  could  quit  the  nursery,  he  had  been  sent  to  a  school 
at  Knowle,  ten  miles  from  Warwick ;  and  even  of  this  time,  when  he 
had  reached  the  age  of  about  four  years  and  a  half,  his  letters  have  a 
recollection  which  is  worth  preserving.  Writing  to  his  sister  Ellen 
from  Florence,  at  the  close  of  1831,  he  says:  "  I  remember  when  I 
went  to  Knowle  an  old  woman  coming  from  Balsal-Temple  to  little 
Treherne  for  a  guinea,  which  he  paid  her  yearly.  She  was  one  hun- 
dred and  two  when  I  was  four  and  a  half ;  so  that  it  is  in  the  range 
of  possibility  that  she  might  have  seen  people  who  had  seen  not 
only  Milton,  but  Shakespeare,  Bacon,  Spenser,  and  Raleigh.  I  myself 
have  conversed  with  a  man,  not  remarkably  old,  who  had  conversed 
-with  Pope,  Warburton,  and  Fielding."  * 

*  Other  portions  of  this  letter  are  so  curious  that  the  reader  will  thank  me  for  pre- 
serving them.  Adverting  to  an  old  Warwick  friend's  death,  he  continues  :  "  She  must 
have  died  extremely  old  :  she  was  old  forty  years  ago.  I  have  an  acquaintance  here, 
an  American  by  birth,  formerly  a  painter,  who  remembers  the  election  of  Pope  Ganga- 
nelli.  He  was  in  America  when  General  Wolfe  was  killed,  —  '■but  a  mere  child,  as  you 
may  suppose,'  says  he.  He  is  now  a  hundred  and  thirteen  or  fourteen,  and  will  not  own 
that  he  is  above*  eighty-nine,  until  reminded  of  Wolfe  and  Ganganelli.  Ononis  occa- 
sion, some  years  ago,  he  said,  '  Yes,  sir,  I  am  eighty-nine  ;  I  was  eighty-nine  at  the 
time  vou  mention  ;  and  eighty-nine  I  will  stick  at,  to  the  last.'  He  painted  the  picture 
of  the  late  Lord  Middleton  and  his  family,  about  sixty  years  ago,  at  Middleton  ;  soon 
after  which  he  declined  the  profession  because  he  found  himself  growing  old.  Fifty- 
five  years  ago  he  walked  with  a  stick,  —  since  that  time  he  has  left  it  off.  He  keeps 
late  hours,  and  is  not  very  abstemious  in  food  or  wine.  A  little  while  ago,  somebody 
had  read  in  the  papers  of  a  man  in  Russia  who  was  a  hundred  and  thirty-two  years 
old.  When  this  was  told  him,  he  said:  '  I  dare  say  that  he  is  more,  but  won't  own  it : 
people  when  they  are  getting  a  little  in  years  don'tlike  to  say  anything  about  it.'  His 
hearing  is  perfect.  I  asked' him  one  day,  in  joke,  how  he  liked  William  Penn.  He  did 
not  perceive  that  I  was  quizzing  him,*  although  he  is  very  suspicious,  but  answered 
gravely  :  '  Penn,  I  believe,  was  dead  before  my  time,  —  at  all  events  his  estate  was  a. 
good  way  from  Philadelphia.'  '  Then  you  never  even  saw  him.'  '  No,  no,  not  I." 
Continuing  what  is  said  in  the  text  of  the  man  who  had  conversed  with  Pope,  and  who 
will  shortly  again  be  mentioned,  Landor  adds  :  "  This  was  Dr.  Harrington  of  Bath,  who 
at  the  time  I  mention  was  not  above  seventv-two  years  old.  He  told  me  that  he  dined 
with  old  Allen  at  Prior  Park  when  he  was  about  ten  or  eleven  years  old,  and  saw  there 
Pope  and  Warburton  ;  and  Several  years  afterwards  (five  or  six)  Fielding.  Pope  died 
the  year  afterwards,  that  is,  in  1745.*  But  old  James  Smith,  my  American,  might  have 
had'  gray  hairs  in  his  head  at  Pope's  death."  I  do  not  know  what  Lord  Macaulay 
would  have  said  to  all  this  ;  but  he  might  probably,  and  rightly,  have  demurred  at  the 
outset,  —  that  the  evidence  did  not  satisfy  him.    It  is  curious,  however. 


8  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  S?f-V 


Another  incident,  of  a  year  and  a  half's  later  date,  no  recalled 
when  writing  to  Southey,  in  1811,  of  his  Lanthony  estate,  in  the 
Vale  of  Ewias,  and  its  infinite  variety  of  flowers, — those  "beautiful 
and  peaceful  tribes"  he  so  often  wished  that  he  knew  more  about. 
"  They  always  meet  one  in  the  same  plaee,  at  the  same  season  ;  and 
years  have  no  more  effect  on  their  placid  countenances  than  on  so 
many  of  the  most  favored  gods.  I  remember  a  little  privet  which  I 
planted  when  1  was  about  six  years  old,  and  which  I  considered  the 
next  of  kin  to  me  after  my  mother  and  elder  sister.  Whenever  I 
returned  from  school  or  college,  —  for  the  attachment  was  not  stifled 
in  that  sink,  —  I  felt  something  like  uneasiness  till  I  had  seen  and 
measured  it.  There  is  no  small  delight  in  having  a  friend  in  the 
world  to  whom  one  dare  repeat  such  folly."  With  a  delight  that 
may  perhaps  be  measured  by  the  surpassing  beauty  of  the  lines  in 
which  it  is  expressed,  he  repeated  the  folly  in  later  years  to  a  wider 
audience  :  — 

"  And  't  is  and  ever  was  my  wish  and  way 
To  let  all  flowers  live  freely,  and  all  die* 
Whene'er  their  Genius  bids  their  semis  depart, 
Among  their  kindred  in  their  native  place. 
I  never  pluck  the  rose  ;  the  violet's  head 
Hath  shaken  with  my  breath  upon  its  hank 
And  not  reproached  me  :  the  ever-sacred  cup 
Of  the  pure  lily  hath  between  my  hands 
Felt  sate,  unsoiled,  nor  lost  one  grain  of  gold." 

Varied,  at  the  same  time,  with  these  enjoyments  of  youth,  were  its 
other  commoner  occurrences,  which  bring  to  most  of  us  a  foretaste  of 
the  later  troubles.  All  the  trials  he  ever  underwent,  he  declared  re- 
peatedly, were  as  nothing  to  his  sufferings  over  grammar  and  arith- 
metic, of  the  last  of  which  he  remained  ignorant  all  his  life,  "  accord- 
ing to  the  process  in  use."  And  a  still  worse  calamity,  a  deep  lower 
than  the  lowest,  was  dancing ;  so  that  when  he  came  to  have  a  son 
of  his  own  present  age,  he  had  gloomily  to  prophesy  that  he  bid  fair 
to  be  a  worse  dancer  than  he  had  himself  been,  for  quite  vainly  had 
he  striven  to  impress  upon  him  the  dreadful  truth  that  all  other 
miseries  and  misfortunes  of  life  put'  together  were  nothing  to  this. 


IV.     AT  RUGBY  SCHOOL. 

From  Knowle,  when  about  ten  years  old,  Landor  was  transferred 
to  Rugby  ;  at  that  time  under  Doctor  James,  a  scholar  of  fair  repute, 
who  did  something  to  redeem  the  school  from  the  effects  of  the  long 
and  dull  mastership  that  preceded  his.  Many  stories  are  told  of 
Landor  here,  and  Bome  that  in  his  old  age  obtained  sanction  from 
himself,  which  must,  nevertheless,  be  pronounced  apocryphal 

He  is  said  to  have  been  without  a  rival  in  boxing,  in  leaping,  and 
in  all  sports    allowed    or    forbidden  ;   to    have   been   the  boldest   rider 

and  most  adventurous  despiser  of  sehoohbounds  of  whom  the  Rug- 


MX.  1-22.]  AT   SCHOOL   AT    RUGBY.  9 

bseans  of  that  day  boasted ;  and  to  have  astonished  equally  the 
townspeople,  the  school-boys,  and  the  masters  by  a  reckless  defiance 
of  authority.  That  he  defied  authority,  here  as  in  most  other  places, 
is  certain  enough ;  but  the  methods  and  modes  described  are  not 
those  he  is  likely  to  have  used.  The  picture  of  him  on  horseback, 
out  of  bounds,  galloping  beyond  the  reach  of  pedestrian  authority, 
bears  small  resemblance  to  the  studious,  wilful  boy,  at  once  shy  and 
impetuous,  —  not,  indeed,  backward  in  the  ordinary  sports  of  the 
school,  but  in  boxing  not  more  than  the  equal  of  any  of  his  three 
brothers,  of  whom  none  were  in  a  remarkable  degree  pugnacious  or 
skilful,  and  in  riding  certainly  inferior  to  them  all.  Charles  more 
especially,  the  brother  next  to  himself,  was  his  admitted  superior  in 
athletic  exercises ;  and  Rugby  recollections  have  doubtless  given  to 
Walter  many  of  the  exploits  of  this  younger  brother,  always  more 
active  and  fonder  of  country  sports,  and  to  whom  the  language 
quoted  woidd  be  more  applicable,  though  still  extravagant.  Charles 
had  a  larger  and  finer  presence,  both  as  boy  and  man,  and  to  the  last 
was  an  admirable  horseman.  Walter  was  of  strong  build,  but  never, 
in  early  or  later  life,  rode  well ;  and  though  he  took  part  in  cricket,* 
football,  and  other  games,  and  was  even  famous  for  the  skill  with 
which  he  threw  the  cast-net  in  fishing,  he  was  at  all  times  disposed 
rather  to  walk  by  the  river-side  with  a  book  than  to  engage  in  such 
trials  of  strength  and  activity.  In  one  of  his  letters  he  remarks  both 
of  school  and  college  days,  that  he  oftener  stuck  in  the  middle  of 
a  Greek  verse  than  of  a  brake  ;  and  he  writes  on  one  occasion  to 
Southey,  much  in  the  style  of  an  inexpert  horseman  :  "  I  was  very 
fond  of  riding  when  I  was  young,  but  I  found  that  it  produces  a 
rapidity  in  the  creation  of  thought  which  makes  us  forget  what  we 
are  doing."  His  brother  Robert  tells  me  that  he  never  followed  the 
hounds  at  Rugby  or  anywhere  else,  and  that  when  he  kept  three 
horses  he  never  mounted  one  of  them ;  they  were  only  for  his  car- 
riage. Average  sized  as  he  was,  he  was  the  least,  though  not  the 
■weakest,  of  the  four  brothers  ;  well  shaped,  but  not  in  youth  so  good- 
looking  as  those  who  knew  him  only  in  after  days  would  imagine. 

For  a  moment  I  recall  the  well-remembered  figure  and  face,  as 
they  first  became  known  to  me  nearly  thirty  years  ago.  Landor 
was  then  upwards  of  sixty,  and  looked  that  age  to  the  full.  He  was 
not  above  the  middle  stature,  but  had  a  stout,  stalwart  presence, 
walked  without  a  stoop,  and  in  his  general  aspect,  particularly  the 

*  Other  allusions  to  Rugby  may  be  worth  giving  from  one  of  his  letters  to  his  sister 
Elizabeth  from  Florence  in' January,  1831.  Mentioning  the  fact  of  the  publication  of 
Dr.  Buckland's  book  on  Geology,  'he  describes  having  dined  with  the  Doctor  three 
years  before  at  Lord  Dillon's,  and  adds  :  "  He  told  me  I  little  suspected,  when  I  was 
playing  at  cricket  at  Rugby,  that  I  was  running  over  some  hundreds  of  hyenas.  Several 
parishes  in  that  neighborhood  are  resting  entirely  on  immense  droves  of  these  brutes. 
He  says  they  must  have  occupied  the  world  before  men  did,  yet  the  marks  of  their 
teeth  are  still  visible  on  the  thigh-bones  one  of  another.  I  have  been  reading  a  book 
which  I  was  laughed  at  for  reading  when  at  Rugby,  and  which  I  believe  I  then  threw 
aside.  Sandford  and  Merton.  I  find  it  one  of  the  most  sensible  books  that  ever  was 
written  for  the  education  of  children." 


10  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  ^s^;!' 

set  and  carriage  of  his  head,  was  decidedly  of  what  is  called  a  dis- 
tinguished bearing.  His  hair  was  already  silvered  gray,  and  had 
retired  Gar  upward  from  his  forehead,  which,  wide  and  full  but  re- 
treat in.ir,  could  never  in  the  earlier  time  have  been  seen  to  such 
advantage.  What  at  first  was  noticeable,  however,  in  the  broad 
white  massive  head,  were  the  full,  yet  strangely  lifted  eyebrows; 
and  they  were  not  immediately  attractive.  They  might  have  meant 
only  pride  or  self-will  in  its  most  arrogant  form  but  for  what  was 
visible  in  the  rest  of  the  face.  In  the  large  gray  eyes  there  was  a 
depth  of  composed  expression  that  even  startled  by  its  contrast  to 
the  eager  restlessness  looking  out  from  the  surface  of  them ;  and  in 
the  same  variety  and  quickness  of  transition  the  mouth  was  ex- 
tremely striking.  The  lips  that  seemed  compressed  with  unalterable 
will  would  in  a  moment  relax  to  a  softness  more  than  feminine ; 
anil  a  sweeter  smile  it  was  impossible  to  conceive.  What  was  best 
in  his  character,  whether  for  strength  or  gentleness,  had  left  its 
traces  here.  It  was  altogether  a  face  on  which  power  was  visibly 
impressed,  but  without  the  resolution  and  purpose  that  generally 
'accompany  it  ;  and  one  could  well  imagine  that  while  yet  in  extreme 
youth,  and  before  life  had  written  its  ineffaceable  record,  the  individ- 
ual features  might  have  had  as  little  promise  as  they  seem  to  bear  in 
a  portrait  *  of  him  now  before  me  belonging  to  his  brother  Henry, 
and  taken  in  his  thirtieth  year.  The  eye  is  fine;  but  black  hair 
covers  all  the  forehead,  and  you  recognize  the  face  of  the  later  time 
quite  without  its  fulness,  power,  and  animation.  The  stubbornness 
is  there,  without  the  softness ;  the  self-will  untamed  by  any  ex- 
perience ;  plenty  of  energy,  but  a  want  of  emotion.  The  nose  was 
never  particularly  good;  and  the  lifted  brow,  flatness  of  cheek  and 
jaw,  wide  upper  lip,  retreating  mouth  and  chin,  and  heavy  neck, 
peculiarities  necessarily  prominent  in  youth,  in  age  contributed  only 
to  a  certain  lion  look  he  liked  to  be  reminded  of,  and  would  confirm 
with  a  Loud,  long  laugh  hardly  less  than  leonine.  Higher  and  higher 
went  peal  after  peal,  in  continuous  and  increasing  volleys,  until 
regions  of  sound  were  reached  very  far  beyond  ordinary  human 
lungs-t 

*  There  i-  an  engraving  of  this  portrait  of  him  in  his  thirtieth  year,  ami  another  of  a 
painting  of  him  by  Boxall  on  the  eve  of  hi-  seventy-eighth  birthday.  With  BoxalPs 
work  he  was  greatly  pleased,  ami  wished  it  to  appear  in  any  posthumous  edition  of  his 
writings.  "  I  care  little,"  be  wrote  t..  me  in  December,  1852,  "  how  many  folks  look  at 
me  when  it  i-  clear  and  evident  that  F  do  not  step  out  to  he  looked  at.  If  I  have  any 
vanity  or  affectation,  let  me  at  least  have  the  merit  of  concealing  it.  No  author,  liv- 
ing or  dea. I.  ever  kept  himself  bo  deeply  in  the  shade  throughout  every  season  of  life. 
Perhaps  when  I  am  in  the  nave,  curiosity  may  he  excited  to  know  what  kind  of 
countenance  that  creature  had  who  Imitated  nobody,  and  whom  nobody  imitated;  the 
man  who  walked  through  the  crowd  of  poets  ami  prose-men  and  never  was  touched  by 
any  one's  Bkirts;  who  walked  ap  to  the  ancients  and  talked  with  them  familiarly,  hut 
never  took  a  -up  of  wine  or  a  crust  of  bread  in  their  houses.  If  this  should  happen,  and 
it  probably  will  within  your  lifetime,  then  let  the  good  people  see  the  old  man's  head 
by  Boxall." 

t  There  i-  so  good  a  description  of  this  laugh  in  a  clever  article  of  the  London 
Quarterly  Renew,  shortly   after  Landor'a  death,  that    the  reader  will   thank  me  for 


yET.  1-22.]  AT    SCHOOL   AT    RUGBY.  11 

With  this  accompaniment  I  have  heard  him  relate  one  Rugby 
anecdote  that  is  certainly  authentic.  Throwing  his  net  one  morning 
in  a  stream  to  which  access  on  some  previous  occasion  had  been 
refused  to  him,  the  farmer  who  owned  the  land  came  down  upon  him 
suddenlv ;  very  angry  wor^ls  were  exchanged  ;  and  Landor,  comply- 
ing quite  unexpectedly  with  a  peremptory  demand  for  his  fishing 
apparatus,  flung  the  net  over  the  farmer's  head  with  such  faultless 
precision  as  completely  to  entangle  in  its  meshes  his  enraged  adver- 
sary, and  reduce  him  to  easy  submission.  Nor  did  he  less  riotously 
laugh  at  the  relation  of  one  of  his  many  differences  with  the  head- 
master in  his  later  years  at  the  school,  when  he  would  entangle  him 
as  suddenly  in  questions  of  longs  and  shorts ;  and  the  Doctor,  going 
afterwards  good-naturedly  to  visit  him  in  his  private  room,  woidd 
knock  vainly  for  admission  at  the  bolted  study-door,  from  within 
which  Landor,  affecting  to  discredit  the  reality  of  the  visit  or  the 
voice,  and  claiming  there  his  right  to  protest  against  all  intrusion  of 
the  profane,  would  devoutly  ejaculate,  Avaunt,  Satan  ! 

Among  his  school-fellows  was  Butler,  afterwards  head-master  of 
Shrewsbury  and  Bishop  of  Lichfield  ;  but  Landor  had  the  reputation 
in  the  school  of  being  the  best  classic.  The  excellence  of  his  Latin 
verses  was  a  tradition  at  Rugby  for  half  a  century  after  he  left ;  and 
one  of  the  fags  of  his  time,  a  peer's  son,  has  described  the  respectful 
awe  with  which  he  read  one  day  on  the  slate,  in  the  handwriting  of 
Doctor  James  himself,  "Play-day  for  Landor's  Latin  verses."  His 
familiarity  with  Greek  was  less  conspicuous,  that  language  having 
become  his  more  especial  study  only  in  later  years  ;  and  there  is 
doubtless  some  truth  in  the  playful  allusion  of  one  of  his  letters 
written  when  he  was  eighty-four.  "  I  have  forgotten  my  Greek,  of 
which  I  had  formerly  as  much  as  boys  of  fifteen  have  now.  Butler, 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Lichfield,  and  myself,  were  the  first  at  Rugby,  or, 
I  believe,  any  other  school,  who  attempted  a  Greek  verse.  Latin  I 
still  possess  a  small  store  of."  *  But  what  would  seem  most  to  have 
marked  itself  out  as  peculiar  in  his  mastery  of  both  Greek  and  Latin, 
even  so  early  as  his  Rugby  days,  was  less  what  masters  could  teach 
him  than  what  Nature  herself  had  given  him.  This  was  a  character 
and  habit  of  mind  resembling  closely  that  of  the  ancient  Avriters ; 
ways  of  seeing  and  thinking  nearly  akin  to  theirs  ;  the  power,  sudden 
as  thought  itself,  of  giving  visual  shape  to  objects  of  thought ;  and 
with  all  this,   intense   energy  of  feeling,  and  a  restless  activity  of 

quoting  it.  The  writer  is  speaking  of  Landor's  morning  calls  in  Bath,  with  his  small 
Pomeranian  dog,  as  events  to  the  friends  he  visited.  "  He  used  to  enounce  the  most 
outre  opinions ;  and  when  some  sentiment  more  extravagant  than  the  rest  had  excited 
the  laughter  of  his  audience,  he  would  sit  silent  until  they  had  finished  laughing,  then 
he  would  begin  to  shake,  then  to  laugh  aloud,  piano  at  first,  hut  with  crescendo  steadily 
advancing  to  the  loudest  fortissimo  ;  whereupon  Pomero  would  spring  out  from  his  lair, 
leap  into  his  master's  lap,  add  his  bark  to  Landor's  roar,  until  the  mingled  volume  of 
sounds  would  swell  from  the  room  into  the  sleepy  streets,  and  astonish,  if  not  scandal- 
ize, the  somewhat  torpid  Bathonians  who  might  be  passing  by." 
*  Letter  to  Lady  Sawle,  8th  February,  1858. 


12  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  **%£*& 

imagination,  eager  to  reproduce  themselves  in  similar  forms  of  vivid 
and  picturesque  expression.      It  was  this  that  nave  originality  to  his 

style,  even  while  he  most  appeared  to  be  modelling  himself  upon 
antiquity.     He  had  the  Greek  love  of  the  clear,  serene,  and  graceful, 
of  the  orderly  and  symmetrical;   he  had. the  ('.reek  preference  for 
impulsive   rather  than  reflective   forms   of  imagination;  and  he  had 
the   sense   of    material    grandeur,    and   the   eager   sympathy   with 
domestic  as  well  as  public  life,  peculiar  to  the  Latin  genius.     In  this 
way  to  the  last  he  was  more  himself  of  the  antique  Roman  or  Greek 
than  of  a  critical  student  of  either  tongue;  although  the  marvellous 
facility  with  which  he  had  been  writing  Latin  verse  from  his  youth 
gave   him   always   a   power   over   that    language   which   might   well 
supply  the  place  of  more  severe  requirements  of  scholarship.     Very 
largely  also  during  all  his  life  had  the  power  contributed  to  his  own 
enjoyment;  and  it  is  in  this  view,  rather  than  in  the  light  of  tasks 
or  lessons,  we  have  to  speak  of  his  classical  attainments  even  so  far 
back  as  his  boyhood.      Such  acquaintance  with  parsing,  syntax,  and 
prosody  as  the  Rugby  exercises  at  that  time  called  for,  cost  him,  of 
course,  no  effort ;  and  long  before  he  had  formally  qualified  for  the 
rank  he  was   practically  the  first   Latinist  in  the  school.      His  tutor 
was  Doctor  Sleath,  the  late  prebend  of  St.  Paul's;*  but  though  this 
good  man  had  some   influence  over  him,  it  was-  exerted  in  vain  to 
induce  him  to  compete  for  a  prize  poem.     "  I  never  would  contend 
at  school,"  he  wrote  in  one  of  his  last  letters  to  Southey,  "  with  any 
one  for  anything.       I  formed  the  same  resolution  when  I  went  to 
college,  and    I    have  kept  it,"     With  something  of  the  shyness  that 
avoided  competition,  there  was  more  of  the  pride  that  would  acknowl- 
edge no  competitor  ;   and  he  was,  in  truth,  never  well  disposed  to 
anything  systematized  either  in  pursuits  or  studies.     What  he  did 
best  and  worst,  he  did  in  his  earliest  as  his  latest  life  for  the  satisfac- 
tion  of  his  own  will  or  pleasure. 

The  subject  thus  adverted  to  will  frequently  recur,  and  frank  con- 
fession of  my  want  of  qualification  to  speak  of  it  critically  must  ac- 
company all  remarks  of  my  own.  I  will  yet  venture  to  say  of  his 
Latin  verse,  which  he  wrote  as  abundantly  as  English  and  of  which 
he  had  himself  the  higher  opinion,  that  I  believe  more  of  the  pleas- 
ure of  original  poetry  to  be  derivable  from  it  than  from  any  other 
modern  Latinity;  and  though  here  and  there  it  seems  to  me  to  be 
somewhat  difficult  in  construction,  it  has  never  anything  of  the 
schoolmaster's  expletives  or  phrases,  but  in  that  as  in  other  respects 
may  be  read  as  if  a  Roman  himself  had  written  it.  Nor  is  it  less 
certainly  to  be  Baid  of  his  Creek,  that,  though  he  more  rarely  com- 
posed m  that  language,  he  had  the  sense  inseparable  from  a  poet  and 

*  Among  his  papers  I  found  interesting  proof  that  ngp  had  not  ohscnred  his  recollec- 
tion of  kindnesses  received  at  Rugbv,  in  the  cop?  of  a  note  he  had  Bent  with  his  Col- 
lected Works  in  1846  to  his  old  tutor"    "  My  dear  Dr.  Sleath:   Do  not  fatigue  your 
with  reading  the  Bmall   print   T  send  you;  but  accept  it  graciously  from  your  ever 
obliged  and  affectionate  W.  Lahdob."  " 


yET.  1-22.]  AT    SCHOOL    AT    RUGBY.  13 

scholar  of  the  vast  superiority  of  its  literature,  and  derived  from  it 
an  influence  that  in  his  own  original  writing  became  strikingly 
visible.  He  is  one  of  the  dozen  men  in  a  generation  who  can  be  said 
to  have  read  Plato  through  in  his  own  tongue  ;  and  when  he  had 
passed  his  eighty-fifth  year  he  read  in  the  original  Greek  the  whole 
of  the  Odyssey.  I  will  add  a  remark  from  one  of  his  brother's  let- 
ters :  "  At  school  and  college  he  had  gained  superiority  over  his 
companions,  and,  seventy  years  ago,  very  little  Greek  was  sufficient 
for  such  distinction.  There  are  better  scholars  passing  from  our 
public  schools  now  than  were  then  the  fellows  of  my  college  who  had 
taken  their  master's  degree.  But  Walter  increased  his  Latin  all  his 
life  long,  because  he  had  pleasure  in  it.  He  had  also  a  fondness  for 
the  derivation  of  words  :  reading  the  Port-Royal  Grammar  twice 
through,  and  Ainsworth's  Latin  Dictionary  once.*  But  it  was  not 
till  after  he  had  left  England  and  was  preparing  to  qualify  himself 
for  the  Imaginary  Conversations  and  Pericles  and  Asimsia,  that  he 
applied  his  thoughts  thoroughly  to  Greek  literature  ;  and  even  then 
his  reading  was  very  confined.  His  friends  must  regret  his  estimate 
of  Plato  especially.  But  there  was  no  deception,  no  false  pretence, 
in  his  criticisms.  He  did  not  affect  more  scholarship  than  he  pos- 
sessed :  but  because  his  contemporaries  had  once  been  inferior  to  him, 
he  believed  that  they  must  ever  remain  at  the  same  distance  from 
him ;  that  they  must  be  inferior  still ;  and  hence  the  appearance  of 
too  much  pretension.  Compared  with  such  scholars  as  the  Univer- 
sities are  producing  now,  he  was  a  very  idle  student,  idle  indeed. 
You  will  accept  these  opinions  of  mine  as  worth  hardly  a  moment's 
consideration,  unless  they  are  confirmed  by  your  own ;  for  I  am  now, 
and  ever  have  been,  as  ill  qualified  to  estimate  Walter  as  he  was  to 
estimate  Plato.  Parr  once  described  him  to  me  as  a  most  excellent 
Latin  scholar  with  some  creditable  knowledge  of  Greek ;  and  I  be- 
lieve that  not  much  more  could  be  said  fifty  years  later.  Nor  did  he 
pretend  to  more." 

Of  any  taste  as  yet  developed  in  him  for  particular  branches  of 
English  reading  or  study,  there  is  no  trace  ;  but  one  of  his  letters  to 
Southey  in  1811  tells  us  of  his  first  literary  purchase  :  "The  two 
first  books  I  ever  bought  were  at  the  stall  of  an  old  woman  at  Rugby. 
They  happened  to  be  Baker's  Chronicle  and  Drayton's  PolyoJhion.  I 
was  very  fond  of  both  because  they  were  bought  by  me.  They  were 
my  own ;  and  if  I  did  not  read  them  attentively,  my  money  would 
have  been  thrown  away,  and  I  must  have  thought  and  confessed  my- 
self injudicious.  I  have  read  neither  since,  and  I  never  shall  possess 
either  again.  It  is  melancholy  to  think  with  how  much  more  fond- 
ness and  pride  the  writers  of  those  days  contemplated  whatever  was 
belonging  to  Old  England.  People  now,  in  praising  any  scene  or 
event,  snarl  all  the  while,  and  attack  their  neighbors  for  not  praising. 

*  "  Of  the  Greek  Grammar,"  he  tells  Southev  in  one  of  his  letters,  "  I  knew  so 
little  at  seventeen  that  I  read  over  the  Port-Koyal  yearly  for  more  than  twenty  years. 


14:  WABWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  vk-W*' 

They  feel  a  consciousness  that  the  foundations  of  our  greatness  are 
impaired,  and  have  occasioned  a  thousand  little  cracks  and  crevices 
to  let  in  the  cold  air  upon  our  comforts.  Ah,  Nassau  and  Oliver!  — 
Quis  ml, is  tertius  kazres?"  Certainly  neither  Sidmouth  nor  Castle- 
reagh,  Southey  would  himself  have  answered  ;  and  the  mere  tone  of 
the  question  is  some  proof  that  the  purchase  from  the  old  woman's 
stall  was  indeed  a  good  one,  and  that  to  have  read  "  attentively  "  at 
this  time  of  life  two  such  hearty  old  lovers  of  their  country  as  Baker 
and  Drayton  had  left  a  wholesome  impression  on  this  Rugby  boy. 

On  the  same  form  with  him  and  Butler,  all  four  having  entered  at 
about  the  same  time,  were  Henry  Cary  and  Walter  Birch,  both  of 
them  also  Landor's  contemporaries  at  Oxford.  Writing  from  Flor- 
ence  at  nearly  the  close  of  his  eighty-fifth  year,*  he  says  :  "  Do  not 
despise  Cary's  Dante.  It  is  wonderful  how  he  could  have  turned  the 
rhymes  of  Dante  into  unrhymed  verse  with  any  harmony  :  he  has 
done  it.  Poor  Cary!  I  remember  him  at  Rugby  and  Oxford.  He 
was  the  friend  of  my  friend  Walter  Birch,  whom  I  fought  at  Rugby, 
and  who  thrashed  me  well.  He  was  a  year  older,  and  a  better  boxer  : 
we  were  intimate  ever  afterwards,  till  his  death.*'  f  Many  letters  re- 
main to  attest  this  intimacy,  which,  a  few  years  after  Landor's  brief 
residence  at  Oxford,  his  brother  Robert  closely  shared  on  coming  into 
residence  at  Worcester  College  ;  Birch  having  by  that  time  obtained  a 
fellowship  at  Magdalen,  and  deservedly  high  repute  among  the  most 
distinguished  men  in  the  other  colleges.  His  elder  brother  was 
second  master  at  Rugby;  J  and  Landor  often  generously  spoke  of 
Walter  Birch  himself  as  having  been  the  best  Rugby  scholar,  as  well 
as  the  boy  with  whom  he  had  formed  his  closest  and  indeed  his  only 
real  friendship.  "I  see  this  morning,"  he  wrote  to  me  in  1854, 
"that  Routh,  the  President  of  Magdalen,  is  dead.  He  was  made 
president  just  before  I  entered  the  university.  The  first  scholar  ad- 
mitted to  his  college  after  the  election  was  my  friend  Walter  Birch, 
the  best  scholar  at  Rugby,  not  excepting  Butler.  We  used  to  walk 
together  in  Addison's  walk  along  the  Cherwell.  From  Rugby  we  had 
often  gone  to  Bilton,  one  mile  off,  a  small  estate  bought  by  Addison, 
where  his  only  daughter,  an  old  fat  woman  of  weak  intellect,  was 
then  living,  and  lived  a  good  while  after, —  three  or  four  years. 
Surely   1    must    have    assisted    in    another   life!" 

B  yond  such  glimpses  as  these  there  is  little  more  to  relate  of  his 
Rugby  days.      Though   he   had  not  many  intimacies  in  the  school,  he 

*  October  28,  I860:  the  letter  is  addressed  to  Mr.  Robert  Lytton. 

t  "Cary,"  the  letter  goes  on  in  characteristic  fashion,  "had  some  subordinate  place 
in  the  British  Museum.  Se  was  a  learned  and  virtuous  man.  Our  ministers  of  state 
were  never  more  consistent  than  in  their  neglect  of  him.  One  would  imagine  that 
they  were  all  | ts,  only  that  they  'li'l  not  snarl  or  scowl  at  him." 

J  To  this  brother  of  his  friend,  Landor  -'"it  a  copy  of  his  Collected  Works  in  1848 
with  the  subjoined  note:  "My  dear  Dr.  Birch:  My  old  friendship  with  your  brother 
Walter,  my  only  one  at  Rugby,  gives  me  a  riLrht  of  sending  to  you  what  it  i^  the  will 
of  Providence  that  I  cannot  send  t"  him.    Accept  it  a-  a  mark  of  my  esteem  for  your 

manly  character  and  gr inl  erudition;  ami  believe  me,  my  dear  Dr.   Birch,  yours 

Bincerely,  W.  S.  Lakdob." 


JET.  1-22.]  AT    SCHOOL    AT    RUGBY.  15 

was  generally  popular  and  respected,  and  used  his  influence  often  to 
save  the  younger  boys  from  undue  harshness  or  violence.  This  is 
mentioned  in  some  recent  recollections  by  one  who  was  with  him  at 
Eugby  ;  and  an  illustration  may  be  added  from  a  letter  of  his  brother 
Henry's,  when  both  had  passed  their  seventieth  year  :  "  Do  you 
think  I  ever  forgot  your  kindness  to  me  at  Rugby,  in  threatening 
another  boy  who  ill-used  me  if  he  again  persisted  in  similar  conduct  1 
Or  your  gift  of  money  to  me  at  that  time,  when  I  verily  believe  you 
had  nut  another  shilling  left  for  your  own  indulgences  1 "  *  A  like 
interference  on  behalf  of  another  school-fellow  of  his  own  standing, 
with  whom  otherwise  he  had  little  in  common,  led  to  an  intimacy 
that  should  be  mentioned  here  ;  not  for  anything  it  adds  to  our 
knowledge  of  his  school-days,  |  but  because  it  brought  pleasant  asso- 
ciations to  his  later  life.  Between  him  and  Fleetwood  Parkhurst,  son 
of  an  old  Worcestershire  squire  descended  from  the  Fleetwoods  and 
Dormers,  there  was  a  discordance  of  taste  and  temper  in  most  things  ; 
yet  their  connection  survived  the  Rugby  time  ;  they  met  frequently 
after  their  school-days  ;  they  visited  each  other's  families  ;  Parkhurst 
was  the  only  Rugby  boy  who  went  with  him  to  the  same  college  at 
Oxford  ;  and  they  travelled  on  occasions  together  until  quite  thrown 
asunder  by  a  quarrel,  |  which  nevertheless  in  no  respect  abated  the 
affection  already  conceived  for  his  son's  friend  by  the  elder  Mr.  Park- 
hurst, and  continued  through  the  old  squire's  life.  At  Ripple  Court, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Severn,  the  family  house,  there  was  for  years  no 
happier  guest ;  and  when  nearly  half  a  century  had  passed,  and 
Fleetwood's  youngest  sister  had  wedded  a  public  man  of  distinction 
to  be  named  later  in  this  narrative,  Landor  reminded  her  of  days  still 
gratefully  remembered. 

*  Henry  to  Walter  Landor:  Tachbrooke,  2d  January,  1847. 

t  I  shall  be  forgiven  for  quoting  a  letter  to  myself  of  August,  1851,  as  well  for  its 
incidental  mention  of  Rugby,  and  its  other  amusing  references,  as  for  its  closing  allu- 
sion to  Walter  Birch  and  Coplestone.  Mentioning  a  writer  "  who  likes  to  be  fine,"  as 
having  been  "scornful  at  ladies  (by  possibility)  eating  with  their  knives,"  he  goes  on: 
"  He  means  using  them  as  we  generally  use  forks.  Everybody  did  it  before  silver- 
pronged  forks  were  common.  When  I  was  at  Rugby  we  had  only  steel  forks  of  three 
prongs.  Verily  do  I  believe,  on  recollection,  that  they  were  only  of  two  until  the  age 
grew  delicate.  It  is  probable  that  our  Sardanapalus  'George  the  Fourth  had  no  silver 
ibrk  at  eight  or  nine  years  of  age.  Coryat,  in  his  Crudities,  is  horrified  at  the  luxury 
of  the  Venetians,  among  whom  he  first  saw  such  a  portent.  I  once  observed  a  French 
lady  of  high  rank,  no  less  a  personage  than  a  duchess,  not  only  use  her  knife  as  a  baker 
uses  his  shovel,  but  pick  her  teeth  with  it,  resting  her  elbow  on  the  table.  In  France 
the  Graces  seem  to  leave  the  room  when  the  ladies  sit  down  to  dinner.  They  are.  cer- 
tainly more  free  and  easy  at  such  times  than  ours  are.  Nine  in  ten  of  ours  would 
think  it  indecorous  to  cut  their  turbot.  but  would  rather  tear  it  in  pieces,  and  besmear 
their  plates  with  it.  The  more  fools  they,  — as  well  as  the  more  inelegant.  Turbot, 
by  the  fork  alone,  is  almost  as  indomitable  as  venison.  If  I  were  anybody  of  conse- 
quence, I  should  like  to  shock  Squire 's  ultra-Chesterfieldism  by  a  display  of  my 

manipulation  on  a  turbot  four  inches  thick.  He  should  see  the  precision  of  my  quad- 
ratures. I  am  glad  you  think  highly  of  Coplestone.  He  was  the  friend  of  my  friend 
Walter  Birch,  who  had  only  a  single'unworthy  one,  Walter  Landor." 

%  I  find  in  one  of  Lando'r's  letters  of  1844  a  reference  to  the  close  of  the  life  of  this 
companion  of  his  youth.  He  had  fallen  dead  in  the  streets  of  Bristol.  "  Lltt]e  .as 
poor  Parkhurst  is  to  be  respected,  I  am  shocked  and  grieved  at  his  death.  A  happier 
one,  however,  there  could  not  be.  I  shall  often  think  of  our  early  friendship  and  our 
"■appier  days." 


16  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  lfm-97- 

"  Whore  Malvern's  verdant  ridges  gleam 

Beneath  the  morning  ray, 
Look  eastward:   Bee  Sahrina's  stream 

Roll  rapidly  away 

The  lord  of  these  domains  was  one 
Who  loved  me  like  an  only  son."  * 

Remaining  at  Rugby  till  he  was  past  his  fifteenth  year,  lie  had 
meanwhile  been  joined  there  by  his  younger  brothers  Charles  and 
Henry  ;  and  in  a  letter  to  the  latter  written  in  1847  we  get  our  first 
glimpse  of  their  father,  Doctor  Landor,  at  tins  early  time.  Naming 
some  communication  received  from  the  head  of  the  Lawley. family,  he 
says  Lord  Wenlock  had  reminded  him  that  their  families  had  been 
intimate  for  sixty  years,  but  that  his  own  memory  carries  him  further 
back.  "It  is  sixty-five  years  since  Sir  Robert  Lawley  stood  god- 
father to  our  brother  Robert.  I  was  at  Canwell  (so  was  Charles) 
with  my  father  when  I  was  about  eleven  years  old.  We  went  cours- 
ing, for  we  rode  our  ponies.  One  morning  we  went  into  the  stable, 
and  Sir  Robert  said  to  my  father,  stopping  in  a  certain  spot,  '  Landor, 
how  many  bottles  of  port  have  we  drank  together  just  about  here1?' 
'  Better  talk  of  dozens,  Sir  Robert,'  said  my  father.  He  and  his 
father  must  have  known  my  grandfather,  for  he  quoted  as  a  saying 
of  his  father's  that  -my  grandfather  was  an  honest  dog  for  a  Jacobite, 
and  screamed  with  laughter  as  he  said  it."  It  was  but  a  year  after 
this  incident  that  young  Walter  had  a  visitor  who  might  have 
seemed  not  wholly  unconnected  with  those  dozens  of  port,  and  to 
have  brought  him  unsought  and  premature  instalment  of  his  entailed 
estates  of  inheritance.  The  alarm  was  a  false  one,  this  particular 
legacy  going  to  his  younger  brothers  ;  but  the  reader  will  appreciate 
the  quiet  humor  with  which  one  of  them,  Avho  received  from  his 
father  no  better  portion,  tells  the  tale. 

"Though  followed,"  writes  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  "by  two  younger 
brothers  as  soon  as  they  could  be  received  at  Rugby,  there  remains 
nothing  worth  recording  till  he  was  twelve  years  old,  —  when  a  vio- 
lent fit  of  the  gout--  gout  which  might  have  qualified  him  for  an  al- 
derman—  restored  him  to  his  mother's  care  at  Warwick.  Never  was 
there  a  more  impatient  Bufferer;  and  his  imprecations,  divided  equally 
between  the  gout  and  his  nurses,  were  heard  afar.      It  is  also  strange 

*  The  poem  from  which  these  lines  are  taken  was  sent  to  Mrs.  Rosenhagen  in  May, 
with  a  letter,  in  which  he  tells  her:   "I  am  not  quite  so  young  as  I  was,  nor 

?uite  so  free  from  cares  and  infirmities  as  you  remember  me  at  Ripple.  Believe  me, 
very  often  think  of  the  very  kind  friends  who  received  me  there  «  ith  such  cordiality. 
Your  father  was  as  fond  of  me  as  if  I  had  been  his  son;  and  never  did  I  shed  so  many 
tears  for  the  1"--  of  any  man."  In  one  of  his  letters  of  1880,  from  Florence,  he  pra.3  a 
his  sister  Elizabeth  not  to  omit  to  tell  her  that  he  often  thinks  of  the  many  happy 
day-  he  -pent  at  Ripple.    "  I  believe  I  should  shed  tears  if  I  saw  the  place  again.    No 

fm  in  my  early  days  was  so  partial  to  me  as  her  father  was."  Finally,  let  me  give 
i-oin  another  of  his  letters  a  dialogue  (not  altogether  imaginary)  illustrative  of  this 
friend  of  his  youth.  "  My  excellent  old  friend,  Mr.  Parkhurst,  was  appointed  by  Lord 
North  to  he  one  "f  the  commissaries  to  the  armies  in  North  America.  <  m  his  return  he 
met  Lord  North  in  the  Park.  ■  What,  Parkhurst!  von  a  commissary!  and  in  your  old 
family  coach?'  'Yes,  my  lord!  thank  Cod!  and  without  a  shilling  more  in  my 
pocket  than  when  I  set  out'     '  A  pretty  thing  to  thank  God  for! '  rejoined  my  lord." 


JET.  1-22.]  AT    SCHOOL    AT    RUGBY.  17 

that  there  never  was  any  return  of  this  disorder.  Our  father  suffered 
from  it,  and  all  three  of  the  younger  brothers  ;  but  though  Walter's 
appetite  much  surpassed  the  best  of  ours  (or  the  worst),  he  escaped 
it  during  more  than  seventy  years.  However  active  at  dinner,  he 
was  always  temperate  after  it ;  and  I  never  saw  the  smallest  sign  of 
excess,  though  he  greatly  enjoyed  three  or  four  glasses  of  light 
wine.  He  remained  at  Rugby  till  fifteen  or  sixteen,  and  gained  the 
character  of  more  than  common  scholarship  by  his  Latin  verses  es- 
pecially. However  violent  his  temper  might  have  been,  I  think  that 
he  was  liked  as  well  as  respected  by  his  school-fellows  ;  for  some  of 
them,  whom  I  knew  many  years  later,  always  remembered  him  witli 
pleasure." 

But,  before  finally  quitting  Rugby,  an  event  of  importance  in  a 
poet's  life  is  to  be  recorded.  While  still  in  the  school,  and  not  more 
than  fourteen,  he  had  written  his  first  original  verses  ;  with  a  certain 
sobriety  of  tone  as  well  as  absence  of  commonplace  in  the  metre  not 
usual  in  so  young  a  beginner,  and  probably  derived  from  exercises 
previously  made  in  translations  of  which  we  can  premise  a  word  or 
two  on  his  own  authority.  "  The  only  Latin  metre  1  ever  tried  in 
English,"  he  told  Southey  when  thanking  him  for  his  Vision  of  Judg- 
ment in  1824,  "  is  the  Sapphic.  This  is  extremely  easy.  When  I  was 
at  Rugby  I  wrote  a  vast  number,  and  some  few  at  Oxford.  My  ear- 
liest attempt  was  the  translation  of  Sappho's  odes  :  of  which  I  remem- 
ber only  a  part  of  the  first  stanza,  —  no  very  good  specimen.  First  I 
had  written,  '  0  Venus,  goddess '  ;  afterwards,  '  Venus  !  0  goddess 
both  of  earth  and  heaven.'     The  next  I  forget.     The  third  was, 

'  From  the  sublime  throne  variously  tinged 

Hear  my  petition ! '  " 

This  sort  of  practice  was  no  bad  preparation  for  his  first  original 
attempt,  made  iipon  a  cousin's  marriage  at  her  own  reqitest,  and  on 
the  whole  not  worse  or  better  than  such  things  commonly  are.  But 
more  interesting  than  the  verses  themselves  is  the  letter  I  find  with 
them  in  his  papers,  indorsed  by  himself  "Miss  Norris,"  addressed  to 
"Mr.  Landor,  at  Rugby,"  and  written  from  his  father's  house  in 
Warwick.  The  writer,  who  was  of  the  family  from  whom  his  mother 
derived  the  estates  of  Ipsley  and  Tachbrooke,  had  obtained  some 
influence  over  him,  and  here  uses  it  to  confirm  what  was  best  in  his 
tastes  and  temper,  with  correction  of  what  was  worst  in  both.  She 
thanks  him  for  his  poetry,  thinks  it  exceeedingly  pretty,  and  wonders 
he  should  hesitate  a  moment  to  present  it  to  the  lady  who  requested 
he  would  write  it  for  her.  He  is  to  recollect  that  at  his  age  people 
are  not  to  expect  a  Milton  or  a  Pope  ;  and  that  should  any  inaccura- 
cies occur,  which  she  assures  him  she  has  not  been  able  to  discover, 
they  will  be  attributed  to  youth  and  inexperience.  She  says  that 
Mrs.  Landor  desires  her  love  to  him,  and  hopes  he  received  her  letter 
and  some  pigeons  she  had  sent  for  him  and  his  brothers.      She  sends 

2 


18  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  lm-97- 

Doctor  Landor's  respects;  and  says  he  lias  not  been  able  to  find  for 
her  an  earlier  poetical  piece  containing  Walter's  thoughts  en  public 
and  private  education,  which  he  had  wished  that  she  should  read. 
"I  cannot  help,"  Bhe  continues,  "admiring  your  way  of  employing 
your  time.  Youth  is  doubtless  the  season  for  study  and  improve- 
ment; and  though  we  may  not  at  all  times  find  it  agreeable,  yet 
when  we  consider  how  despicable  a  figure  the  ignorant  and  unin- 
formed make,  it  excites  us  to  persevere  with  unceasing  industry.  I 
think  you  arc  much  in  the  right  to  make  the  most  learned  your 
friends  and  companions  ;  but  permit  me  to  say,  that  though  1  think 
a  propft"  spirit  commendable  and  even  necessary  at  times,  yet  in  my 
opinion  it  is  better  to  submit  smut  times  to  those  under  whose  au- 
thority we  are,  even  when  we  think  they  are  in  fault,  than  to  run  the 
risk  of  being  esteemed  arrogant  and  self-sufficient."  The  date  of  the 
letter  is  the  23d  of  September,  1790,  little  more  than  a  year  after 
the  fall  of  the  Bastille  ;  and  the  revolt  against  authority  it  rebukes 
with  such  wise  tenderness  has  relation  to  one  of  the  many  differences 
between  the  scholar  and  his  master  which  had  occurred  at  this  time. 
Landor  was  afterwards  so  willing  to  forget  these  encounters,  and  to 
recall  nothing  of  the  old  doctor  not  kindly  and  grateful,  that  the  allu- 
sion to  them  nowr  shall  be  brief. 

He  seems  to  have  thought,  when  in  the  school,  that  Doctor  James 
either  would  not  or  could  not  appreciate  what  he  did  in  Latin  verse, 
and  that  when  he  was  driven  to  take  special  notice  of  it,  he  took  the 
worst,  and  not  the  best,  for  the  purpose.  Thus,  when  told  \ivy  gra- 
ciously on  one  occasion  to  copy  out  fairly  in  the  Play-1 k  verses  by 

himself  of  which  he  thought  indifferently,  Landor  in  making  the 
copy  put  private  additions  to  it  of  several  lines,  with  a  coarse  allusion 
beginning,  "  Esec  sunt  malorum  pessima  carminum  quae  Landor  un- 
quam  scripsit,"  <fcc.  This  offence  was  forgiven;  but  it  was  followed 
by  another  of  which  the  circumstances  were  such  as  to  render  it 
impossible  thai  he  should  continue  longer  in  the  school.  The  right 
at  first  was  on  Landor's  side,  for  Doctor  James  had  strongly  insisted 
on,  and  the  other  as  firmly  had  declined,  the  correction  of  an  alleg  d 
false  quantity  found  really  not  to  exist.  But,  apart  from  the  righl  or 
wrong  of  the  dispute,  an  expression  in  the  course  of  it  rudely  used  by 
the  pupil,  and  not  necessary  to  be  repeated  here,  was  very,  sharply 
inted  by  the  master;  and  when  the  matter  came  to  be  talked 
about,  only  one  result  was  possible.  "When  between  fifteen  and 
sixteen,"  writes  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  "he  was  not  expelled  from 
Rugby,  but  removed  as  the  less  discreditable  punishment,  at  the 
head-master's  suggestion.  There  was  nothing  unusual  or  disgraceful 
in  the  particular  transgression,  but  a  fierce  defiance  of  all  authority, 
and  a  refusal  to  ask  forgiveness." 

Fet  not  so  should  we  part  from  his  Rugby  days.  He  has  himself 
given  a  picture  of  one  of  the  latest  of  them  appealing  to  kindlier 
remembrance.     Sitting  by  the  square  pool  not  long  before  he  left,  he 


JET.  1-22.] 


AT    ASHBOURNE.  19 


had  written  a  little  poem  on  Godiva  ;  and,  in  a  note  to  his  Imaginary 
Conversation  on  the  charming  old  Warwickshire  story,  he  not  only 
relates  how  the  school-fellow  to  whom  he  showed  his  earlier  effort 
laughed  at  him,  and  how  earnestly  he  had  to  entreat  and  implore 
him  not  to  "  tell  the  other  lads,"  but  he  repeats  the  verses.  With 
which,  as  he  transcribes  them  in  his  villa  at  Fiesole,  there  comes 
back  to  him  the  very  air  of  the  school-boy  spot  in  which  first  they 
were  written,  and  fervently  he  wishes  that  the  peppermint  may  still 
be  growing  on  the  bank  by  the  Rugby  pool.  It  is  a  pretty  picture, 
and  the  lines  themselves  are  of  a  kind  to  haunt  the  memory. 

"  In  every  hour,  in  every  mood, 
0  lady,  it  is  sweet  and  good 

To  bathe  the  soul  in  prayer; 
And,  at  the  close  of  such  a  day, 
When  we  have  ceased  to  bless  and  pray, 

To  dream  on  thv  long  hair." 


V.  AT  ASHBOURNE. 

Rugby  had,  nevertheless,  given  pretty  nearly  all  in  the  way  of 
scholarship  she  had  to  give  to  Landor,  when  he  was  thus,  though  still 
too  young  for  the  university,  compelled  to  bid  her  adieu.  An  inter- 
mediate place  between  school  and  college  it  was  necessary  to  provide  ; 
and,  writes  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  "  at  sixteen  he  was  consigned  to  the 
tuition  of  a  clergyman  living  in  Derbyshire  who  had  no  other  pupil, 
and  who  seemed  well  qualified  for  the  office  by  patience  and  gentle- 
ness. Walter  always  spoke  of  him  with  respect ;  but  though  by  no 
means  ignorant,  the  tutor  had  very  little  more  scholarship  than  the 
pupil,  and  his  Latin  verses  were  hardly  so  good  as  Walter's."  This 
was  Mr.  Langley,  Vicar  of  Ashbourne,  —  the  charming  country  village 
Landor  has  so  prettily  described  in  his  delightful  conversation  of 
Walton,  Cotton,  and  Oldways,  where  he  takes  occasion  also  to  render 
tribute  to  his  worthy  old  tutor,  and  makes  Walton  say  of  such  mas- 
ters and  their  scholars  that  they  live  like  princes,  converse  like 
friends,  and  part  like  lovers.  "  He  would  take  only  one  private 
pupil,"  he  says  in  a  note  to  that  conversation,  "  and  never  had  but 
me.  The  kindness  of  him  and  his  wife  to  me  was  parental.  They 
died  nearly  together,  about  five-and-twenty  years  ago.  Never  was  a 
youth  blessed  with  three  such  indulgent  and  affectionate  private 
tutors  as  I  was  ;  before  by  the  elegant  and  generous  Doctor  John 
Sleath  at  Rugby,  and  after  by  the  saintly  Benwell  at  Oxford."  In  a 
letter  to  n^self  written  hardly  eleven  years  ago,  he  makes  another 
allusion  to  these  days  passed  in  Derbyshire  between  sixty  and  sev- 
enty years  before  which  may  be  worth  preserving.*  "  My  old  tutor 
at  Ashbourne,  poor  dear  Langley,  had  seen  Pope  when  he  came  to 

*  Other  similar  allusions  were  frequent;  as  in  a  letter  to  me  of  1851.  "  It  is  exactly 
sixty  years  since  I  saw  Chatsworth.  I  was  at  that  time  under  a  private  tutor  at  Ash- 
bourne, having  just  left  Rugby,  aud  being  a  little  too  young  for  Oxford." 


20  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  ^m-Th 

visit  Oxford  from  Lord  Harcourt's  at  Nuneham.  Doctor  Harrington 
of  Oceana's  family  dined  at  Allen's,  where  he  did  not  meet  Pope,  but 
did  meet  Fielding.  Tope,  1  believe,  was  then  dead.  Harrington  was 
almost  a  boy,  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  old.  He  sat  at  dinner  by  his 
father,  and  Fielding  on  the  other  side.  Warburton  was  there,  and 
with  great  pomposity  made  a  speech  eulogistic  of  Allen,  who  had 
said  a  tew  words,  modest  and  unimportant.  '  Gentlemen,'  said  War- 
burton,  '  many  of  ns  have  enjoyed  the  benefits  of  a  university  educa- 
tion, but  which  among  US  can  speak  so  wisely  and  judiciously]' 
Fielding  turned  his  face  round  to  Harrington  and  said  pretty  loudly, 

'Hark  to  that  sycophantic  son  of  a  of  a  parson!'     I   doubl 

whether  the  double  genitive  case  was  ever  so  justly  (however  inele- 
gantly) employed."  *  When  recollections  such  as  these  came  back  to 
Land  or,  he  might  be  pardoned  the  exclamation  we  have  lately  heard 
from  him,  that  surely  he  must  have  assisted  in  another  life  !  Bom 
in  the  year  when  the  English  colonies  in  America  rebelled ;  living 
through  all  the  revolutions  in  France,  and  the  astonishing  career  of 
the  great  Napoleon ;  a  sympathizer  with  the  defeated  Paoli  and  the 
victorious  Garibaldi  ;  contemporary  with  Cowper  and  Burns,  yet  the 
survivor  of  Keats,  Wordsworth,  and  Byron,  of  Shelley,  Scott,  and 
Southey ;  living  while  Gibbon's  first  volume  and  Macaulay's  last 
were  published ;  to  whom  Pitt  and  Fox,  and  even  Burke,  had  been 
familiar,  as  were  Peel  and  Russell ;  who  might  have  heard  Mirabeau 
attempting  to  save  the  French  Monarchy,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  predict- 
ing the  disruption  of  the  American  Republic,  — it  would  seem  strange 
that  a  single  life  should  be  large  enough  for  such  experiences,  if  their 
very  number  and  variety  did  not  suggest  the  exaggeration  of  impor- 
tance that  each  in  its  turn  is  too  apt  to  receive  from  us  all,  and 
impress  us  rather  with  the  wisdom  of  the  saying  of  the  greatest  of 

poets,  that 

"  We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  of;  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

When  the  two  years  at  Ashbourne  were  passed,  they  had  left  some 
profitable  as  well  as  pleasant  remembrances.  He  dated  from  this 
time  Ins  better  acquaintance  with  some  of  the  Greek  writers,  espe- 
cially Sophocles  and  Pindar;  he  turned  several  things  of  Cowley  into 

*  T  permit  myself  to  add,  as  every  way  very  characteristic  of  the  writer,  then  on  tlie 
eve  of  his  eightieth  year,  the  closing  hues  of  this  letter  of  my  old  friend,  lie  was 
waiting  at  the  time  the  visit  I  generally  paid  him  on  Ins  birthday.  "  In  the  twentieth 
year  or  the  British  Republic  some  old  man  may  recount  tales  of  you  and  me.     Be  will 

not  be  a  very  old  man,  if  public  affairs  are  managed  another  year  as  they  have  been  this 
last. 

'  Fobstbb!  come  hither,  I  pray,  to  the  Fast  of  our  Anglican  Martyr. 
Turhot  our  Church  has  allowed,  and  perhaps  (not  without  dispensation) 
Pheasant:  then  Btrawberry-cream,  green-gages,  and  apricot-jelly, 
( Iranges  housewives  call  j>"i.  and  red-rinded  nuts  of  Avella, 

Filberts  we  name  them  at  home,  —  happy  they  who  have  teeth  for  the  crackers! 
Blest,  but  in  lower  degree,  whose  steel-armed  right  hand  overcomes  them ! 
I,  with  more  envy  than  spite,  look  on  and  sip  sadly  my  claret.'  " 


JET. 


l-22.\  AT   ASHBOURNE.  21 


Latin  Sapphics  and  Alcaics  ;  he  wrote  a  few  English  pieces ;  and  he 
translated  into  verse  the  Jephthah  of  Buchanan,  a  poem  afterwards 
destroyed,  but  of  which  he  had  himself  so  high  an  opinion  that  he 
said  he  could  not  have  improved  it  even  after  he  wrote  Gebir.  I 
should  strongly  have  doubted  this,  upon  examination  of  several  poems 
of  the  present  date,  preserved  in  the  volume  collected  and  printed 
four  years  later,  for  he  was  still  within  the  trammels  of  Pope's  versi- 
fication, and  though  in  conception  often  original,  in  execution  was  still 
almost  always  imitative ;  but  that  other  indisputable  evidence  ;s  be- 
fore me  of  the  higher  character  given  gradually  to  his  own  style  by 
the  mere  eifort  of  translating.  There  was  indeed  but  one  stride  to 
be  taken  to  Gebir,  which  appeared  within  three  years  after  the  volume 
referred  to ;  and  the  reader  will  probably  admit,  at  that  portion  of 
my  narrative,  that  a  more  remarkable  advance  in  power  was  never 
made,  and  rarely  such  an  achievement  in  literature  by  a  man  so 
young.  Let  me  show  meanwhile,  by  example  of  a  poem  written  at 
Ashbourne,*  in  what  different  ways  the  same  subject  was  treated  now 
and  in  the  days  that  were  so  soon  to  follow  of  his  greater  maturity 
of  mind.  It  is  the  difference  between  a  Pope  translation  and  a  Greek 
original. 

Medea  at  Corinth  (1791). 

"  So,  when  Medea,  on  her  native  strand, 
Beheld  the  Argo  lessen  from  the  land; 
The  tender  pledges  of  her  love  she  bore, 
Frantic,  and  raised  them  high  above  the  shore. 
'  Thus,  thus  may  Jason,  faithless  as  he  flies, 
Faithless,  and  heedless  of  Medea's  cries, 
Behold  his  babes,  oppose  the  adverse  gales, 
And  turn  to  Colchis  those  retiring  sails.' 
She  spake :  in  vain :  then  maddened  with  despair 
Tore  her  pale  cheeks  and  undulating  hair. 
Then,  0,  unmindful  of  all  former  joys, 
Threw  from  her  breast  her  inoffensive  boys; 
Their  tender  limbs  and  writhing  fibres  tore, 
And  whirled  around  the  coast  the  inexpiable  gore !  " 

The  same  Subject  {a  few  years  later). 

"'Stay!  spare  him!  save  the  last!  .  .  . 
I  will  invoke  the  Eumenides  no  more  — 
I  will  forgive  thee  —  bless  thee  —  bend  to  thee 
In  all  thy  wishes !  do  but  thou,  Medea, 
Tell  me,  one  lives ! '     '  And  shall  I,  too,  deceive?' 
Cries  from  the  fiery  car  an  angry  voice ; 
And  swifter  than  two  falling  stars  descend 
Two  breathless  bodies,  —  warm,  soft,  motionless 
As  flowers  in  stillest  noon  before  the  sun, 
They  he  three  paces  from  him.     Such  they  lie, 
As  when  he  left  them  sleeping  side  by  side, 
A  mother's  arm  round  each,  a  mother's  cheeks 
Between  them,  flusht  with  happiness  and  love. 
He  was  more  changed  than  they  were,  —  doomed  to  show 

*  In  a  note  to  one  of  its  lines  on  the  misfortunes  of  the  King  of  France  he  remarks, 
that  "  when  this  was  written  Louis  had  only  returned  to  Paris  after  his  flight,"  which 
was  in  1791 ;  and  to  the  fate  which  afterwards  befell  the  king  he  applies  a  passage  from 
the  Electro,  of  Sophocles. 


22  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  (IV'nK  ' 


Thee  and  the  stranger,  how  defaced  and  scarred 
Grief  hunt-  u>  down  the  precipice  of  years!" 

Even  in  the  earliest  poem  here  quoted,  however,  which  contains 
also  a  paraphrase  from  Cowley,  there  is  greater  merit  than  the  Medea 
passage  would  indicate.  En  single  verses  occasionally  there  is  a  happy 
delicacy  of  touch,  as  in  the  picture  of  Eve  :  — 

"  And  her  locks  of  gold 
Gales,  airy-fingered,  negligently  hold." 

From  time  to  time,  too,  a  personal  trait  is  given  with  extraordinary 
force ;  as  where  he  states  his  preference  for  nature  and  enjoyment 
over  studies  and  self-mortification. 

"  Tims,  throughout  nature  even-  part  affords 
More  sound  instruction  than  from  '  winged  words.' 
By  me  more  felt,  more  studied,  than  the  rules 
Of  pedants  strutting  in  sophistic  schools; 
w  ho,  argumentative,  with  endless  strife. 
In  search  of  living  lose  the  ends  of  life; 
Or,  willing  exiles  from  fair  pleasure's  train, 
Howl  at  the  happy  from  the  dens  of  pain." 

Of  those  same  "winged  words"  that  could  offer  instruction  higher 
than  the  schools  he  speaks  also  not  unworthily. 

"  Had  verse  not  led  in  adamantine  chains 
The  victims  sacrificed  on  Dion's  plains, 
Who  would  have  heard  of  Hector  V  who  have  known 
The  rage  of  Peleus's  immortal  son  ?  " 

Nor  will  space  be  grudged  for  a  few  couplets  more ;  from  a  poem  not 
now  obtainable,  and  which  shows  Landor's  mastery  in  writing  when 
he  had  hardly  entered  his  seventeenth  year.  He  describes  the  origin 
of  pipe  and  pastoral. 

"  P.y  bounteous  rivers,  'mid  his  flocks  reclined 
He  heard  the  reed  that  rustled  in  the  wind. 
Then,  leaning  onward,  negligently  tore 
The  slender  stein  from  on  the  fringed  shore. 
With  mimic  breath  the  whisper  soft  assayed  — 
When,  lo!  the  yielding  reed  his  mimic  breath  obeyed. 
'T  was  hence,  erelong,  the  pleasing  power  he  found 
Of  DOted  numbers  and  of  certain  sound. 
I      h  morn  and  eve  their  fine  effect  he  tried, 
Each  morn  and  eve  he  blest  the  river's  reedy  side! " 

• 

Poets  of  the  highest  originality  take  their  point  of  departure  from 
an  imitative  stage,  and  Landor  in  these  verses  shows  no  exemption 
from  the  rule.  Bui  from  the  first  the  influence  of  his  classical  studies 
and  temperament  is  more  than  ordinarily  manifest,  and  the  complete- 
ness and  rapidity  with  which  it  formed  his  original  style  is  worthy  of 
remark.  I  have  hinted  at  this  in  allusion  to  Ins  Jephthah  translation. 
A  marked  instance  lias  been  given  in  the  second  version  of  the  Medea 
just ,  quoted  :  and  another  more  extraordinary  presents  itself  in  a 
translation  of  one  of  the   most   famous  episodes   in  Virgil,  which   I 


JET:.  1-22.1  AT    ASHBOURNE. 


23 


have   found  in  scraps  of  his  handwriting  of  the  date  of  1794,  and 
with  which  I  shall  close  this  section.  * 

"  The  shell  assuaged  his  sorrow:  thee  he  sang, 
Sweet  wife !  thee  with  him  on  the  shore  alone, 
At  rising  dawn,  at  parting  day,  sang_  thee. 
The  mouth  of  Tamarus,  the  gates  ot  Dis, 
Groves  dark  with  dread,  he  entered;  he  approacht 
The  Manes  and  their  awful  king,  and  hearts 
That  knew  not  pity  vet  for  human  prayer. 
Boused  at  his  song,  the  Shades  of  Erebus        # 
Rose  from  their  lowest,  most  remote,  abodes, 
Faint  Shades,  and  Spirits  semblances  of  life; 
Numberless  as  o'er  woodland  wilds  the  birds 
That  wintry  evening  drives  or  mountain  storm; 
Mothers  and  husbands,  unsubstantial  crests 
Of  high-souled  heroes,  boys,  unmarried  maids, 
And  youths  on  biers  before  their  parents'  eyes. 
The  deep  black  ooze  and  rough  unsightly  reed 
Of  slow  Cocvtus's  unyielding  pool 
And  Styx  confines  them,  flowing  ninefold  round. 
The  hails  and  inmost  Tartarus  of  Death, 
And  (the  blue  adders  twisting  in  their  hair) 
The  Furies,  were  astounded. 

On  he  stept, 
And  Cerberus  held  agape  his  triple  jaws : 
On  stept  the  Bard  .  .  .  Ixion's  wheel  stood  still. 

Now,  past  all  peril,  free  was  his  return, 
And  now  was  following  into  upper  air 
Eurydice,  when  sudden  madness  seized 
The' incautious  lover:  pardonable  fault, 
If  those  below  could  pardon :  on  the  verge 

Of  light  he  stood,  and  on  Eurydice, 

Mindless  of  fate,  alas,  and  soul-subdued, 

Lookt  back  .  .  . 

There,  Orpheus !  Orpheus !  there  was  all 

Thy  labor  shed,  there  burst  the  dynast's  bond, 

And  thrice  arose  that  rumor  from  the  lake. 

'  Ah,  what,'  she  cried,  '  what  madness  hath  undone 

Me,  and  (ah,  wretched!)  thee,  my  Orpheus,  too! 

For,  lo !  the  cruel  Fates  recall  rne  now, 

Chill  slumbers  press  my  swimming  eyes  .  .  .  farewell ! 

Night  rolls  intense  around  me  as  I  spread 

My  helpless  arms  .  .  .  thine,  thine  no  more  ...  to  thee.' 
She  spake,  and  (like  a  vapor)  into  air 

Flew,  nor  beheld  him  as  he  claspt  the  void 

And  sought  to  speak;  in  vain:  the  ferry-guard 

Now  would  not  row  him  o'er  the  lake  again : 

His  wife  twice  lost,  what  could  he?  whither  go? 

What  chant,  what  wailing,  move  the  powers  of  Hell? 

Cold  in  the  Stygian  bark  and  lone  was  she ! 

Beneath  a  rock  o'er  Strymon's  flood  on  high 

Seven  months,  seven  long-continued  months,  't  is  said, 

He  breathed  his  sorrows  in  a  desert  cave, 

And  soothed  the  tiger,  moved  the  oak,  with  song. 

So  Philomela  'mid  the  poplar  shade 

Bemoans  her  captive  brood:  the  cruel  hind 

Saw  them  unplumed  and  took  them :  but  all  night 

Grieves  she,  and  sitting  on  the  bough,  runs  o'er 

Her  wretched  tale,  and  fills  the  woods  with  woe." 

*  Since  this  was  written,  I  find  that  these  very  lines,  with  extremely  trivial  altera- 
tion, were  printed  by  him  in  the  Examiner  thirty' years  ago,  as  having  been  "  written 
at  college."  He  subsequently  reproduced  them  without  that  prefatory  remark,  but 
with  an  interesting  note,  in  his  Dry  Sticks. 


24  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  «$?*« 


'775-97. 


Few  ancient  pieces  have  been  chosen  oftencr  by  translators  as  a 
ground  of  competition;  yet,  from  Dryden  to  Wordsworth,  there  is  no 
one  who  has  excelled,  if  any  has  equalled,  this  translation  by  a  youth 
of  nineteen.  Its  minute  fidelity  to  the  spirit  of  the  original  I  will 
indicate  by  a  touch  which  all  the  others  have  missed.  They  make 
the  nightingale  sitting  on  "«"  bough,  but  Landor  restores  "the" 
bough ;  the  fatal  bough  from  which  the  spoiler  had  taken  her  brood. 
But  to  me  the  lines  are  interesting,  and  are  here  specially  given,  for 
their  illustration  of  the  growth  of  his  own  genius.  If  I  had  met  with 
them  anywhere,  not  knowing  the  lines  of  Virgil,  I  should  have  sup- 
posed them  to  be  an  original  poem  of  the  writer's  later  life.  He  has 
nevertheless  not  passed  the  imitative  stage.  His  own  thoughts  have 
not  yet  found  their  style.     Their  written  character  is  still  to  come. 

VI.    AT  TRINITY  COLLEGE,  OXFORD. 

At  eighteen  years  of  age  Landor  entered  as  a  commoner  in  Trinity 
College,  Oxford.  It  was  the  memorable  year  of  1793,  which  had 
opened  at  Pai'is  with  the  execution  of  Louis  Seize.  Of  the  excite- 
ment that  prevailed ;  of  the  conflicting  passions  that  were  raging 
everywhere,  grief  on  the  one  hand  at  the  downfall  of  ancient  institu- 
tions, exultation  on  the  other  at  supposed  triumphs  of  justice  and 
reason,  —  it  is  needless  to  speak.  To  the  young*  it  was  natural  to 
believe  that  a  new  world  was  opening ;  and  the  glorious  visions  that 
attended  it  descended  largely,  it  may  well  be  imagined,  on  the  stu- 
dents at  both  Universities.  As  Wordsworth  says  for  himself,  society 
became  his  glittering  bride,  and  airy  hopes  his  children.  I  cannot 
find,  however,  that  Landor  was  at  any  time  much  excited  in  this  way. 
The  American  rebellion  was  oftener  in  his  thoughts  than  the  French 
revolution.  He  was  a  Jacobin,  but  so  would  have  been  if  Robespierre 
and  Danton  had  not  been.  He  reasoned  little,  but  his  instincts  were 
all  against  authority,  or  what  took  to  him  the  form  of  its  abuse. 
With  exulting  satisfaction  he  saw  the  resistance  and  conquests  of 
democracy ;  but  pantisocracy,  and  golden  days  to  come  on  earth,  were 
not  in  his  hopes  or  expectation.  He  rather  rejoiced  in  the  prospect 
of  a  fierce  continued  struggle  ;  his  present  ideal  was  that  of  an  armed 
republic,!  changing  the  face  of  the  world  ;  and  as  the  outbreak  of 
the  revolution  had  not  made  him  republican,  neither  did  its  excesses 
cure  him  of  that  malady.  He  gloried  to  the  last  in  avowing  his  pref- 
erence for  a  republic;  though  he  would  also  date  his  hatred  of  the 
French,  which  he  maintained  with  almost  equal  consistency,  from  the 

*  "  Bins  was  it  in  the  dawn  to  be  alive, 
Hut  to  be  young  was  very  Heaven!  " 

WordtwOrlh  in  Coleridge's  Ode. 
Tlio  same  words,  with  change  of  "  the"  for  "  that"  in  the  first  line,  reappeared  in  his 
own  Prelude. 

t  Speaking  to  Southey  of  Napoleon's  career  in  1811,  he  says:  "  This  revives  in  niv 
mind  a  toast  I  was  accused  of  giving  at  Oxford:  '  May  there  be  only  two  classes  of 
people,  the  republican  and  the  paralytic  ! '  " 


;ET.  1-22.]  AT    TRINITY    COLLEGE,    OXFORD.  25 

day  when  they  slew  their  Queen.  Mr.  Shandy  might  have  connected 
all  this  with  his  birth  on  the  anniversary  of  Charles  the  First's  exe- 
cution. 

He  remained  at  Oxford  little  more  than  a  year  and  a  half,  between 
1793  and  1794,  and  used  to  call  the  hours  passed  with  Walter  Birch 
in  the  Magdalen  walk  by  the  half-hidden  Cherwell  (the  road  of  which 
Addison  was  so  fond)  the  pleasantest  he  could  remember,  as  well  as 
the  most  profitable.  Of  his  studies  there  is  little  to  be  said.  For  a 
portion  of  the  time  he  certainly  read  hard,  but  the  results  he  kept  to 
himself;  for  here,  as  at  Rugby,  he  declined  everything  in  the  shape 
of  competition.  "Though  I  wrote  better  Latin  verses  than  any 
undergraduate  or  graduate  in  the  University,"  he  wrote  to  Dr.  Davy,  in 
1 857,  "  1  could  never  be  persuaded,  by  my  tutor  or  friends,  to  contend 
for  any  prize  whatever.  I  showed  my  compositions  to  Birch  of  Mag- 
dalen, my  old  friend  at  Rugby  ;  and  to  Cary,  translator  of  Dante ;  to 
none  else."  It  is  at  the  same  time  unquestionable  that  his  extraor- 
dinary talents,  and  skill  in  both  the  ancient  languages,  had  impressed 
greatly  his  tutor  Benwell,  and  the  president  and  fellows  of  Trinity ; 
and  I  have  heard  him  say  frequently  that  Benwell  ("  dear  good  Ben- 
well  ")  shed  tears  when  his  favorite  pupil  was  obliged  to  quit  the  col- 
lege. But  the  Universities  then,  with  far  less  inducement  to  study 
than  now,  had  even  fewer  restraints  than  at  present  exist  for  youths 
unable  to  restrain  themselves ;  the  license  generally  allowed  left  a 
man  quite  equally  free  to  use,  abuse,  or  waste  his  powers ;  and  we 
have  only  to  wonder  how  so  many  lads  of  fortune,  so  let  loose  at  that 
critical  time,  could  manage  to  get  on  in  after  life  with  any  kind  of 
credit.  I  hardly  remember  an  allusion  by  Landor  to  the  examination- 
halls  or  lecture-rooms,  except  that  in  the  latter,  one  day,  Justin  was 
given  them  to>construe,  and  that  though  indignant  at  the  choice  of 
such  an  author,  he  was  reconciled  on  finding  there  the  story  of  the 
Phocseans,  which  he  straightway  began  to  turn  -into  English  blank 
verse,  a  measure  he  had  not  before  attempted. 

One  other  subject  that  interested  him,  however,  finds  mention  in 
his  letters.  There  is  allusion  in  one  of  them  to  a  small  disquisition 
sent  at  this  time  to  Dr.  Parr,  with  whom  an  acquaintance,  already 
formed  at  Warwick,  was  soon  to  ripen  into  intimacy.  The  object  of 
the  essay  was  to  give  opinion  as  to  the  origin  of  the  religion  of  the 
Druids  ;  and  its  argument  may  be  very  briefly  stated.  It  appeared 
to  Landor  that  Pythagoras,-  who  settled  in  Italy  and  had  many  fol- 
lowers in  the  Greek  colony  of  the  Phocreans  at  Marseilles,  had  in- 
grafted on  a  barbarous  and  blood-thirsty  religion  the  human  doctrine 
of  the  metempsychosis  ;  for  that,  finding  it  was  vain  to  say,  "  Do  not 
murder,"  as  none  ever  minded  that  doctrine,  he  frightened  the  savages 
by  saying,  "  If  you  are  cruel  even  to  beasts  and  insects,  the  cruelty 
will  fall  upon  yourselves  ;  you  will  be  the  same."  He  explained  also 
the  "  beans  "  of  the  old  philosopher  in  the  exact  way  that  Coleridge 
took  credit  for  afterwards  originating ;  though  in  this  both  moderns 


2G  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  ^l 

had  been  anticipated  by  sundry  other  discoverers,   beginning  with 
Plutarch  himself.* 

But  not  always  so  philosophical  or  remote  were  his  labors  out  of 
the  lecture-room.  .Much  nearer  lay  London  than  either  Justin  or 
Pythagoras;  the  summer  of  1794,  when  Landor's  Oxford  residence 
was  about  to  draw  to  its  close,  was  a  time  of  unexampled  excitement ; 
and  some  notice  must  he  taken  of  the  other  than  classical  subjects  in 
which  his  ardent  temper  engaged  him.  The  Scotch  judges  had 
transported  Muir  and  Palmer  and  Gerrard  as  felons,  for  desiring 
Parliamentary  reform;  the  English  judges  were  expected  to  hang 
Holcroft  and  Home  Tooke  as  traitors  for  "corresponding"  with  the' 
same  desire  ;  and  by  all  this  Landor  was  stung  into  writing  a  satire, 
making  himself  interlocutor  with  a  clerical  friend.  He  listens  to  the 
other's  warning  :  — 

"Hush!  why  complain?  of  treason  have  a  cure ; 
You  hear  of  Holcroft  and  of  Tooke  —  beware ! " 

and  indignantly  rejoins  :  — 

"  Before  a  tyrant  Juvenal  displayed 
Truth's  hated  form  and  Satire's  flaming  blade; 
With  hand  unshaken  bore  her  mirror-shield: 
Vice  gazed  and  trembled,  — shrieked  and  left  the  field. 
Shall  I  dissemble  then  ?  " 

following  up  his  question  by  vigorous  denunciation  of  the  war  with 
France,  and  impassioned  appeal  to  Poland,  then  just  rising  again  :  — 

"  0,  bear  no  longer!  longer  canst  thou  bear 
Three  royal  ruffians  thus  thy  rights  to  tear? 
Rights  that  thy  guardian  countryman  has  signed, 
Freedom's  pure  page,  the  lesson  of  mankind." 

The  friend  again  interposes  :  — 

"  Mistaken  youth !  the  milder  plan  pursue, 
To  love  what  statesmen  and  what  monarchs  do. 
Hence  no  political,  no  civil  strife, 
Thy  death  will  hasten,  or  torment  thy  life. 
In  the  same  steps  the  greatest  men  have  trod, 
Far  our  superiors." 

*  See  De  Quincey's  Autobiographic  Sketches,  pp.  146,  147,  and  note.  I  subjoin  what 
Landor  wrote  tome  in  a  letter  of  the  23d  October,  1864  "To-day,  having  had  a  tooth 
drawn,  and  a  jaw  in  danger  of  a  divorce,  I  have  been  reading  Mr.  De  Quincey's  Selec- 
tions.  I  was  amused  at  finding  attributed  to  the  Bagacity  of  Coleridge  a  remark  on 
Pythagoras  and  his  beans.  I  made  the  same  remark  in  a  letter  to  Parr,  which  Dr. 
John  Johnstone  wished  to  publish  with  all  my  others.  It  maybe  also  found  in  the 
letter-  of  Pericles  and  Atpasia,  I  believe.  Mine  to  Parr  was  written  in  1794  or  there- 
abonts,  and  when  the  name  of  Coleridge  had  never  reached  me.  These  are  estrays 
and  waifs  not  worth  claiming  by  the  lord  of  the  manor.  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth 
are  heartily  welcome  to  a  day's  sport  over  any  of  my  woodlands  and  heaths.  I  have 
no  preserves."  Since  writing  this  note  I  have  found  among  Landor's  papers  Parr's 
acknowledgment  of  the  letter  referred  to.  "  Dear  Walter,"  wrote  the  kindly  old 
scholar,  ••  I  thank  you  for  your  very  acute  and  masterly  reasoning  about  Pythagoras, 
but  I  am  no  convert  to  his  being  in  Caul:  for  the  doctrine  of  transmigration  is  much 
older,  and  prevailed  among  the  Celts  and  Scythians  long  before  Pythagoras.  It  is  be- 
lieved, even  now,  in  the  north  of  Europe,  and  would  naturally  suggest  itself  to  any 
reflecting  barbarian.  However,  you  have  done  very  well  in  your  hypothesis.  I  am, 
with  great  regard  and  re-pert,  dear  Walter,  your  sincere  friend,  S.  Paku." 


JET.  1-22.]  AT    TRINITY    COLLEGE,    OXFORD.  27 

To  which  Landor  :  — 

"  /  believe  in  God. 
This  only  reason,  courtly  priest !  I  give. 
Go,  cease  to  moralize:  learn  first  to  live." 

From  three  other  poems  of  this  date,  none  of  them  being  elsewhere 
now  accessible,  brief  extracts  may  also  be  permitted.  The  first  illus- 
trates the  war  against  liberty  by  picturing  a  French  village,  into 
which  it  had  brought  desolation,  repaired  again,  and  peace  restored, 
by  the  arms  of  the  Republic  ;  and  both  in  the  thought  and  in  the 
form  of  the  verse  (which,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  he  never  again  used), 
there  is  considerable  beauty.  The  "  arms  unbound "  is  a  touch  of 
the  happiest  kind, —  in  its  careless  yet  conscious  keeping  with  the 
spirit  of  the  poem. 

"  'Twas  evening  calm,  when  village  maids 
With  Gallia's  tuneful  sons  advance 
To  frolic  in  the  jovial  dance, 
'Mid  purple  vines  and  olive-shades. 

"  Their  ancient  sires  that  round  them  sit 

Renew  in  thought  their  youthful  days ; 
Some  try  the  tottering  step,  or  praise 
Their  former  fame  for  gallant  wit.  .  .  . 

"  But,  0,  the  rulers  of  mankind 

Ruthless  their  fellow-creatures  seize, 
Nor  radiant  eyes  nor  suppliant  knees 
Of  Beauty  can  their  fury  bind  .  .  . 

s 
"  Smoke  fills  the  air,  and  dims  the  day: 
No  more  the  vine  of  matted  green 
Or  thin-leaved  olive  now  are  seen, 
Or  bird  upon  the  trembling  spray  .  .  . 

"  But  o'er  yon  slope,  a  willing  band, 

With  smiles  unfeigned  and  arms  unbound, 
March  to  the  pipe's  enchanting  sound 
From  fierce  Oppression's  proud  command. 

"  '  Foes  once,  by  force;  now  happy  friends! 
Be  welcome  to  the  sprightly  dance, 
To  peace,  to  liberty,  to  France, 
Where  pride's  accursed  empire  ends.''" 

The  second,  of  which  the  opening  stanzas  show  the  sweet  modula- 
tion of  genuine  verse,  paints  a  Sunday  morning  in  May. 

"  0,  peaceful  day  of  pious  leisure ! 

0,  what  will  mark  you  as  you  run ! 
Will  Melancholy,  or  will  Pleasure, 

Will  gloomy  clouds,  or  golden  sun  ? 

"  0,  shine  serenely :  let  me  wander 
Along  the  willow-fringed  way, 
Where,  lingering  in  each  meander, 
Charmed  Isis  wins  a  short  delay." 

The  third  is  an  "  Ode  to  General  Washington,"  in  which  are  lines 
that  not  many  boys  of  nineteen  have  before  or  since  excelled  in 
strength  of  expression  or  dignity  of  sentiment. 


28  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA-  im?^* 

"  Exulting  on  unwearied  wings 
Above  where  incense  clouds  the  court  of  kings, 

Arise,  immortal  Muse!  arise! 
Beyond  the  confines  of  the  Atlantic  waves, 
O'er  cities  free  from  despots,  free  from  slaves, 
Go,  seek,  the  tepid  calm  of  purer  skies. 

"  But,  hail  thou  hero!  born  to  prove 
Thy  country's  glory  and  thy  country's  love, 

To  break  her  regal  iron  rod: 
Of  justice  certain,  tearless  of  success, 
Her  rights  to  vindicate,  her  wrongs  redress, 
Her  sceptre  to  transfer  from  tyrants  to  her  God. 
•  .  .  * 

"  And  even  thou  to  Nature's  law 
Wilt  bend,  with  reverence  and  majestic  awe, 

As  now  to  thee  thy  Country  bends: 
Yet,  O  my  Washington !  the  fatal  hour 
Deprives  thee  only  of  an  active  power, 
Nor  with  thy  victories  thy  triumph  ends. 

•  •  •  • 

"  The  days  of  playful  youth  engage 
The  pleasing  memory  of  age: 

Thus,  when  we  fly  from  toil  and  pain 

Thither,  where  the  .Inst  remain, 
No  clouds  that  float  beneath  can  screen 

Our  former  country  from  our  wistful  sight! 
0  Man  !   how  happy  to  review  the  scene 

Thyself  hast  blest !  how  godlike  a  delight !  " 

If  the  rumors  that  went  abroad  through  Oxford  of  Landor's  fierce 
and  uncompromising  opinions  had  rested  only  on  pieces  such  as 
these,  he  might  fairly  have  challenged  the  truth  of  epithets  thrown 
against  him  by  assailants  ;  but  unhappily  his  tongue  was  under  less 
instinctive  control  than  his  pen,  and,  there  being  students  of  his  own 
college  who  held  opinions  in  the  other  extreme  with  as  little  disposi- 
tion to  withhold  expression  of  them,  the  result  was  not  favorable  to 
peace  in  the  halls  of  Trinity.  Even  among  those  of  Landor's  own 
way  of  thinking  in  the  University,  there  were  many  who  seem  pur- 
posely to  have  kept  aloof  from  him  ;  not  because  he  was  a  Jacobin, 
but  because  he  was  a  "  mad  "  Jacobin  ;  though  it  is  not  at  all  clear 
that  the  epithet  might  not  have  been  accepted  to  mean  a  more  sen- 
sible sort  of  Jacobinism  than  was  popular  in  the  particular  quarters 
from  which  it  proceeded.  "  At  Oxford,"  said  Landor,  recalling  this 
time  in  his  old  age,  "  1  was  about  the  first  student  who  wore  his  hair 
without  powder.  Take  care,  said  my  tutor,  they  will  stone  you  for 
a  republican.  The  Whigs  (not  the  Wigs)  were  then  unpopular;  but 
I  stuck  to  my  plain  hair  and  queue  tied  with  black  ribbon."  Hardly 
for  this  eccentricity,  however,  was  the  epithet  applicable  in  their 
mouths  who  applied  it.  His  inspiration  doubtless  had  been  the 
minister  Roland's  refusal  to  go  to  court  in  either  knee-buckles  or 
shoe-buckles  ;  and,  under  influence  of  the  same  example,  a  youth  six 
months  older  than  Landor  was  then  also  waging  at  Balliol  so  fierce  a 
war  against  old  ceremonies  and  usage,  that  he  too  had  resisted  every 


JET, 


1-22.]  AT    TRINITY    COLLEGE,    OXFORD.  29 


attempt  of  the  college  barber  to  dress  or  powder  him,  and  had  gone 
into  hall  in  flowing  locks  ;  yet  the  remark  upon  the  madness  of  Lan- 
dor's  Jacobinism  was  given  by  this  very  student  of  Balliol,  a  few 
years  later,  as  his  only  reason  for  not  having  now  sought  Landor's 
acquaintance.  Gebir  had  then  appeared  and  been  placed  in  the  first 
rank  of  English  poetry  by  the  same  youth,  who  in  the  interval  had 
himself  published  Joan  of  Arc  ;  when,  upon  the  name  of  the  writer 
of  Gebir  becoming  known  to  him  one  day,  all  the  Oxford  recollection 
flashed  back  upon  him.  "  I  now  remember,"  Robert  Southey  wrote 
to  his  friend  Humphry  Davy  at  Bristol,  "who  the  author  of 
the  Gebir  is.  He  was  a  contemporary  of  mine  at  Oxford,  of  Trinity, 
and  notorious  as  a  mad  Jacobin.  His  Jacobinism  would  have  made 
me  seek  his  acquaintance,  but  for  his  madness.  He  was  obliged  to 
leave  the  University  for  shooting  at  one  of  the  Fellows  through  the 
window.  All  this  I  immediately  recollected  on  getting  at  his  name." 
The  latter  recollection  was  not  quite  accurate,  but  the  substance  of  it 
unfortunately  was  true  ;  *  and  it  is  now  necessary  to  relate  the  inci- 
dent which  closed  Landor's  career  at  Oxford. 

I  again  avail  myself  of  one  of  Mr.  Robert  Landor's  letters.  "  At 
eighteen  he  entered  as  a  commoner  in  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  and 
was  rusticated  after  a  year's  residence.  Again,  as  at  Rugby,  there 
was  no  greater  offence  than  might  have  been  overlooked  if  the  gen- 
eral character  had  been  less  ungovernable.  He  had  fired  his  fowling- 
piece  into  the  window  of  some  one  whom  he  hated  for  his  Toryism. 
Refusing  to  make  any  concession,  he  wTas  rusticated  daring  one  year  ; 
but  he  was  almost  requested  to  return  at  the  year's  end,  for  his 
abilities  were  justly  estimated."  These  words  have  full  confirmation 
in  a  more  detailed  account  written  a  few  months  later  by  Landor 
himself  to  his  most  intimate  friend  at  the  University,  which  by  a 
singular  accident  has  survived  until  now.  But  a  few  prefatory  words 
are  needed  to  explain  what  it  will  also  necessarily  communicate  of 
Landor's  present  relations  with  his  father,  from  which  unhappily  all 

*  The  letter  of  Southey  quoted  in  the  text  having  been  found  in  1857  among  Sir 
Humphry  Davy's  letters  by  his  brother,  Doctor  Davy,  the  latter  sent  a  copy  of'  it  to 
Landor,  asking  him  if  it  was  true  (which  he  could  "hardly  believe,  except  under  ex- 
traordinary provocation  ").  Landor  replied  at  once;  and  the  reader  may  be  interested 
to  see  his  brief  statement  of  the  occurrence,  written  after  a  lapse  of  more  than  sixty- 
three  years,  and  to  compare  it  with  the  detailed  account  to  be  shortly  given  as  written 
at  the  time,  the  same  number  of  years  before.  This  later  description  shows  no  failure 
of  memory,  and  no  wish  to  exaggerate  or  extenuate.  Substantially  both  are  the  same. 
"  My  usual  fire  of  laughter,"  he  writes,  "  burst  forth  on  reading  your  letter.  The  fire 
across  the  quadrangle  was  hardly  louder  or  hardly  more  inoffensive.  The  fact  is  this: 
In  the  morning  I  had  been  rabbit-shooting;  in  the  evening  I  had  an  after-dinner  party. 
My  gun  was  lying  in  the  bedroom ;  one  of  my  guests  proposed  to  fire  it  at  a  closed 
window-shutter  opposite,  —  the  room  was  a  man's  with  whom  I  had  never  had  a  quar- 
rel or  spoken  a  word.  Fleetwood  Parkhurst  was  the  only  one  in  my  college  with  whom 
I  had  any  intimacy;  the  rest  of  the  company  was  mostly  of  Christ  Church.  I  should 
not  have  been  rusticated  for  two  terms  unless  the  action  had  been  during  prayers. 
Kett  who  afterwards  hanged  himself,  and  thereby  proved  for  the  first  time  his  honesty 
and  justice,  told  the  president,  Chapman,  that  he  Vas  too  lenient.  .  .  .  Southey  did  not 
find  me  quite  so  mad  as  he  expected  when  he  visited  me  at  Clifton,  the  first  or 
second  year  (I  think)  of  this  century."      It  was  four  or  five  years  later  than  that. 


30  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    BWANSEA,  [*m*9fi 

that  imbittered  the  incident  arose;  and  the  reader  will  understand 
why  I  make  as  brief  as  possible  this  unavoidable  allusion. 

All  \vli>>  knew  Doctor  Landor  adopt  the  same  tone  in  speaking  of 
him.     What  is  remembered  of  him  by  his  sons  is  identical  with  what 

1  have  been  able  to  gather  from  other  sources.  The  slightest  symp- 
tom of  arrogance  or  vanity  none  can  recollect  in  him.  He  disputed 
no  one's  pretensions,  and  was  always  silent  about  his  own.  With 
much  more  than  the  average  amount  of  sense  and  learning  common 
to  country  gentlemen  of  that  time,  he  made  no  comparisons,  but  took 
his  place  among  them  unconscious  of  any  difference  that  might  have 
placed  him  far  above  them.  Social  and  hospitable,  he  never  thought 
of  rivalry.  Landor  himself  used  to  say  of  him,  that  no  other  person 
ever  equalled  the  simple  pleasantry  with  which  his  anecdotes  were 
related  ;  and  these  had  such  a  charm  that  his  sons  were  accustomed 
to  provoke  their  repetition  by  little  artifices,  though  they  could  anti- 
cipate almost  every  word.  Mentioning  this  in  one  of  his  letters,  Mr. 
Robert  Landor  continues  :  "  As  a  magistrate  he  had  a  large  acquaint- 
ance among  the  senior  barristers,  and  I  have  often  met  at  his  table 
Mr.  Romilly  (Sir  Samuel),  with  other  men  of  both  parties,  for  he  was 
very  liberal  in  opinion.  But  I  do  not  think  that  my  brother  Walter 
was  ever  present.  He  hated  law  and  lawyers  then  almost  as  much 
as  he  despised  the  Church  and  its  ministers  at  all  times  ;  and  the 
gentlemanly  manners  by  which  he  was  distinguished  thirty  years 
later  had  then  no  existence."  This  indicates  sufficiently  a  source  of 
disagreement  between  father  and  son,  in  which  their  only  point  of 
agreement,  an  excessive  warmth  of  temper  common  to  both,  had  fre- 
quent occasion  of  exercise.  With  whom  the  wrong  must  have  lain  in 
such  quarrels  would  hardly  admit  of  doubt,  even  if  no  memory  had 
survived  to  acquit  Doctor  Landor,  not  only  of  the  faintest  trace  of 
arrogance  to  his  children,  but  of  all  contemptuous  depreciation  of 
other  people,  and  indeed  of  anything  like  pride.  On  this,  therefore, 
nothing  further  will  be  said  beyond  such  statement  as  the  facts  ren- 
der necessary. 

But,  delicate  as  the  around  is  on  which  T  find  mvself  thus  earlv,  it 
would  be  a  wrong  to  the  excellent  person  from  whom  I  have  derived 
so  many  interesting  recollections,  not  to  say  at  once  that  if  he  had 
less  frankly  complied  with  my  urgent  and  reiterated  request  for  the 
actual  truth  of  his  brother's  earlier  history,  the  memoir  could  not 
have  been  undertaken  at  all.  My  personal  knowledge  extended  only 
to  Landor's  later  life  ;  and  recollections  derived  exclusively  from 
himself  1  found  to  he  too  often  incompatible  with  the  statements 
of  others  to  he  used  with  perfect  safety.  N'ot  that  Landor  would  at 
any  time  consciously  have  practised  deception.  The  absence  of  it  in 
his  nature  in  regard  to  such  learning  as  he  possessed,  noticed  already 
by  his  brother,  extended  to  every  part  of  his  life.  Never  was  any 
man  so  little  of  a  hypocrite  ;  for  it  was  not  until  he  had  grossly  de- 
ceived himself,  that  any  one  was  in  danger  of  being  deceived  by  him 


JET.  1-22.]  BEFORE    AND    AFTER    RUSTICATION.  31 

upon  any  subject  whatever.  But,  with  an  imagination  to  the  very- 
last  incessantly  and  actively  busy,  it  was  not  difficult  that  by  him- 
self he  should  be  so  misled  ;  that  he  should  not  at  all  times  be  able  to 
distinguish  between  the  amusement  of  his  fancy  and  the  certainty  of 
his  recollection  ;  and  that,  without  charging  him  with  even  careless- 
ness as  to  truth,  his  facts  should  occasionally  prove  to  have  been 
hardly  less  imaginary  than  his  conversations.  As  to  all  else,  the 
most  just  as  wTell  as  ultimately  the  kindest  account  will  be  that, 
which,  in  remembering  these  things,  is  careful  to  keep  equally  in 
mind  his  temper  and  temperament,  distinguishing  what  came  by  per- 
mission, and  what  was  inherited  from  nature.  Most  characters  are 
too  narrow  for  much  variety ;  but  in  him  there  was  room  enough  for 
all  the  changes  of  feeling,  however  unlike.  My  own  predominant  im- 
pression from  our  years  of  intercourse,  during  all  of  which  he'  was 
living  alone,  was  that  of  a  man  genial,  joyous,  kind,  and  of  a  nature 
large  and  generous  to  excess ;  but  of  a  temper  so  uncontrollably  im- 
petuous, and  so  prone  to  act  from  undisciplined  impulse,  that  I  have 
been  less  startled  upon  a  closer  knowledge  to  find  it  said  by  others, 
unfaltering  both  in  admiration  and  tried  affection  for  him,  that  during 
hardly  any  part  of  his  life  between  nine  years  and  almost  ninety 
could  he  live  with  other  people  in  peace  for  any  length  of  time  ;  for 
that,  though  always  glad,  happy,  and  good-humored  for  a  while,  he 
was  apt  gradually  to  become  tyrannical  where  he  had  power,  and  re- 
bellious where  he  had  not ;  and  I  here,  therefore,  candidly  state  so 
much,  to  be  always  kept  steadily  in  view,  that  hereafter  there  may  be 
less  danger  of  doing  unconsciously  some  injustice  to  others  in  the  de- 
she  to  be  in  all  things  just  to  so  remarkable  a  man. 

VII.  BEFORE  AND  AFTER  RUSTICATION. 

To  the  youth  who  has  just  left  Oxford,  and  who  is  still  short  of 
his  twentieth  year,  the  tone  just  used  may  seem  to  be  applied  prema- 
turely. But  already  his  character  is  formed  ;  even  as  his  hand- 
writing, in  this  letter  written  seventy  years  ago,  and  now  lying  before 
me,  is  absolutely  identical  in  form,  freedom,  and  decisiveness  of  out- 
line with  that  which  he  wrote  nearly  seventy  years  later.  And  just 
as  in  the  later  time  when  anything  painful  had  occurred  to  him,  he 
would  fling  it  aside,  and  forget  it  in  the  writing  of  a  dialogue  or  poem 
of  which  he  would  set  aside  the  (imaginary)  profits  for  the  benefit  of 
somebody  or  something  in  distress,  he  has  already,  in  the  interval  of 
five  months  between  his  rustication  and  this  letter  to  Walter  Birch, 
with  the  same  happy  power  of  forgetting  what  it  was  not  pleasant  to 
remember,  gone  from  his  father's  house  to  London,  brought  out  in  a 
volume  The  Poems  of  Walter  Savage  Landor*  devoting  all  its  profits 
to  the  benefit  of  a   "  distressed  clergyman,"  and,  together  with  his 

*  "  Printed  for  T.  Cadell,  Jun.,  and  W.  Davies  (successors  to  John  Cadell),  in  the 
Strand.     1795." 


32  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  w°-^' 

statement  to  Birch  of  the  circumstances  which  had  driven  him  from 
Trinity  College,  is  now  sending  him  this  volume  of  his  poems  ! 

"Dear  Birch,"  he  begins,*  "you  will  be  surprised  to  receive  a 
letter  from  me,  but  more  so  to  see  my  verses  in  their  present  form. 
I  confess  the  truth  to  you  that  the  letter  does  not  attend  them, 
but  they  the  letter  ;  for  I  thought  I  could  not  have  a  better  op- 
portunity of  addressing  myself  to  you  than  in  their  company."  He 
had  ardently  desired  to  explain  to  his  friend  the  affair  which  made 
him  leave  Oxford,  for  he  knew  very  well  that  enemies  on  the  one  side 
and  friends  on  the  other  would  make  the  circumstance  appear  in 
various  and  deceitful  lights.  Birch  was  not  to  think,  however,  that 
he  was  going  to  apologize  for  himself;  no  such  thing.  His  folly  ap- 
peared more  hateful  to  him  than  it  could  to  any  other  person,  and  he 
would  show  it  to  his  friend  undisguised. 

"  In  the  morning  I  had  been  a-shooting ;  in  the  evening  I  invited  a  party 
to  wine.  In  the  room  opposite  there  lived  a  man  f  universally  laughed  at 
and  despised  ;  but  I  must  tell  you  why  he  was  so,  — for  we  are  naturally 
sorry  for  such  people,  and  are  careful  not  to  increase  their  misfortunes. 
With  a  figure  extremely  disgusting,  lie  was  more  so  in  his  behavior. 
Plenus  ruris  et  inficetiarum,  he  was  continually  intruding  himself  where  his 
company  was  not  wanted;  and,  hearing  others  talk  of  hunting  and  other 
diversions,  always  joined  the  conversation,  and  often  mistook  a  laugh  for  an 
applause.  For  the  very  jokes  that  were  passed  on  him  gratified  him  highly, 
and  pulled  him  up  with  an  idea  of  his  own  consequence.  This  was  the 
aim  of  the  college:  laughed  at  first  for  his  amusement,  and  afterwards  for 
our  own.  We  called  him  '  Duke  of  Leeds.  Well,  it  unfortunately  hap- 
pened that  he  lived  opposite  to  me,  and  that  he  had  a  parly  on  the  same 
day,  consisting  of  servitors  and  other  raffs  of  every  description.  The 
weather  was  warm,  and  the  windows  were  open;  the  consequence  was 
that  those  who  were  in  my  room  began  rowing  those  in  his,  who  very 
soon  retorted.  All  the  time  I  was  only  a  spectator ;  for  I  should  haye 
blushed  to  have  had  any  conversation  with  them,  particularly  out  of  a 
window.  But  my  gun  was  lying  on  another  table  in  the  room,  and  I  had 
in  my  back  closel  some  little  shot.  I  proposed,  as  they  had  closed  the 
casements,  and  as  the  shutters  were  on  the  outside,  to  fire  a  volley.  It 
was  thought  a  good  trick,  and  accordingly  I  went  into  my  bedroom  and 
fired.  Soon  the  president  sent  up  a  servant  to  inform  me  that  Mr.  Leeds 
had  complained  of  a  gun  being  fired  from  the  room  in  which  I  entertained 
my  company,  bu1  he  could  not  tell  by  whom  ;  so  that  he  insisted  on  know- 
ing from  me,  and  making  me  liable  to  the  punishment." 

And  now  arises  an  illustration  of  character.  In  the  circumstances 
st;  ted  there  was  manifestly  no  escape  wdth  honor  except  by  frank 
confession  ;  but  knowing  tiie  consequence  that  must  follow,  its  pos- 
sible effect  upon  his  father  Hashed  suddenly  <>n  Landor,  and,  with 
the  swift  transition  to  extremes  which  was  a  part  of  his  nature,  he 
thought  it  on  the  instant  worth  any  sacrifice  not  to   imbitter  past 

*  The  letter  is  'Intel  from  88  Beaumont  Street,  Portland  Place,  12th  April,  1705. 
f  It  will  lie  observed  that  to  Birch  he  Baya  nothing  of  the  man's  Tory  opinions,  Birch 

himself  having  a  loaning  that  way. 


MT.  1-22.]  BEFORE    AND    AFTER   RUSTICATION.  33 

hope  those  home  disagreements  of  which  ordinarily  he  was  careless 
enough.  His  eager  desire  of  the  moment  shut  out  everything  but  the 
one  opportunity  of  evasion,  which  he  hurriedly  seized.  He  assured 
the  president  that  no  gun  was  fired  from  the  rooms  in  which 
his  company  were  (he  had  fired  it  from  the  bedroom);  and  as  his 
questioner  coidd  not  identify  any  person,  he  did  not  recognize  it  as 
his  own  duty  to  reply  to  a  vague  charge.  The  president  inquired 
whether  any  person  had  come  up  the  same  stairs  1  Very  possibly 
there  might,  said  Landor.  Whether  he  himself  possessed  a  gun] 
He  did.  If  the  president  might  see  it  1  Certainly.  Had  it  not  been 
lately  fired  1  Yes.  The  president  then  immediately  sent  for  the 
men\vho  had  been  in  Landor's  room.  They,  knowing  he  was  not 
likely  himself  to  make  any  concession,  gave  discrepant  answers  ;  for 
they  were  each  examined  separately  and  very  minutely.  Upon  this 
Doctor  Chapman  sent  for  Landor  again  ;  told  him  he  had  received 
such  contradictory  evidence  that  he  was  determined  to  persevere  till 
he  found  out  the  truth  ;  and  suggested  that  Landor  should  enable 
him  to  deal  leniently  in  the  case  by  himself  stating  frankly  what  had 
occurred.  This  was  extremely  generous,  Landor  admits,  and  adds 
that  he  was  foolish  in  the  last  degree  to  refuse  it ;  but  he  called  to 
mind  his  own  prevarication,  and  that  of  his  friends,  and  hastily  re- 
solved not  to  throw  any  light  on  the  subject.  He  thought  himself 
under  no  obligation  to  reply  to  a  charge  that  could  not  be  proved, 
although  it  was  just ;  and  he  required  Doctor  Chapman  to  try  him  as 
he  would  a  criminal.  He  reminded  him  of  the  privileges  of  a  person 
accused  ;  and  that  even  if  a  place  were  improperly  specified  in  an  in- 
dictment, that  alone  would  discharge  the  prisoner.  But  the  Doctor 
did  not  comprehend  this  (a  wonder  if  he  had) ;  "  he  chose  to  ex- 
amine all  the  grounds  ;  and  if  any  one  of  them  was  sound,  it  should  be 
enough  for  him."  He  proceeded,  therefore,  and,  the  various  contra- 
dictions being  compared,  the  guilt  was  proved. 
Very  characteristically  Landor  continues  :  — 

"I  was  extremely  chagrined.  I  wrote  to  the  president,  and  informed  him 
that  I  only  was  responsible  for  the  plan  I  had  pursued.  I  even  vastly 
magnified  my  fault,  and  painted  my  dissimulation  in  the  most  odious  colors. 
For,  being  what  I  never  was  guilty  of  before,  it  struck  me  with  the  great- 
est horror.  You  will  very  likely  wonder  at  the  course  I  took.  But  the 
reason  why  I  refused  to  confess  was  not  on  my  own  account.  I  imagined 
that  I  should  certainly  be  rusticated  at  all  events  for  firing  off  a  gun  in  the 
quadrangle  in  the  time  of  prayers.  I  therefore  balanced  the  sorrow  I 
should  feel  in  deceiving  the  president,  with  that  of  irritating  a  father  with 
whom  I  was  already  on  the  most  indifferent  terms.  I  hardly  doubted  a 
moment.  For  though  my  father  had  really  shown  me  as  much  nnkindness 
as  was  in  his  power,  I  was  resolved,  if  possible,  not  to  give  him  any  further 
cause  of  complaint.  I  appeal  to  Heaven  for  the  purity  of  my  motives,  and 
that  they  arose  not  from  personal  fear.  At  the  same  time  I  confess  to  you, 
my  dear  Birch,  that  I  have  committed  an  action  (the  prevarication)  which 
I  never  can  forgive.     The  president  knew  very  well  the  circumstances  in 

3 


34  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  li7^97- 

which  I  stood;  and  I  really  think  that  lie  would  not  have  rustieated  me,  if 
he  had  not  thought  that  by  going  home  I  should  be  reconciled  the  more  soon 
to  my  father,  lie  wrote  a  letter  for  this  purpose;  and  expressed  his 
wishes  t<>  me  on  parting  that  I  should  return  again  to  college,  and  assured 
me  that  the  whole  affair  should  be  forgotten." 

Such  indeed  had  been  the  anxiety  of  this  good  Doctor  Chapman  to 
treat  Landor  with  excess  of  lenity,  that  one  of  the  fellows  openly  ex- 
pressed dissatisfaction.  The  letter  to  Birch  does  not  at  all  exaggerate 
the  favorable  turn  given  to  the  sentence  itself,  in  coupling  it,  as  the 
dissentient  fellow  remarked,  with  " an  unexampled  formula."  "Mr. 
Landor,"  said  the  president,  "it  is  the  opinion  of  the  fellows  that  you 
be  rusticated  for  two  terms,  at  the  expiration  of  ivhich  I  invite  you  to  re- 
turn." And  it  was  upon  Landor's  nevertheless  earnestly  entreating 
that  his  punishment  might  be  of  any  other  kind,  however  much 
severer,  in  order  to  save  pain  to  his  family,  not  himself,  that  Doc- 
tor Chapman  wrote  to  his  father.  But  the  return  home  failed  to 
bring  about  the  proper  understanding;  the  Birch  letter  itself  too 
abundantly  explaining  why  this  could  not  be  expected.  The  sacrifice 
which  the  son  imagined  he  had  made,  was  to  the  father  very  naturally 
an  aggravation  of  offence ;  and  it  is  impossible  not  to  smile  at  the 
huffed  and  haughty  tone  taken  up  where  entire  and  sorrowful  sub- 
mission might  have  seemed  but  small  atonement.  The  extraordinary 
ease  also  with  which  at  last  the  whole  subject  is  carelessly  dismissed 
will  not  fail  to  be  observed. 

"  But  my  father  and  I  are  more  different  than  any  other  two  men.  I 
have  endeavored  to  make  the  greatest  sacrifices  to  his  happiness;  but  if  I 
cannot  make  him  happy,  I  certainly  will  not  make  him  miserable.  Because 
I  sent  to  Oxford  to  give  up  my  rooms,  he  imagined  that  I  had  no  intention 
of  returning.  On  this  he  used  the  most  violent  expressions,  and  the  event 
is  that  I  have  left  him  forever.  1  have  been  in  London  about  a  quarter  of  a 
year,  constantly  employed  in  studying  French  and  Italian.  The  former  I 
could  read  before,  but' not  speak.  The  latter  is  extremely  easy  both  to 
read  and  speak,  ami  I  understand  it  as  well  as  French,  which  I  have  been 
in  the  habit  of  reading  four  or  five  years.  In  about  another  month  ] 
think  of  going  into  Italy.  —  hut  if  the  French  should  take  me  prisoner,  I 
will  enter  their  harbors  singing  ra  ira.  I  have  excellent  lodgings  here,  and 
nothing  would  give  me  greater  pleasure  than  to  see  you." 

He  was  not,  however,  to  sing  ca  ira  as  yet,  or  to  embark  upon  any 
sueh  exciting  adventure  as  he  hints  at,  He  remained  a  few  weeks 
longer  in  London,  having  nothing  afterwards  to  remember  more  notice- 
able than  an  accidental  meeting  with  the  son  of  Egalite  ;  *  and  while 


* 


Speaking,  in  a  letter  to  his  sister  Elizabeth,  of  the  strong  party  feeling  in  Florence 
after  trie  Three  Days'  Revolution  in  France,  he  describes  a  dinner  at  which  he  had  met 
the  Due  de  Laval-Montmorency  and  Talleyrand's  nephew,  the  Due  de  Dino,  who  with 
Infinite  care  avoided  speaking  to  each  other,  and  adds:  "  Their  new  king  will,  however, 
reconcile  all  that  arc  worth  reconciliation.  He  \<  the  best,  ami  almost  the  wisest,  man 
iii  his  kingdom.  I  once  saw  him  in  London  in  the  year  1705.  He  was  knocking  at  a 
door  in  York  Place,  where  I  also  had  a  call  to  make.  Be  was  extremely  handsome 
and  thin,  which  lie  is  no  longer,  and  spoke  two  or  three  words  in  English  perfectly 


iET.  1-22.]  FIRST    PUBLISHED    BOOK.  35 

kind  friends  had  been  doing  their  best  to  heal  the  difference  with  his 
father,  he  had  himself  been  chiefly  and  unconcernedly  busy  about  his 
volume  of  Poems. 


VIII.    FIRST  PUBLISHED  BOOK. 

Mr.  Robert  Landor  thus  adverts  to  his  brother's  first  published 
book  in  one  of  his  letters  to  me.  "  The  first  of  Walter's  publications 
must  have  appeared  almost  seventy  years  ago.  A  small  volume  of 
poems,  which  were  withdrawn  or  suppressed  without  any  reason  as 
I  can  remember,*  excepting  that  he  hoped  to  write  better  soon.  There 
was  nothing  among  them,  I  think,  discreditable  in  any  way  to  a  man 
barely  twenty  years  old.  But  he  seems  to  have  wished  that  they 
should  be  forgotten,  even  before  the  publication  of  Gebir  two  or  three 
years  later."  The  wish  was  a  natural  one,  and  it  will  be  found  very 
shortly  that  Landor  himself  gives  good  reasons  for  it ;  but  a  book  is 
as  hard  to  withdraw  as  to  circulate,  and  there  is  no  rule  so  common 
as  the  rule  of  contrary  in  such  things.  It  may  be  shrewdly  suspected 
that  the  Poems  went  further  than  Gebir  for  the  very  reason  that  sug- 
gested the  desire  to  suppress  them.  A  letter  is  before  me  written  to 
Landor  from  Oxford  early  in  1795,  by  one  who  was  already  a  fellow 
of  his  own  college  of  Trinity,  in  which  this  remark  is  made  :  "  For 
myself,  what  can  I  do  1  You  know  nescit  vox  missa  reverti.  But 
these  little  things  promote  the  sale  of  the  copies  of  your  volume  in  the 
University,  so  that  the  booksellers  here  are  at  present  out  of  a  supply." 

The  grave,  good-natured  writer,  older  than  Landor  by  many  years, 
and  to  whom  a  living  had  just  fallen  from  his  college,  can  thus  with- 
out anger  refer  to  some  lines  addressed  to  Doctor  Warton;  containing 
a  personal  attack  on  himself  which  seems  to  have  been  altogether 
wilful  and  unpi-ovoked  :  — 

"  Deign  from  thy  brother's  works  to  cull  us 
What  bold  Lucretius,  sharp  Catullus, 
Divinely  elegant  Tibullus, 
And  all  the  grand  Aonian  quire 
Would  envy,  or  at  least  admire. 
Then  Oxford  shall  no  more  regret 
The  twofold  night  'twixt  C — -  and  K ." 


—  the  offence  of  Clarke  and  Kett  being  explained  in  a  note  to  have 
been,  that  the  last  had  published  Juvenile  Poems  at  the  age  of  forty, 
and  the  first  an  (Edipus  in  prose.     "  Ouvrez,  Messieurs  !  c'est  mon 

well.  I  did  not  know  who  he  was  until  I  entered  the  house,  and  then  I  congratulated 
myself  that  I  had  insisted  on  his  entering  first,  —  for  I  learned  that  he  was  so  sensible 
and  independent  a  man  that  he  rather  gained  his  bread  by  teaching  French  in  two  or 
three  distinguished  families  than  accept  the  two  hundred  a  year  which  the  king  of 
Sardinia  offered  him.  It  was  a  lucky  house,  —  for  the  Abbe' on  whom  I  called  was 
made  Bishop  of  Agen  by  Bonaparte,  though  a  Christian  and  a  Royalist.  I  wondered  as 
much  at  this  as  he  once  wondered  at  me  for  eating  a  red  herring  without  mustard  and 
vinegar,  faute  de  salade."  The  kind  word  for  Louis  Philippe  may  fairly  stand  against 
many  harsh  ones  uttered  in  later  years. 
*  See  post,  p.  81. 


36  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  ins^* 

CEdipe  on  prose."  The  note,  however,  does  not  say  all.  The  person 
with  whom  Clarke  is  coupled  hud  done  worse  than  publish  Juvenilia 
at  forty,  having  in  fact  been  the  solitary  dissentient  among  the  fellows 
of  Trinity  from  Doctor  Chapman's  good-humored  invitation  that  Lan- 
dor  should  return ;  and  to  the  close  of  Rett's  unhappy  life  Landor 
resented  this  ill  word.  On  the  other  hand  there  was  no  sufficient 
reason  for  putting  Clarke  into  the  pillory  erected  in  the  volume  for 
Kett  ;  and  Landor  seems  himself  to  have  regretted  it,  when  from  the 
letter  just  quoted  he  saw  how  good-naturedly  it  was  taken. 

There  is  no  trace  of  anger  in  Clarke  (for  the  letter  is  his) ;  he 
thinks  more  of  expressing  his  delight  at  the  poetry  and  scholarship 
of  the  book  than  of  taking  offence  at  its  personalities ;  *  and  what  he 
says  of  various  parts  of  the  volume,  and  in  especial  of  its  fifty  pages 
of  Poematum  Latinorum  Libellus  et  Latine  scribendi  Defemio,  testifies 
strongly  now  the  impression  made  then  upon  the  Oxford  graduates 
and  masters  by  the  powers  of  this  unruly  lad  of  twenty.  He  thinks 
that  Catullus  himself  might  have  been  proud  of  the  "  Hcndecasyl- 
labi "  ;  wishes  that  courts  and  courtiers  could  but  be  reformed  by  the 
political  pieces  ;  declares  that  Persius  never  excelled  the  ease  and 
concinnity  of  his  Invocation ;  f  says  of  a  couplet  for  a  Quaker's  tank- 
ard, — 

"Ye  lie,  friend  Pindar!  and  friend  Thales! 
Nothing  so  good  as  water  ?    Alt  is ! " 

*  "  Yon  are  somewhat  severe,"  he  says,  "on  my  contemporary  and  fellow-collegian, 
Mr.  Kett,  wliom  vou  have  also  made  collinear  with  myself,  rather  to  the  diversion  of  all 
our  friends."  He  cannot  help  adding  an  epigram  which  had  just  come  out  as  a  reply 
to  Landor:  — 

"  K not  a  poet !  who  dare  say  so  ? 

Though  not  an  Ovid,  yet  a  Naso." 

This  shows  that  Kett  was  not  strong  in  friends,  even  among  men  of  his  own  standing. 
He  must  have  had  some  merit  (lie  was  one  year  chosen  Hampton  Lecturer),  but  noth- 
ing he  did  seem-  to  have  been  done  successfully;  and  what  is  said  to  have  induced  him 
finally  to  commit  suicide  (not  by  hanging,  as  Landor  supposed,  but  drowning)  was 
some  formal  censure  passed  upon  him  in  the  University. 

t  This  Invocation  is  noticeable  still  for  the  treasonable  bitterness  of  its  last  couplet, 
and  for  its  terse  summary  of  the  so-called  poets  whom  the  general  dulness  had  thrown 
into  prominence  since  the  death-  of  Goldsmith  and  Gray.  As  yet  the  voice  of  Cowper 
had  but  faintly  been  heard;  Bums  had  still  to  be  naturalized  to  England;  while  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  Lamb,  and  Southey  were  only  trying  and  sounding  their  instruments 
iu  small  publications  at  Bristol. 

"Though,  Helicon!  I  seldom  dream 
Beside  thy  lovely  limpid  stream, 
Nor  elory  that  to  me  belong 
( >r  elegance,  or  nerve  of  song, 

Or  I  la  \  ley's  easy-ambling  horse, 
Or  Peter  Pindar's  comic  force, 
<  >r  Mason's  fine  majestic  flow, 
Or  aught  that  pleases  one  in  Crowe: 
Yet  thus,  ;,  gaucy  suppliant  bard. 
I  court  the  Muse's  kind  regard  — 
'0  whether,  Muse!  thou  please  to  give 
My  humble  verses  long  to  live; 
*  <  >r  tell  me  the,  decrees  of  Fate 

Have  ordered  them  a  shorter  date, — 
I  bow.     Yet  ( ),  may  every  word 
Survive,  however,  George"  the  Third ! '  " 


JET.  I 


22.]  A    FAIR    INTERCESSOR.  37 


that  he  had  seen  one  of  the  dons  laughing  over  it  heartily ;  and  of 
another  at  the  hundred  and  thirty-third  page,  on  Tucker's  treatise 
concerning  civil  government  in  opposition  to  Locke, 

"  Thee,  meek  Episcopy!  shall  kings  unfrock 
Ere  Tucker  triumph  over  sense  and  Locke!  " 

avers  that  he  "saw  Tucker  himself  overlooking  page  133."  This 
forgiving  fellow  of  Trinity,  in  short,  has  only  one  regret  in  connection 
with  his  assailant,  —  that  he  had,  owing  to  some  misunderstanding 
about  the  letting  of  his  rooms  to  him  at  his  first  entering  the  college, 
lost  the  honor  of  having  Landor  for  a  tenant :  "  especially  as  but  for 
that  you  might  now  have  been  a  resident  amongst  us ;  and  with  the 
pipe  of  antiquity  on  which  you  so  sweetly  play,  directed  upwards, 
you  might  have  charmed  any  uncouth  inhabitant  of  your  zenith, 
instead  of  having  alarmed  the  horizon  by  an  instrument  placed  at 
right  angles  with  your  shoulder.". 

IX.    A  FAIR  INTERCESSOR. 

At  Warwick  meanwhile,  as  I  have  said,  kind  friends  were  inter- 
ceding to  clear  the  horizon  from  any  further  ill  consequence  of  the 
alarm  to  the  "  uncouth  inhabitant  "  of  Trinity ;  and  now  that  we  are 
all  dead,  as  Sydney  Smith  says,  the  name  of  one  of  the  intercessors 
may  be  singled  out. 

This  was  Dorothea  Lyttelton,  the  chosen  and  particular  friend  of 
Landor's  eldest  sister,  Eliza*  eth  ;  who  lived  with  her  two  rich  bachelor 
uncles  at  Studley  Castle,  fourteen  miles  from  Warwick  and  adjoining 
Ipsley  Court ;  who  was  known  to  be  not  only  heiress  to  both  uncles, 
but  already  to  possess  in  her  beauty  a  more  enviable  dowry ;  whom 
everybody  for  miles  about  naturally  was  in  love  with ;  and  who  had 
not  yet  smiled  on  any  of  those  countless  suitors,  though  youths  of  all 
but  the  highest  rank  were  said  to  be  among  them.  The  whole  of  the 
brothers  Landor  she  of  course  led  captive ;  and  a  tale  is  told  of  the 
youngest,  that  when  two  or  three  years  hence  she  had  relented  and 
was  a  bride,*  and  he,  a  lad  of  fifteen,  had  gone  into  her  presence 
bent  upon  slaying  her  bridegroom  in  single  combat  with  spears  or 
bows  and  arrows,  she  suddenly,  to  his  extreme  mortification,  displaced 
those  desperate  thoughts  by  taking  him  in  her  arms  and  kissing  him. 
We  may  gather  at  least  from  the  story  what  the  family  intimacy  with 
Miss  Lyttelton  was  ;  and  we  have  proof  that  an  elder  brother  had 
been  more  presuming.  "  I  ought  to  remember  well  that  name, 
and  little  notes  to  my  sister  subscribed  D.  Lyttelton,"  wrote  Landor 

*  Almost  as  I  write  these  words  the  papers  announce  the  death  of  this  lady's  son. 
"We  regret  to  announce  the  decease  of  Sir  Francis  Goodricke,  Bart.,  at  Malvern. 
Born  in  November,  1797,  he  was  the  eldest  son  of  Francis  Holyoake,  Esq.,  of  Tettenhall 
in  Staffordshire,  and  Studlev  Castle,  Warwickshire,  bv  Dorothy  Elizabeth,  niece  and 
heiress  of  Philip  Lyttelton,  Esq.,  of  Studlev  Castle.  He  was  member  for  Stafford  in  ■ 
1835;  was  afterward  returned  for  South  Staffordshire;  in  1834,  filled  the  ofilce  of  high- 
sheriff  of  Warwickshire;  and  in  1835  was  created  a  baronet." 


38  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  ??«°-V.' 


'775-97. 


to  me  in  his  eightieth  year,  correcting  Leigh  Hunt's  spelling  of  the 
name  in  his  book  about  Kensington.  "The  estate  of  Studley  Castle 
joined  Ipsley  Court,  and  there  dwelt  one  whom  Lady  Hertford,  the 
best  judge  of  beauty  in  the  world,  called  the  most  lovely  and  graceful 
creature  she  had  ever  known.  Every  day  of  the  vacations  I  went 
over  there.  It  soon  was  Walter  and  Dorothea  ;  her  uncles,  too,  called 
me  Walter,  and  liked  me  heartily  ;  and  if  I  had  then  been  indepen- 
dent, I  should  have  married  this  lovely  girl."  Tales  told  by  hope  are 
often  too  flattering,  but  we  have  better  means  than  usual  of  judging 
whether  it  was  so  here.  Among  his  papers  I  found  a  packet  of  her 
letters  carefully  kept  and  indorsed  by  him,  addressed  to  him  at  his 
London  lodgings  in  Beaumont  Street  in  those  early  months  of  1 795  ; 
and  there  will  be  now  no  breach  of  confidence  in  admitting  the  reader 
to  some  glimpses  of  them. 

The  first  shows  her  very  anxious  about  his  sister  Elizabeth,  with 
whom  she  has  been  passing  some  days,  when  "  she  talked  of  you  to 
me,  and  distresses  herself  more  than  you  can  imagine."  He  had 
been  their  constant  theme.  To  talk  about  him  was  the  only  conso- 
lation for  his  absence,  which  had  diminished  the  happiness  of  her 
own  visit  to  Warwick.  Never,  she  prays  him,  is  he  to  be  so  cruel  to 
her  "  nice  little  friend  Elizabeth "  as  not  to  correspond  with  her. 
The  omission  was  promptly  repaired ;  and  in  her  next  letter  she  tells 
him  how  he  had  charmed  his  sister  by  writing  to  her,  "  and  me  by 
the  compliment  of  attending  to  my  request !  She  WTote  to  me  in 
ecstasies."  I 

Then  there  is  a  question  as  to  some  promise  about  a  hit  of  ribbon 
he  has  charged  her  with  having  broken;  but  she  will  not  regret  an 
apparent  forgetfulness  that  has  proved  his  remembrance  of  her,  and 
gratified  her  vanity  by  convincing  her  that  the  insignificance  of  a  bit 
of  ribbon  may  derive  worth  from  her  presenting  it  to  him.  At  once, 
upon  having  his  letter,  she  had  sent  to  her  "  friend  citoyenne  John- 
stone, who  is  now  at  that  metropolis  of  dissension  and  aristocracy, 
Birmingham,"  to  procure  her  the  colors;  and  —  would  he  believe  it! 
—  the  citoyenne  lias  sent  alight  blue  instead  of  a  dark  purple  !  Ihyt 
really  it  is  the  ignorance  that  has  angered  her  more  than  the  delay  ; 
for,  "  to  say  the  truth,  I  cannot  think  you  mean  in  earnest  I  should  pack 
off  two  or  three  bits  of  ribbon  those  number  of  miles  !  If  I  am  mis- 
taken, it  rests  with  you  to  rectify  it ;  and,  upon  demand,  here  will  be 
the  real  colors  to  tie  up  for  your  watch-chain."  This  demand  of 
course  came,  and  the  bits  of  ribbon  went. 

There  is  next  the  arrival  of  the  Poems;  which  she  sits  up  reading 
till  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  then  cannot  '^compose  herself  to 
sleep"  till  she  has  told  him  what  "exquisite  delight"  they  had  given 
her  ;  and  not  the  printed  book  only,  but  verses  in  manuscript  !  and 
lines  addressed  to  herself!  How  is  she  to  find  words  to  thank  him  ; 
and  ouirht  she  indeed  to  thank  him  for  making  her  inordinately  vain  ! 
But  what  a  talent  it  is !  and,  when  existing  with  a  disposition  equally 


iET.  1-22.]  A    FAIR    INTERCESSOR.  39 

happy,  how  great  the  power  it  gives  its  possessor  to  oblige  all  whom 
he  may  honor  with  the  name  of  friend  !  "  These  verses,  how  I  could 
talk  of  them !  What  I  have,  I  can  repeat  as  fluently  as  the  author 
himself,  and  am  longing  for  my  memory  to  be  further  charged."  She 
had  only  to  continue  to  long  until  the  next  post ;  which  conveyed 
to  her  the  proof  of  what  her  following  letter  expressed  in  thanking 
him,  that  her  wish  was  become  a  command. 

If  additional  evidence  were  wanting,  however,  to  show  in  all  that 
has  thus  been  quoted  but  the  friendly  familiarity  of  a  good-humored 
girl  for  the  brother  of  her  friend,  a  year  or  two  younger  than  herself, 
whose  cleverness  she  admired  and  whose  attentions  pleased  her,  the 
other  contents  of  that  last-named  letter  would  supply  it.  She  had 
been  told  of  his  intention,  already  named  to  Walter  Birch,  to  betake 
himself  to  Italy ;  and  not  content  with  a  vehement  disapproval  of 
this  plan,  she  bestirs  herself  on  the  instant  with  much  zeal  to  pre- 
vent it. 

She  begins  by  thanking  him  for  having  taken  so  much  trouble  to 
explain  his  situation,  for  to  talk  of  himself  is  more  interesting  to  her 
than  any  other  subject.  They  had  already  heard  at  Studley  of  the 
unfortunate  misunderstanding  between  him  and  his  father,  and  hoped 
it  might  be  reconciled.  But  now  she  must  tell  him  that  she  is  in  a 
humor  to  preach  a  little  to  him.  Is  he  disposed  to  profit  by  a  lec- 
ture ]  He  will  say  she  is  determined  to  disapprove  of  all  his 
schemes  ;  but  against  this  journey  to  Italy  she  must  loudly  exclaim, 
as  she  would  also  against  any  other  as  distant.  There  she  is  decided. 
"  I  would  have  people  with  superior  worth  and  abilities  stay  and  dis- 
tinguish themselves  where  example,  in  most  wise  and  good  things,  is 
so  much  wanting.  I  really  do  not  see,"  she  continued,  proceeding  to 
lay  all- the  blame  on  the  French  Revolution,  though  as  wise  and 
gentle  a  monitor  might  to  the  very  close  of  his  life  have  applied  the 
words  she  is  using  now  at  its  beginning  :  "I  do  not  see  why  you 
should  be  so  disgusted  with  people  in  general  of  your  own  country, 
when  to  my  certain  knowledge  you  have  more  than  your  share  of 
friends.  But  this  vile  party  political  work  which  now  rages  through 
the  whole  world  destroys  all  happiness  both  domestic  and  public, — 
and  I  think  we  must  all  soon  be  of  one  opinion  as  to  that." 

In  any  case,  however,  he  must  not  go  to  Italy.  In  a  previous  let- 
ter she  had  named  her  uncles  to  him  as  very  much  on  his  side,  and 
as  having  desired  her  to  mention  them  to  him  as  his  sincere  friends ; 
and  now  that  this  project  has  been  told  to  them,  they  are  quite  as 
eager  as  herself  to  prevent  it.  Hence,  what  she  will  now  propose  ; 
and  see  with  what  a  delighf ul  energy  she  does  it, —  being  nothing  less 
than  determined  that  it  shall  be  ! 

"  I  have  a  thousand  things  to  say  to  you  from  my  uncles.  They  talk  of 
you  much,  and  are  ready  to  be  mediators  between  you  and  your  father. 
Let  me  then  beg  of  you  to  consider  on  what  terms  and  with  what  induce- 
ments you  can  be  tempted  to  give  up  this  voyage.     Propose  them  to  me, 


40  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  ?J^J* 

and  I  will  commit  them  to  my  uncles;  one  of  whom  will  make  such  pro- 
posals to  your  lather  as  coming  from  themselves.  I  assure  you  thej 
bent  upon  restoring  peace  and  content  to  you;  and  if  they  can  serve  you, 
do  gratify  their  wish!  Recollect  in  the  course  of  nine  months  you  will  he 
of  age.  You  will  then  have  it  in  your  power  to  increase  your  income  if 
you  do  hut  approve  of  those  only  means  to  do  it.  Till  then,  suppose  my 
uncle  was  to  propose  your  going  to  Cambridge'.''  And  would  yon  agree 
to  giving  a  security  to  make  amends  to  the  younger  part  of  the  family  if 
your  lather  would  allow  you  enough  to  support  you  in  studying  the  law  at 
the  Temple?  or  living  independent  anywhere  else  in  England?  For  I  find 
the  truth  is,  he  cannot  allow  you  sufficient  to  study  the  law  without  in- 
juring his  younger  children.  Three  hundred  a  year  my  uncles  talk  of. 
Now  this  is  really  coming  to  the  point.  Not  merely  saying  don't  r/o,  but 
thinking  of  what  you  are  to  do  if  you  stay.  Let  me  entreat  you,  then,  to 
tell  me  the  terms  on  which  you  will  give  up  this  melancholy  scheme. 
Do  lay  them  down  to  me,  and  I  will  acquaint  my  uncles  of  them.  Nay, 
write  to  one  of  them  yourself  !  Or,  will  you  come  down  and  stay  a  little 
while  with  them,  and  talk  over  schemes  and  projects  to  restore  your 
happiness  in  England?  I  do  hope  sincerely  you  will  take  time  to  try  if 
you  do  not  find  it  sufferaoh  to  stay.  Give  it  up  till  you  are  of  age  merely, 
and  then  determine!  What  can  you  do  in  Italy?  /  quite  depend  upon 
your  making  me  your  confidante,  and  that  I  shall  hear  from  you  imme- 
diately.    I  will  attend  at  all  times  to  anything  that  will  serve  you." 

There  is  something  extremely  touching  in  all  this  pretty,  persistent, 
feminine  earnestness  for  the  youth  so  wayward  and  self-willed,  who 
had  yet  the  qualities  to  inspire  such  sisterly  attachment  and  interest 
as  are  manifest  in  every  line  she  writes.  Nothing  more  of  the  cor- 
respondence is  preserved  ;  but  immediately  after  the  last  letter 
reached  Landor,  he  quitted  London  for  Tenby  in  South  Wales,  and 
his  having  accepted  the  proposed  mediation  is  to  be  inferred  from 
the  fact  that  it  shortly  afterwards  took  place,  and  the  arrangement 
ultimately  made  for  his  living  away  from  Warwick  was  founded 
upon  it. 

The  notion  as  to  Cambridge,  and  the  plan  for  reading  law  at  the 
Temple,  were  rejected ;  but  a  fixed  yearly  sum,  about  half  of  what 
his  eager  advocate  suggested,  was  set  apart  for  his  use.  with  the 
understanding  that  his  father's  house  was  at  all  times  open  to  him  in 
aid  of  this  allowance,  for  as  much  of  the  year  as  he  chose  to  live  in 
it.  And  so  for  that  time  there  was  a  surrender  of  the  flight  to  Italy, 
which  had  carried  dismay  to  at  least  another  female  heart,  humbler 
though  perhaps  not  less  tmc  than  Dorothea  Lyttelton's.  "Hon**4 
Sir."  wrote  the  servant  who  had  nursed  him  in  his  infancy,  "  May 
Health  and  Bappiness  attend  you,  and  may.  I  Live  to  see  you  at  the 
lbad  of  that  Family  who,  next  to  a  Husband,  as  my  Best  Affections. 
I  hope  the  providence  of  God  will  direct  you  in  Every  thing,  but,  0 
Sir,  I  hope  you  will  Never  go  a  Broad.  My  hart  Bhuders  at  the  thout 
of  your  Leaving  England  Least  1  shud  see  you  no  more."  The  letter, 
addressed  to  him  at  Tenby  in  the  August  of  1795,  1  found  among 
Landor's  papers  at  his  death  with  his  indorsement,  "Mary  Bird — 


MT    1-22.1  A    MORAL    EPISTLE.  41 

my  nurse:'1  She  had  married  shortly  before,*  a  present  he  then  sent  her 
now  forming  her  apology  for  writing  to  him ;  and  this  small  niche  in 
his  story  may  be  fairly  given  to  so  old  a  friend  of  his  family,  whose 
return  of  the  affection  she  bore  them  has  record  in  a  tablet  placed  to 
her  memory  in  Warwick  Chinch  by  Henry  Landor. 

X.    A  MORAL  EPISTLE. 

While  he  had  thus  been  waiting  to  decide  upon  his  future  career, 
however,  his  letters  to  his  interesting  correspondent  had  not  tilled  up 
all  his  time.  Some  weeks  before  he  quitted  London  there  came  forth 
from  the  printing-press  of  Messrs.  Cadell  and  Davies,  with  no  other 
name  on  the  title-page,  a  tract  of  twenty  pages  in  verse,  A  Moral 
Epistle  to  Earl  Stanhope,  of  which,  from  letters  addressed  to  him  at 
Tenby,  I  lately  discovered  him  to  have  been  the  writer.  One  of  its 
lines  indeed  avows  the  authorship.  I  may  not  long  detain  the  reader 
with  it ;  but  one  or  two  characteristic  points  should  not  be  omitted. 

The  satire,  as  its  title  implies,  is  in  the  manner  of  Pope,  whose 
workmanship  in  some  respects  it  cleverly  reproduces.  It  is  an  attack 
upon  Pitt ;  the  republican  earl  being  put  in  contrast  with  the  Tory 
minister  ;  and  its  lines  best  worth  recalling  are  those  that  ^  denounce 
the  shabby  public  vices  encouraged  by  Chatham's  son,  as  in  him  co- 
existing with  private  weaknesses,  that,  for  such  association  in  the 
elder  time,  nay,  even  in  his  father's  time,  would  have  been  too  gen- 
erous. 

"  Ah.  Bacchus,  Bacchus !  round  whose  thyrsus  twined 
Tendrils  and  ivy  playing  unconfined, 
How  art  thou  altered!  " 

Not  the  less  now,  for  the  bottle  in  each  hand,  did  avarice  and  disin- 
genuousness  flourish ;  not  the  less  did  spies  abound  ;  and  not  safer 
was  the  confidence  because  given  at  the  festive  hour.  One  can  hardly 
imagine  the  lines  that  follow  written  by  a  lad  of  twenty. 

"  Yet  0  the  pleasures !  when  'mid  none  hut  friends 
The  trusty  secret  where  it  rises  ends: 
At  which  no  hireling  politician  storms, 
No  snoring  rector  catches,  and  informs  ' 
Now,  even  Friendship  bursts  her  golden  hand, 
Kens  one  with  caution  ere  she  shakes  one's  hand* 
No  longer  gives  she  that  accustomed  zest 
Which  made  luxurious  e'en  the  frugal  feast; 
Nor  hold  we  converse,  in  these  fearful  days, 
More  than  the  horses  in  your  lordship's  chaise. 
Yet  Wine  was  once  almighty!  silent  Care 
Filled  high  the  bowl,  and  laughed  at  poor  Despair; 

*  "Molly  Perry"  was  the  maiden  name  of  this  old  family  servant;  and  was  the 
name  by  which  very  recently,  in  the  crisis  of  a  dangerous  illness,  Mr.  Robert  Lan- 
dor, unconscious  for  the  moment  of  more  than  eighty  intervening  years,  called  to  her, 
supposing  her  still  to  be  watching  at  his  bed  as  in  his  infancy.  Occasionally,  also,  in 
letters  between  him  and  Walter,  the  mention  of  her  occurs;  and  in  some  amusing  com- 
ments on  the  disagreeableness  of  English  hexameters,  Robert  makes  exception  for 
"  Sternhold's  104tb/Psalm  as  recited  by  Molly  Bird."    (August,  1856.) 


42  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  [f-,°°KJ' 

I 

Wine  threw  the  guinea  from  the  miser's  hand, 

Wine  bade  his  wond'ring  heart  with  alien  warmth  expand. 

But  —  honest  minister  or  sound  divine  — 

He  lies  who  tells  us  now  there's  truth  in  wine. 

For  George's  premier,  never  known  to,  reel, 

Drinks  his  two  bottles,  Bacchus!  at  a  meal." 

There  is  another  passage,  in  which  the  shoulder  of  mutton  of  honest 
Marvell  is  hashed  once  more  for  downright  Shippen,  whom  Walpole 
has  visited  in  the  hope  of  corrupting  :  — 

"  '  Boy,'  quoth  Shippen,  'pray 
What  will  thy  master  dine  upon  to-day?' 
'  Sir?  Mutton,  sir!  '     '  Speak  boldly; 'why  ahasht? 
Drest  in  what  manner?  '     '  Please  your  honor,  hasht.'  " 

—  all  of  which  is  excellent,  though  only  these  lines  may  be  given. 
But  an  extract  from  a  note  to  them  is  also  worth  giving,  to  show  the 
readiness  with  which  he  used  his  learning;  how  intimately  it  was  a 
part  of  himself  even  at  this  boyish  time ;  and  how  early  had  begun 
those  applications  of  it  which  habit,  making  more  and  more  easy  to 
him,  made  finally  a  second  nature.  The  note  tells  us  something,  too, 
of  his  opinions  of  the  people's  representatives  in  those  days,  and  as 
to  the  need  that  existed  for  reform. 

Remarking  that  Walpole's  court  was  infamous  to  a  proverb,  he  says 
that  though  comparisons  would  be  odious,  a  time  had  very  certainly 
at  last  arrived  among  themselves  when  nearly  the  whole  of  their 
worthy  representatives  might  join  the  chorus  in  Sophocles  :  — 

00°    i(TTlV   rjfJ.O)V   VClVKpUTOdp   6  TTOIS  •     OCT     (IV 

ovtos  Xeyr;  aoi,  raird  aoi  XW€IS  4>aH-€V' 

Thev  mio-ht  sing,  in  other  words,  "  This  youth  here  is  our  pilot,  and 
whatever  he  tells  you  we  also  say  "  :  a  song  unlike  that  later  one  in 
which  "  the  pilot  "  Pitt  appeared,  but  in  an  odd  kind  of  way,  of  which 
Landor  is  wholly  unconscious,  seeming  to  prefigure  it.  He  goes  on 
to  say  that  Sophocles  often  is  a  satirist ;  that  if  he  had  lived  in  Eng- 
land he  would  most  surely  have  had  his  windows  broken  for  freedom 
of  speech  ;  and  that  it  is  a  great  pity,  in  so  immense  a  web  of  scholia 
us  that  which  is  entangled  round  him,  not  to  be  able  to  distinguish 
the  characters  he  seems  to  have  attacked. 

"  The  critics  never  observed  that  Sophocles  joined  politics  to  poetry  ; 
otherwise  they  certainly  would  have  taken  the  pains  to  illustrate,  as  they 

went,  the si  striking  characters  of  a  most  eventful  age.     This  reflection 

led  me  to  another,  —  which  is,  that  nothing  would  he  more  proper  than 
thaH  to  every  town  which  had  representatives  there  should  every  month 
be  senl  an  account  how  they  act.  This  account  should  be  reposited  in 
some  place  of  safety,  where  the  constituents  might  refer  to  it  whenever 
they  please.  They  could  then  be  no  longer  deceived;  and  if  there  existed 
any  undue  influence,  it  would  be  their  own  fault.  Even  this,  however, 
would  be  nugatory,  unless  the  hill  passes  for  a  more  general  reform. 

So  Bweeping  a  reformer  indeed  was  the  ardent  young  poet,  that, 
not  content  with  addressing  his  Epistle  to  Lord  Stanhope,  and  with 


JET.  1-22.1  RETREAT    TO    WALES.  43 

declaring  repeatedly  that  he  despises  the  title  as  much  as  he  admires 
the  virtue  of  so  distinguished  a  patriot,  he  thinks  it  necessary  also  to 
prefix  a  prose  dedication  in  which  he  is  "  bold  enough  to  assert "  that 
when  Fortune  placed  on  the  brow  of  Lord  Stanhope  the  tinsel  coronet 
for  the  civic  wreath,  she  must  have  been  either  more  blind  or  more 
insulting  than  usual.  For  himself,  she  had  nothing  to  give,  because 
there  was  nothing  he  would  ask.  He  would  rather  .have  an  execu- 
tioner than  a  patron. 

The  remark  no  doubt  expresses  very  exactly  the  feeling  with  which 
Landor  awaited  at  Tenby  the  result  of  the  intercession  with  his 
father. 

XI.     RETREAT  TO  WALES. 

In  the  later  memory  of  Landor  the  various  matters  consequent  on 
his  departure  from  Oxford  continued  to  live  only  confusedly  ;  and  at 
the  time  of  his  letter  to  me  in  1855  he  had  the  belief  that  Dorothea 
Lyttelton's  intercession  had  obtained  for  him  a  separate  allowance  of 
four  hundred  a  year,  though  his  own  non-compliance  with  certain 
conditions  compelled  him  to  surrender  it.  Her  letters  will  not  only 
have  shown  how  such  errors  may  have  found  place  in  his  mind,  but 
will  account  for  sundry  statements  naturally  repeated  since  his  death 
because  put  forth  with  his  authority  while  he  lived  ;  and  in  order  to 
explain  the  interesting  comment  which  these  have  received  from  Mr. 
Kobert  Landor,  of  whom  I  had  inquired  respecting  them  before  Miss 
Lyttelton's  letters  were  found,  their  substance  shall  here  be  briefly 
stated. 

They  are  to  this  effect :  That  Landor,  after  he  left  Oxford,  was 
looking  out  for  a  profession.  That  his  godfather,  General  Powell, 
with  whom  upon  leaving  Oxford  he  lived  in  London,  promised  that 
he  would  obtain  for  his  godson  a  commission  in  the  army  if  the  young 
republican  would  keep  his  opinions  to  himself.  That  Landor  replied 
he  would  suppress  his  opinions  for  no  man,  and  declined  the  offer. 
That  his  father  then  promised  him  four  hundred  a  year  if  he  would 
study  for  the  law,  and  only  a  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  if  he  would 
not.  But  that,  the  law  being  less  to  Landor's  taste  than  the  army, 
after  a  brief  residence  in  London  he  put  the  Severn  Sea  between  him 
and  his  friends,  and  retired  into  Wales. 

As  for  Landor  looking  out  for  a  profession,  this  was  certainly  never 
at  any  time  the  case.  The  earlier  home  disagreements  and  objections 
turned  chiefly  upon  this,  that  he  as  decidedly  refused  as  his  father 
eagerly  desired  to  give  such  a  direction  to  his  studies  as  might  also 
give  purpose  to  his  life  and  steadiness  to  his  habits,  —  "  settle  him 
down  to  something,"  as  the  saying  is.  But,  even  by  the  time  of  the 
Oxford  rustication,  Doctor  Landor  had  come  to  see  pretty  clearly  that 
his  eldest  son  was  just  as  likely  to  qualify  himself  for  a  curacy  or  rec- 
tory as  for  a  lawyer's  wig,  for  a  bishop  as  for  a  judge,  or  for  a  Quaker 
as  for  either.     "  General  Powell,"  Mr.  Robert  Landor  tells  me,  "  my 


44  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA.  [?£?-J' 


'775 -97- 


brother's  godfather,  never  did  live  in  London,  nor  did  my  brother 
ever  live  with  him  anywhere  else.  The  general's  house  and  constant 
residence  was  at  Warwick,  till,  a  great  many  years  later,  he  became 
Lieutenant-Governor  of  Gibraltar.  There  were  five  or  six  old  officers 
at  that  time  resident  in  Warwick,  but  none  so  familiar  with  my 
father  as  General  Powell.  He  had  served  in  Canada  during  the 
American  War  ;  and,  enjoying  an  ample  fortune,  at  the  peace  re- 
turned to  Warwick,  his  native  town,  as  an  immarried  sportsman. 
When  not  otherwise  engaged,  he  spent  his  evenings  with  us  ;  a  cheer- 
ful, good-humored  old  soldier,  with  very  gentlemanly  manners  Which 

never   changed While   Walter  was   a   boy,   the    old  general 

laughed  at  such  extravagance  as  his  wish  that  the  French  would  in- 
vade England  and  assist  us  in  hanging  George  the  Third  between 
two  such  thieves  as  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  and  York.*  But 
at  a  later  age  military  men  could  not  be  so  tolerant ;  and,  therefore, 
rather  than  quarrel,  the  general  hardly  ever  spent  his  evenings  in  my 
father's  house  when  Walter  was  there.  According  to  the  accounts 
you  send  me,  General  Powell  had  offered  a  commission  in  his  regi- 
ment to  Walter,  which  was  declined.  The  general  would  have 
thought  him  as  well  qualified  for  the  chaplaincy.  Such  an  offer  was 
nu i ilc  to  my  brother  Charles ;  but  at  that  time  Walter  never  entered 
the  general's  house,  though  so  near,  and  the  general  very  seldom  en- 
tered our  father's.  More  than  twenty  years  later  I  prevailed  on 
Walter  to  call  on  General  Powell,  then  very  old  and  almost  dying,  at 
Clifton.  Every  trace  of  ill-feeling  was  forgotten  on  both  sides  ;  but  I 
doubt  whether,  during  those  twenty  years,  they  had  seen  each  other. 
There  was,  however,  another  military  proposal  of  which  my  brother 
never  heard  one  word.  The  Warwickshire  Militia,  assembled  at  War- 
wick, had  for  its  colonel  the  Marquis  of  Hertford,  and  for  its  lieu- 
tenant-colonel a  Colonel  Packwood,  also  one  of  my  father's  friends. 
On  one  occasion,  when  I  think  that  I  was  present,  Colonel  Packwood 
related  to  my  father  the  resignation  of  some  young  officer  through 
ill-health.  My  father  may  have  hoped  that  the  unsettled  and  restless 
habits  of  his  son  would  perhaps  be  corrected,  if  employment  could  be 
found  for  him  among  many  older  persons  from  the  best  county  fami- 
lies. He  asked  Colonel  Packwood  whether  he  thought  that  Lord 
Hertford  would  give  Walter  the  vacant  appointment1?  Colonel  Pack- 
wood  promised  to  report  my  father's  wishes  to  the  marquis.  A  few 
days  after,  when  they  met  again,  my  father  asked  whether  the  appli- 
cation had  been  made  ;  to  which  the  colonel  said  that  it  had  not 
been  made  by  him;  for  that  at  the  mess  after  dinner,  when  talking 
about  the  vacancy,  he  had  mentioned  my  father's  wish  and  his  own 

*  The  memory  of  my  correspondent  pops  so  fur  back  as  even  to  recall  the  occasion 
when  he  and  his  brothers  and  Bisters,  sitting  in  their  mother's  room,  not  only  heard  this 
pious  wish,  but  saw  Mrs.  Landor  rise  immediately  from  her  seat,  and  box  Walter's  cars 
from  behind.  They  were  all  terrified  at  Walter,  wondering  what  he  might  do;  when 
they  heard  their  mother's  high-heeled  shoes  clattering  quickly  over  the  margin  of  the 
unenvpeted  oak  near  the  door,  saw  >r  neat  little  figure  suddenly  disappear.  "I'd 
advise  you,  mother,"  shouted  Walter  niter  her,  "  not  to  try  that  sort  of  thing  again !  " 


m 

MT.  1-22.1  RETREAT    TO    WALES.  45 

belief  that  the  marquis  would  readily  comply  with  it ;  whereupon 
one  of  the  officers  present  immediately  objected  to  my  brother's  vio- 
lent and  extreme  opinions,  exclaiming,  '  If  young  Walter  Landor  gets 
a  commission,  I  will  resign  mine ' ;  and  this  resolution  being  con- 
firmed for  similar  reasons  by  every  one  present,  nothing  more  could 
be  done.  I  do  not  believe  that  Walter  ever  heard  of  it,  or  the  con- 
tempt which  he  always  so  loudly  expressed  for  the  Warwickshire  gen- 
try might  be  accounted  for." 

This  last  anecdote  dates,  of  course,  a  little  later  than  the  time  now 
engaging  us  ;  and  is  inserted,  as  it  was  written,  to  illustrate  those 
exaggerated  peculiarities  of  temperament  which  unexplained  would 
make  inexplicable  Landor's  whole  career ;  which  gave  his  opinions  a 
tone  of  offence  that  not  all  the  eloquent  ability  he  maintained  them 
with  could  allay  ;  which  put  him  in  the  wrong  when  the  right  was 
most  upon  his  side  ;  and,  involving  him  in  unmeaning  quarrels,  left 
him  both  in  youth  and  age  to  the  loneliness  and  isolation  of  which  he 
at  once  boasted  and  complained.  A  lively  lady  who  both  liked  and 
admired  him  said  to  me  in  his  later  life  that  the  great  enjoyment  of 
walking  out  with  him  had  only  one  drawback,  that  he  was  always 
knocking  somebody  down.  She  meant  this  mostly  by  way  of  meta- 
phor ;  but  her  objection  was  the  same  as  that  of  his  soldier-contempo- 
raries, except  that  there  was  less  of  the  metaphor  in  it  then.  The 
young  officers  of  the  Warwickshire  Militia  were  infinitely  his  inferiors 
doubtless,  and  in  everything  might  have  learned  from  him,  as  they 
would  also  gladly  have  been  taught,  with  a  little  help  from  better 
manners.  How  often  has  the  truth  to  be  repeated  which  Burke 
urged  on  Barry,  that  it  is  the  interest  of  all  of  us  to  be  at  peace  with 
our  fellow-creatures  far  less  for  their  sakes  than  for  our  own,  and  that 
the  only  qualities  to  carry  us  safely  through  life  are  moderation  and 
gentleness,  not  a  little  indulgence  to  others,  and  a  great  deal  of  dis- 
trust of  ourselves. 

As  to  the  allowance  finally  agreed  to  be  given  until  the  family 
estates .  should  descend  to  him,  Mr.  Robert  Landor  remarks-  that, 
besides  the  kind  welcome  at  his  father's  house  when  the  moderate 
income  was  expended,  the  £150  finally  agreed  to  "had  many  small 
additions  as  our  mother  could  spare  them  through  her  own  self-denial 
in  all  ways.  The  three  younger  sons  were  maintained  on  three  hun- 
dred a  year,  as  they  could  live  also,  as  Walter  did,  with  their  father 
when  their  money  was  spent,  in  other  words  for  about  half  the  year ; 
and  our  father  had  three  daughters  at  that  time  utterly  dependent  on 
an  entailed  income  really,  though  not  nominally,  less  than  £1,800  a 
year."  Nor  can  I  consent  to  withhold  any  part  of  what  is  said  on 
this  subject  by  Mr.  Landor  in  another  letter.  "  With  six  younger 
children,  for  four  of  whom  there  was  no  provision "  (Charles  being 
promised  the  rectory  of  Colton  of  which  the  patronage  belonged  to 
his  father,  and  Henry  having  the  bequest  of  a  small  estate  at  Whit- 
nash),  "  our  mother's  cares  were  confined  to  her  family  during  many 


46  WARWICK,  RUGBY,  OXFORD,  SWANSEA.  Jmt-J' 


'775  -97- 


years.  And  when  she  afterwards  had  less  need  of  economy,  the  same 
early  prudence  was  become  habitual,  and  there  was  the  appearance 
of  too  much  parsimony.  But  it  was  never  for  herself.  Under  the 
guidance  of  my  brother  Henry,  who  managed  her  affairs,  she  would 
give  as  much  to  any  of  her  children  as  was  consistent  with  justice  to 
the  rest.  Parting  all  she  had  among  them,  it  was  sometimes  easier 
to  get  from  her  a  hundred  pounds  than  ten  shillings.  An  anxious 
rather  than  a  fond  parent,  she  was  scrupulously  just.  Though 
secretly  pleased  by  any  commendations  bestowed  upon  her  eldest 
son,  she  cared  less  about  his  literary  reputation  than  about  the  holes 
in  his  shoes  and  stockings,  — a  very  constant  grievance  for  which  she 
thought  herself  in  some  degree  responsible.  If  you  feel  tired  of  such 
silly  trash,  remember  that  it  is  intended  by  me  to  mark  the  distinc- 
tion between  two  characters  so  nearly  related  and  yet  so  extremely 
unlike.  This  brother  Henry,  who  was  the  family  adviser  and  man- 
ager, would  never  accept  any  share  in  the  common  property,  or  any 
bequest  from  his  mother  or  sisters,  but  always  transferred  his  rights 
to  nephews  and  nieces.     Here  is  another  contrast  of  which  1  will  say 


no  more." 


When  absent  from  Warwick  during  the  next  three  vears,  Landor 
seems  to  have  been  almost  wholly  at  Tenby  or  Swansea.  That  this 
interval  could  not  in  any  prudent  or  worldly  sense  have  been  very 
profitable  to  him,  what  has  been  said  will  sufficiently  have  shown ; 
and  a  part  of  it,  including  a  love  adventure  that  began  at  the  former 
place,  was  probably  also  painful.  It  is  not  necessary,  however,  that 
this  should  be  dwelt  upon  ;  and  Landor  himself,  with  the  same  reso- 
lute will  that  could  turn  aside  from  pain  as  well  as  pleasure  where 
either  might  have  overwhelmed  another  man,  was  able  very  speedily 
to  forget  it.  One  thing  nevertheless  is  to  be  said  of  these  three 
years,  that  in  the  course  of  them  bis  mind  had  passed  through  a  dis- 
cipline which  from  its  previous  studies  or  emotions  it  had  tailed  to 
acquire  ;  that  during  them  he  appears  to  have  read  more  steadily 
and  persistently  than  at  any  former  time ;  and  that  he  printed  at  the 
close  of  them,  when  he  had  scarcely  passed  his  twenty-second  year,  a 
poem  which  lias  only  hitherto  wonderfully  attracted  the  few  as  it  has 
decisively  repelled  the  many,  but  which  in  my  judgment  is  yet  sure 
of  taking  admitted  rank,  if  not  in  this  in  some  other  generation.^with 
those  lew  productions  of  the  highest  class,  which,  however  wanting  in 
completeness  of  structure  or  finish  in  all  their  parts,  contain  writing 
that  will  perish  only  with  the  language. 

"When  I  began  to  write  Gebir,"  he  wrote  to  me  in  1850,  "  I  had 
just  read  Pindar  a  second  time  and  understood  him.  What  I  ad- 
mired was  what  nobody  r]^t'  had  ever  noticed,  —  his  proud  compla- 
cency and  scornful  Btrength.  If  I  could  resemble  him  in  nothing 
else,  I  was  resolved  to  be  as  compendious  and  exclusive."'  But 
besides  Pindar  he  read  again  in  these  years  Homer  and  the  Trage- 
dians ;  and  what  for  the  purpose  in  hand  was  far  more  important,  he 


JET.  1-22.]  RETREAT    TO    WALES.  47 

had  finally  laid  Pope  aside  and  betaken  himself  to  Milton.  He  has 
described  the  time  in  one  of  his  Conversations.  "  My  prejudices  in 
favor  of  ancient  literature  began  to  wear  away  on  Paradise  Lost,  and 
even  the  great  hexameter  sounded  to  me  tinkling  when  I  had  recited 
aloud,  in  my  solitary  walks  on  the  sea-shore,  the  haughty  appeal  of 
Satan  and  the  repentance  of  Eve."  *  In  such  walks  for  the  most 
part,  and  under  such  influences,  Gebir  was  composed  ;  and  it  was 
probably  no  mere  illusion  of  his  fancy  which  led  him  to  say  repeatedly 
in  after  life  that  he  was  never  happier  than  when  thus  writing  it,  and 
not  exchanging  twelve  sentences  with  men.  Copper-works  had  not, 
as  yet,  quite  filled  the  woods  around  Swansea  among  which  he  lived ; 
and  he  might  take  his  daily  walks,  as  he  has  himself  described  them, 
over  sandy  sea-coast  deserts  covered  with  low  roses  only  and  thou- 
sands of  nameless  flowers  and  plants,  and  with  nothing  save  occa- 
sional prints  of  the  naked  feet  of  the  Welsh  peasantry  to  give  token 
of  the  neighborhood  of  any  human  creatures.  Hardly  human  indeed, 
in  their  savagery  in  those  days,  were  the  lower  orders  of  the  Welsh. 
The  English  visitor  might  have  some  excuse  for  regarding  them  as 
only  something  a  very  little  higher  than  the  animals.  They  were  as 
much  mere  adjuncts  to  his  landscape  as  its  stranded  boats  or  masses 
of  weed. 

This  then  will  be  the  time,  without  stopping  to  speak  of  the  visits 
Landor  meanwhile  made  to  his  father's  house  at  Warwick,  to  offer 
such  detailed  account  of  what  he  thus  achieved  as  may  be  necessary 
to  explain  the  language  applied  to  it ;  and  justify  an  appeal  to  read- 
ers, who  have  probably  never  heard  its  name,  to  redress  at  last  the 
indifference  of  more  than  seventy  years,  and  place  Gebir  in  the  rank 
of  English  poetry  to  which  of  right  it  belongs. 

The  accident  which  led  him  to  the  subject  selected  I  have  often 
heard  him  relate.  He  was  on  friendly  terms  with  some  of  the  family 
of  Lord  Aylmer,  who  were  staying  in  his  neighborhood,  and  one  of 
the  young  ladies  lent  him  a  book,  by  a  now  forgotten  writer  of  ro- 
mances, from  the  Swansea  circulating  library.  Clara  Reeve  was  the 
author ;  but  Landor,  confusing  in  his  recollection  a  bad  romance 
writer  with  a  worse  of  the  same  sex,  thought  it  was  that  sister  of 
Mrs.  Siddons  and  John  Kemble  who  lived  in  the  small  Welsh  town, 
and  wrote  under  the  name  of  Anne  of  Swansea.  Few  of  my  readers 
will  have  heard  her  name,  and  I  may  warn  them  all  against  her 
books,  which  are  mere  nonsensical  imitations  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe ;  but 
Clara  Reeve  had  really  some  merit,  though  not  discoverable  in  the 
particular  book  lent  to  Landor.  He  found  it  to  be  a  history  of  ro- 
mance, having  no  kind  of  interest  for  him  until  he  came  at  its  close 
to  the  description  of  an  Arabian  tale.  This  arrested  his  fancy,  and 
yielded  him  the  germ  of  Gebir.  More  than  sixty  years  later  he  wrote 
to  me  from  Bath  (30th  November,  1857)  that  he  had  just  discovered 
and  sent  to  a  lady  living  near  him,  also  of  that  Aylmer  family,  a  little 

*  Imag.  Conv.  Landor  and  the  Abbs'  De  Lille. 


48  WARWICK,    RUGBY,    OXFORD,    SWANSEA-  ^s-gl' 

poem  called  St.  Clair,  written  all  those  years  ago  for  her  who  thus  lent 
him  the  book. 

One  of  his  critics  afterwards  charged  him  with  having  stolen  his 
story,  and  merely  imitated  Milton  in  telling  it.  On  both  points  light 
will  be  thrown  by  what  I  am  about  to  say.  He  was  now  to  quit  the 
Is,  and  rise  to  the  heights,  of  English  verse ;  and  to  this  extent 
he  had  profited  by  his  recent  study  of  Milton.  But  that  was  the 
whole  of  his  present  debt  to  the  incomparable  master  ;  and  whether 
to  anybody  his  Muse  owed  anything  whatever  for  the  story  in  which 
she  was  to  find  herself  involved,  the  reader  very  shortly  will  be  able 
to  determine. 


BOOK    SECOND. 

1797-1805.     JET.  22-30. 

AUTHORSHIP  OF  GEBIR,  AND  EARLIEST  FRIENDSHIPS. 

I.  Gebir.  —  II.  Some  Opinions  of  Gebir. — III.  Doctor  Parr.  —  IV.  Attack  of 
the  Monthly  Review.  —  V.  Sergeant  Rough.  —  VI.  Corresponding  with  Parr 
and  Adair.  —  VII.  At  Paris  in  1802.  —  VIII.  Poetry  by  the  Author  of  Gebir. 
—  IX.  Walter  Birch ;  and  Succession  to  Family  Estates. 

I.     GEBIR. 

It  is  easier  to  laugh  at  a  thing  than  to  take  the  trouble  to  com- 
prehend it ;  and  when  the  Quarterly  Review  said,  a  good  many  years 
ago,  that  Gebir  was  a  poem  it  did  any  man  credit  to  have  understood, 
there  was  more  in  the  saying  than  its  author  meant.  He  was  not 
himself  entitled  to  the  credit,  though  he  might  have  won  it  with  a 
little  pains. 

The  intention  of  the  poem  is,  by  means  of  the  story  of  Gebir  and 
his  brother  Tamar,  to  rebuke  the  ambition  of  conquest,  however  ex- 
cusable its  origin,  and  to  reward  the  contests  of  peace,  however  at 
first  unsuccessful.  Gebir  is  an  Iberian  -prince,  sovereign  of  Beetic 
Spain,*  whose  conquest  of  Egypt,  undertaken  to  avenge  the  wrongs 
and  assert  the  claims  of  his  ancestors,  is  suspended  through  his  love 
for  its  young  Queen  Charoba,  by  the  treachery  of  whose  nurse  he  is 
nevertheless  slain  amid  the  rejoicings  of  his  marriage  feast.  Tamar 
is  a  shepherd  youth,  the  keeper  of  his  brother's  herds  and  flocks,  by 
whom  nothing  is  so  eagerly  desired  as  to  conquer  to  his  love  one  of 
the  sea-nymphs  whom  at  first  he  vainly  contends  with,  but  who,  made 
subject  to  mortal  control  by  the  superior  power  of  his  brother,  yields 
to  the  passion  already  inspired  in  her,  and  carries  Tamar  to  dwell 
with  her  forever  beyond  the  reach  of  human  ambitions. 

Fanciful  and  wild  in  its  progress  as  the  Arabian  tale  that  suggested 
it,  there  is  yet  thus  much  purpose  in  the  outline  of  Gebir ;  but  its 
merit  lies  apart  from  intention  or  construction,  and  will  be  found  in 
the  passion  and  intellect  pervading  it  everywhere,  in  its  richness  of 
detail  and  descriptive  power.  Style  and  treatment  constitute  the 
charm  of  it.  The  vividness  with  which  everything  in  it  is  presented 
to  sight  as  well  as  thought,  the  wealth  of  its  imagery,  its  marvels 
of  language,  —  these   are  characteristics  pre-eminent  in  Gebir.     In 

*  From  Gebir  we  are  to  suppose  Gibraltar  to  be  derived,  .after  the  fashion  of  the 
Teucro-Latin  names  in  Virgil. 

4 


50  GEBIR  J    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  i"°7°*s": 


the  treatment,  never  abruptly  contrasted,  natural  and  supernatural 
agencies  are  employed  with  excellent  art ;  and  everywhere  as  real  to 
the  eye  as  to  the  mind  are  its  painted  pictures,  its  sculptured  forms, 
and  the  profusion  of  its  varied  but  always  thoughtful  emotion. 

These  qualities  I  shall  exhibit  in  describing  the  seven  books,  con- 
taining nearly  two  thousand  lines,  that  tell  the  story  ;  and  my  extracts 
will  also  show  the  sweetness  of  the  verse,  which,  though  with  occa- 
sional want  of  variety  in  modulation,  is  to  a  remarkable  degree  both 
energetic  and  harmonious.  I  shall  quote  from  it  at  unusual  length ; 
not  only  because  it  is  unknown  to  the  present  reading  generation,  but 
because  no  description  without  such  assistance  could  account  for  the 
effect  produced  by  it  upon  a  few  exti-aordinary  men.  The  mark  it 
made  in  Landor's  life  will  constantly  recur ;  and  of  the  manner  in 
which  his  genius  affected  his  contemporaries,  not  by  influencing  the 
many,  but  by  exercising  mastery  over  the  few  who  ultimately  ride 
the  many,  no  completer  illustration  could  be  given. 

The  love  inspired  in  the  brothers  respectively  finds  expression  in  the 
First  Book,  which  opens  with  the  invasion  of  Egypt  by  Gebir  in  re- 
demption of  an  oath  sworn  to  his  father,  to  satisfy  his  dead  ancestors 
and  revenge  primeval  wrongs.  In  the  fourth  line  is  one  of  those 
touches  which  are  frequent  in  the  poem,  and  proof  of  high  imagina- 
tion ;  where  a  single  epithet  conveys  to  the  mind  the  full  impression 
which  the  sense  would  receive  from  detailed  presentment  of  the  ob- 
jects sought  to  be  depicted.  The  "  dark  helm  "  covers  the  crowd  of 
invading  warrioi-s. 


-■o 


"  He  blew  his  battle  horn,  at  which  uprose 
Whole  nations;  here,  ten  thousand  of  most  might 
He  called  aloud;  and  soon  Charoba  saw 
His  dark  helm  hover  o'er  the  land  of  Nile." 

The  young  queen  in  her  terror  seeks  Dalica  her  nurse,  who  reassures 
her,  tells  her  the  invader  shall  be  destroyed,  and  instructs  her,  in- 
stead of  flying  from  him,  to  go  to  his  tents  and  use  persuasion  to 
induce  him,  in  honor  of  his  ancestors,  to  rebuild  the  city  which  had 
once  been  theirs. 

"  Rut  Gebir,  when  he  heard  of  her  approach, 
Laid  by  his  orbed  shield:  his  vizor-helm, 
His  buckler,  and  his  corslet  In-  laid  by, 
And  bade  that  none  attend  him;  at  his  side 
Two  faithful  dogs  that  urge  the  silent  course, 
Shaggy,  deep-chested,  croucht;  the  crocodile, 
Crying,  oft  made  them  raise  their  flaccid  ears 
And  push  their  heads  within  their  master's  hand.* 
There  was  a  brightening  paleness  in  his  face, 
Such  as  Diana  rising  "'(a-  the  rocks 
Showered  on  the  lonely  Latmian;  on  his  brow 
Sorrow  there  was.  yet  naught  was  there  severe. 
Hut  when  the  royal  damsel  first  he  saw, 

*  Among  Landor's  papers  I  found  a  list,  prepared  by  himself,  of  resemblances  to 
passages  or  his  own  writing  to  be  found  in  Scott's  Tales  of  the.  Crusaders.  There  were 
several  from  Gebir,  and  among  them  that  of  Cosur  de  [.ion's  hound  "  thrusting  his  long 
rough  countenance  into  the  hand  of  his  master."  The  poem  hud  made  a  great  im- 
pression on  Scott,  who  read  it  at  Southey's  suggestion. 


JET.  22-30.]  GEBIR.  51 

Faint,  hanging  on  her  handmaid,  and  her  knees 
Tottering,  as  trom  the  motion  of  the  car, 
His  eyes  lookt  earnest  on  her,  and  those  eyes 
Showed  if  they  had  not  that  they  might  have  loved, 
For  there  was  pity  in  them  at  that  hour." 

After  the  interview  the  prince  seeks  Tamar,  intending  to  speak  of 
the  passion  that  has  taken  possession  of  him,  when  he  is  surprised 
by  a  confidence  which  anticipates  his  own,  and  has  to  listen  first  to 
Tamar's  confession.  The  shepherd  youth's  description  of  the  sea- 
nymph  —  a  powerful,  impulsive,  yet  submissive  creature  of  the  ele- 
ments, with  large  supernatural  strength  taming  itself  to  little  natural 
human  ways  —  is  perfect  in  every  detail  to  the  old  Greek  fancy. 
In  the  picture  of  her  dress  are  two  lines, 

"  Her  mantle  showed  the  yellow  samphire-pod, 
Her  girdle  the  dove-colored  wave  serene," 

which  I  quote  that  I  may  connect  with  them  a  characteristic  trait  of 

the  writer,  who  told  me  once  that  he  had  never  hesitated  more  about 

a  verse  than  in  determining  whether  the  mantle  or  the  girdle  was  to 

be  dove-colored  ;  his   doubts    having  arisen,  after  he  had  written  the 

lines,  on  recollecting  from  the  great  Lucretius  that  the  Eoman  ladies 

wore   a  vest  of  the  same   description,  —  teriturque  thalassina  vestis. 

Assidue,  &c. 

A  prize  to  be  contended  for  had  been  proposed  between  Tamar  and 

the  nymph.     She  has  nothing  of  equal  worth  to  one  of  his  sheep  to 

offer  ;  but  —  she  tells  him,  in  a  passage  which  has  become  one  of  the 

glories  of  our  language,*  and  which  it  is  impossible  even  to  transcribe 

*  I  quote  from  one  of  Landor's  letters  to  me.  "  It  was  my  practice,  as  you  know 
from  Gebir,  to  try  my  hand  at  both  Latin  and  English  where  I  had  been  contented  with 
any  passage  in  one.  "  In  Gebir  there  are  a  few  which  were  written  first  in  Latin.  The 
Shell  was  one  of  these.  Poor  Shell !  that  Wordsworth  so  pounded  and  flattened  in  his 
marsh  it  no  longer  had  the  hoarseness  of  a  sea,  but  of  a  hospital."  Not  without  reason 
he  had  been  irritated  by  a  critic  who  rebuked  Lord  Bvron  for  naming  Gebir  as  the 
source  from  which  he  had  drawn  a  passage  in  his  Island;  this  unlucky  critic,  after  in- 
forming the  noble  poet  that  his  original  was  not  in  Landor,  but  in  an  "  exquisite  pas- 
sage "  by  Mr.  Wordsworth,  having  proceeded  to  quote  the  lines  from  the  Excursion  in 
which,  like  Byron,  Wordsworth  had  copied  Landor,  but,  unlike  Byron,  without  con- 
fessing it. 

"  I  have  seen 

A  cm  ;ous  child,,  who  dwelt  upon  a  tract 

Of  inland  ground,  applying  to  his  ear 

The  convolutions  of  a  smooth-lipped  shell 

To  which,  in  silence  hushed,  his  very  soul 

Listened  intenselv,  and  his  countenance  soon 

Brightened  with  joy;  for  murmuring  from  within 

Were  heard  sonorous  cadences !  whereby, 

To  his  belief,  the  monitor  expressed 

Mysterious  union  with  its  native  sea." 

I  will  add  the  passage  of  the  nobler  original  as  it  appears  in  the  Latin  Gebirus.   It  may, 
indeed,  be  doubted  whether  the  English  or  the  Latin  is  most  perfect. 

"  At  mihi  cserulese  sinuosa  foramina  conchas 
Obvolvunt,  lucemque  intus  de  sole  biberunt, 
Nam  crevere  locis  ubi  porticus  ipsa  palati 
Et  qua  purpurea  medius  stat  currus  in  unda, 
Tu  quate,  somnus  abit:  tu  laevia  tange  labella 
Auribus  atteutis,  veteres  reminiscitur  aades, 
Oceanusque  suus  quo  munnure  murmurat  ilia." 


52  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  [^ 

without  something  of  the  pleasure  that  must  have  attended  its  con- 
ception :  — 

"  But  I  have  sinuous  shells  of  pearly  hue 
Within,  and  they  that  lustre  nave  imbibed 
In  the  sun's  palace-porch,  where  when  unyoked 
His  chariot-wheel  stands  midway  in  the  wave: 
Shake  one,  and  it  awakens;  then  apply 
Its  polisht  lips  to  your  attentive  ear, 
And  it  remembers  its  august  abodes, 
And  murmurs  as  the  ocean  murmurs  there." 

The  conflict  or  -wrestling-match  that  follows  is  intensely  Greek  in  the 
manner  of  the  narration,  and  simple  even  to  rudeness  ;  hut  they  who 
would  turn  it  into  ridicule  will  find  more  abounding  opportunity  for 
the  same  kind  of  mirth  in  the  idyls  of  Theocritus  and  the  descrip- 
tions of  the  Odyssey.  In  the  contest  the  nymph  is  victor,  and  leaves 
Tamar ;  but 

"  More  of  pleasure  than  disdain 
Was  in  her  dimpled  chin  and  liberal  lip, 
And  eyes  that  fanguisht,  lengthening,  just  like  love.  .  .  . 
Restless  then  ran  I  to  the  highest  ground 
To  watch  her ;  she  was  gone ;  gone  down  the  tide ; 
And  the  long  moonbeam  on  the  hard  wet  sand 
Lay  like  a  jasper  column  half  upreared." 

As  the  brothers  take  their  way  to  the  camp,  Gebir  confesses  in 
turn  his  love  for  Charoba,  and  his  resolve  for  her  to  forego  his  native 
country  and  resuscitate  in  Egypt,  the  city  of  his  ancestors.  The 
Second  Book  shows  this  labor  in  progress. 

"  The  Gadire  men  the  royal  charge  obey. 
Now  fragments  weighed  up  from  the  uneven  streets 
Leave  the  ground  black  beneath;  again  the  sun 
Shines  into  what  were  porches,  and  on  steps 
Once  warm  with  frequentation ;  clients,  friends, 
All  morning;  satchelled  idlers  all  midday; 
Lying  half  up  and  languid  though  at  games." 

Slowly  the  buried  city  emerges ;  its  masses  of  stone  and  marble 
green  with  the  growth  of  centuries ;  and  its  pavements  painted  with 
flowers  and  figures,  which,  as  water  is  flung  on  them,  start  fresh  to 
view. 

"  Here  arches  are  discovered;  there  huge  beams 
Resist  tin-  hatchet,  but  in  fresher  air 
Soon  drop  away:  there  spreads  a  marble  squared 
And  smoothened;  some  high  pillar  for  its  base 
Chose  it,  which  now  lies  ruined  in  the  dust. 
Clearing  the  soil  at  bottom,  they  espy 
A  crevice;  and.  intent  mi  treasure,  strive 
Strenuous,  and  groan,  to  move  it:  one  exclaims: 
1  I  hear  the  rusty  metal  grate;   it  moves  !  ' 
Now.  overturning  it,  backward  they  start, 
And  Btop  again,  and  see  a  serpent  pant, 
See  hi-  throat  thicken,  and  the  crisped  scales 
Rise  ruffled,  while  upon  the  middle  fold 
He  keep-  hi*,  wary  head  and  blinking  eye, 
Curling  more  close  and  crouching  ere  he  strike. 
Go,  mighty  men,  invade  far  cities,  go, 
And  be  such  treasure  portions  to  your  heirs." 


MT.  22-30.]  GEBIR.  53 

Portents  of  a  more  terrible  kind  succeed.  Six  days'  labor  had 
seemed  to  bring  the  end  within  reach,  when,  on  the  seventh  day, 
what  was  done  is  found  undone,  and  everything  restored  to  what  it 
had  been.  Gebir  is  pierced  with  sorrow,  for  he  sees  that  other  than 
mortal  hands  are  raised  against  him ;  and,  calling  together  his  follow- 
ers, he  bids  them  supplicate  the  Gods.  Southey  thought  no  English 
poetry  presented  anything  so  Homeric  as  the  passage  that  succeeds. 
It  would  be  difficult  certainly  to  imagine  a  finer  image  than  its  clos- 
ing personification  of  prayers  :  — 

"  Swifter  than  light  are  they,  and  every  face, 
Though  different,  glows  with  beauty";  at  the  throne 
Of  Mercy,  when  clouds  shut  it  from  mankind, 
They  fall  bare-bosomed,  and  indignant  Jove 
Drops  at  the  soothing  sweetness  of  their  voice 
The  thunder  from  his  hand." 

But  here  prayers  are  vain ;  and  Gebir,  believing  it  now  to  be  some 
secret  power  that  opposes  him  other  than  that  of  the  Gods,  hopes 
that,  by  subduing  to  his  will  the  sea-nymph  beloved  by  Tamar,  he 
may  obtain  the  secret  from  her.  He  seeks  her,  dressed  as  his 
brother,  passing  through   the  woodland  to  the   sea  :  — 

"And  as  he  passes  on,  the  little  hinds    - 
That  shake  for  bristly  herds  the  foodful  bough, 
Wonder,  stand  still,  gaze,  and  trip  satisfied: 
Pleased  more  if  chestnut,  out  of  prickly  husk 
Shot  from  the  sandal,  roll  along  the  glade." 

Upon  the  sea-nymph,  meanwhile,  waiting  for  Tamar,  desire  has 
come ;  and  the  wings  of  love,  which  she  held  at  her  will  in  the  for- 
mer conflict,  she  has  languidly  let  loose  :  the  prince  is  victor ;  and 
as,  after  discovery  that  Gebir  has  been  her  antagonist,  she  cries  for 
Tamar,  now  eager  to  declare  and  enjoy  her  passion  as  a  human  nymph 
would  be  timidly  to  conceal  it,  he  promises  again  and  again  to  restore 
to  her  his  brother,  if  she  will  but  say  whose  work  the  ruin  is  that 
comes  each  night  upon  the  city,  and  from  whence  are  the  horrid 
yells  of  rapture  heard  amid  its  falling  walls.      Then  she :  — 

"  Neither  the  Gods  afflict  you,  nor  the  Nymphs. 
Return  me  him  who  won  my  heart,  return 
Him  whom  my  bosom  pants  for,  as  the  steeds 
In  the  sun's  chariot  for  the  western  wave.  .  .  . 
Promise  me  this:  indeed  I  think  thou  hast, 
But 't  is  so  pleasing,  promise  it  once  more." 

He  complies ;  and  she  tells  him  then  of  the  demons  and  incanta- 
tions that  prevail  in  Egypt,  and  by  what  sacrifices  he  is  to  appease 
them.  The  lines  descriptive  of  the  latter  have  a  weird  and  startling 
picturesqueness.  Upon  the  site  of  the  ancient  city  he  performs  all 
that  is  required ;  and  as  her  last  bidding  is  done,  the  earth  gapes 
before  him,  he  descends,  passes  through  the  darkness,  and  sees 
around  him  the  souls  of  those  among  his  ancestors  who  had  rejoiced 
in  war  and  conquest,  expiating  by  pains  of  more  or  less  intensity 


54  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  '*"■ 

their  varying  lusts  of  power.  This  purgatory  of  conquerors  occu- 
pies the  Third  Book,  which  Landor  opens  with  an  aspiration  of  hom- 
age to  the  greatest  of  all  -poets,  who  like  himself  had  been  bi\,J  in 
the  country  of  the  Avon  :  — 

"  0  for  the  spirit  of  that  matchless  man 
Whom  Xatuiv  led  throughout  her  whole  domain, 
While  he,  embodied,  breathed  ethereal  air! 
Though  panting  in  the  play-hour  of  my  youth 
I  drank  of  Avon  too,  a  dangerous  draught, 
That  roused  within  the  feverish  thirst  of  song, 
Yet  never  may  1  trespass  o'er  the  stream 
Of  jealous  Acheron,  nor  alive  descend 
The  silent  and  unsearchable  abodes 
Of  Erebus  and  Night,  nor  unchastised 
Lead  up  long-abseut  heroes  into  day." 

The  supernatural  region  is  at  first  trod  by  Gebir  fearfully ;  but 
when  the  brave  doubt  no  longer  they  fear  no  longer,  his  name  twice 
called  reassures  him,  and  striding  on  undaunted  he  is  about  to  speak, 
when  one  of  the  shades,  Aroar,  who  had  fought  under  his  forefathers, 
addresses  him  :  — 

"  Thou  knowest  not  that  here  thy  fathers  lie, 
The  race  of  Sidad;  theirs  was  loud  acclaim 
'When  living,  but  their  pleasure  was  in  war; 
Triumphs  and  hatred  followed:  I  myself 
Bore,  men  imagined,  no  inglorious  part; 
The  Gods  thought  otherwise,*  by  whose  decree 
Deprived  of  life,  and  more,  of  death  deprived, 
I  -till  hear  shrieking  through  the  moonless  night 
Their  discontented  and  deserted  shades." 

He  describes  the  various  degrees  of  torment  through  which  their 
souls  can  alone  hope  to  rise  again  purified. 

"Yet  rather  all  these  torments  most  endure 
Than  solitary  pain,  and  sad  remorse. 
And  towering  thoughts  on  their  own  breast  o'erturned 
And  piercing  to  the  heart  —  " 

for  then  they  have  bitter  knowledge  of  the  sufferings  they  had  in- 
flicted on  earth,  and  of  the  worthlessness  of  the  trophies,  tributes, 
and  colonies  obtained  in  exchange  for  them,  as  they  lie  listening  to 
the  river  that  rolls  past  their  place  of  expiation. 

*  To  the  words  "the  Gods  thought  otherwise,"  a  note  was  appended  in  the  first  edi- 
tion of  ffcWr(1798),  which  thougb  afterwards  withdrawn  is  sufficiently  characteristic 
to  justify  it-  present  reproduction.  It  anticipate-  by  seventy  years  a  sentiment  of  which 
the  public  avowal  the  other  day,  in  a  controversy  on  the  limits  of  religious  thought, 
excited  much  warmth  of  admiration  and  animadversion.  "Let  not  this  be  con- 
sidered,"  writes  Landor,  "  as  an  imitation  of  the  verse  Diia  dSter  visum.  There  is  no 
great  merit  in  quoting  old  quotations,  however  apposite,  and  I  am  of  opinion  that  this 

singular  passage  has  generally  t n  misunderstood.     Among  all  the  fooleries  which 

men  have  combined  in  their  ideas  of  a  deity,  can  there  be  a  greater  than  that  Gods  and 
mortals  have  a  separate  sense  of  right  and  wrong?  Were  it  really  the  case,  religious 
men  would  become  daily  less  zealous,  and  the  life  of  the  wicked  would  be  but  a  game 
of  chance.  For  the  virtues  of  the  one  party  might  not  stand  for  virtues;  nor  the 
vices  of  the  other  be  marked  for  vices.  There  never  was  a  doctrine  more  calcu- 
lated to  make  the  generality  of  men  despond,  and  to  keep  them  dependent  on  the 

Soyfiarovpyoi." 


MT.  22-30.]  GEBIR.  55 

"Not  rapid,  that  would  rouse  the  wretched  souls; 
Not  calmly,  that  might  lull  them  to  repose; 
But  with  dull  weary  lapses  it  upheaved 
Billows  of  bale,  heard  low,  yet  heard  afar." 

Beyond  this  river  still  move  Gebir  and  his  guide,  till  they  come 
■where  perpetual  twilight  broods,  "  lulled  by  no  nightingale,  nor 
"wakened  by  the  shrill  lark  dewy-winged " ;  having  nevertheless 
glimpses   beyond    of  those    brighter   airs 

"  That  scatter  freshness  through  the  groves 
And  meadows  of  the  fortunate,  and  fill 
With  liquid  light  the  marble  bowl  of  Earth." 

And  here  are  revealed  by  Aroar  the  lawrs  that  govern  these  regions, 
and  the  separation  effected  in  them  between  the  wicked  and  the 
good,  or  in  other  words  the  ambitious  and  the  peaceful,  by  means  of 
a  flaming  arch  which  once  in  every  hundred  years  starts  back,  and, 
discovering  to  each  state  its  opposite,  shows  that  the  eternal  fires 
which  seem  intended  only  to  punish  the  vicious,  are  giving  also  ver- 
dure and  pleasantness  to  the  groves  of  the  blest.  Calm  pleasures 
neighbor  the  majestic  pains,  as  in  Wordsworth's  later  but  as  noble 
fancy. 

Figures  and  faces  have  meanwhile  crowded  past ;  the  Stuarts, 
father  and  son,  we  may  discover  among  them,  and  even  William  the 
deliverer ;  but  there  is  one  whom  Gebir  challenges  :  and  with  what 
strong  resentment  the  young  poet  viewed  the  obstinate  war  that 
George  the  Third  had  waged  with  the  revolted  colonies  of  America 
may  be  read  in  this  passage.  It  needs  not  to  say  to  whom  the  "  eye- 
brows white  and  slanting  brow  "  belonged  ;  but  I  may  point  out,  what 
was  better  understood  at  the  date  of  the  poem  than  it  has  been  since, 
that  the  two  lines  immediately  following  were  intended  to  turn  aside 
the  treasonable  reference  by  raising  a  confusion  in  the  reader's  mind 
between  George  the  Third  and  Louis  Seize,  who  so  recently  had 
perished  by  the  guillotine  :  — 

"  '  What  wretch  that  nearest  us  ?  what  wretch 
Is  that  with  eyebrows  white  and  slanting  brow? 
Listen !  him  yonder,  who,  bound  down  supine, 
Shrieks  yelling  from  that  sword  there  engine-hung; 
He  too  among  my  ancestors  ?  '     '0  King ! 
Iberia  bore  him,  but  the  breed  accurst 
Inclement  winds  blew  lightning  from  northeast.' 
'  He  was  a  warrior  then,  nor  feared  the  Gods  ?  ' 
1  Gebir!  he  feared  the  Demons,  not  the  Gods, 
Though  them  indeed  his  daily  face  adored, 
And  was  no  warrior;  yet  the  thousand  lives 
Squandered  as  stones  to  exercise  a  sling, 
And  the  tame  cruelty  and  cold  caprice  — 
O  madness  of  mankind !  addrest,  adored ! 
0  Gebir!  what  are  men?  or  where  are  Gods?  '  " 

But  the  time  has  come  to  reascend  to  earth  ;  and  with  groans  and 
tears  Gebir  has  called  bitterly  to  his  tortured  ancestors  as  he  turns 
to    retrace    his  way,   when    suddenly   flames    environ   him,   and   he 


56  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  «w°1sm 


1797  - 1805. 

"  stands  breathless  in  a  ghost's  embrace."  It  is  his  father ;  who, 
for  binding  him  to  the  vow  that  had  made  him  invader  and  exile,  was 
now  expiating  that  guilt. 

"  '  Rackt  on  the  fiery  centre  of  the  sxw, 

Twelve  years  I  saw  the  ruined  world  roll  round. 

Shudder  not;  I  have  borne  it;  I  deserved 

My  wretched  fate;  be  better  thine;  farewell.'" 

Saddened  with  the  misery  he  has  witnessed,  remorseful  for  the  past 
and  doubtful  of  the  future,  but  with  present  power  over  the  Egyp- 
tians increased  by  the  experience  he  has  undergone,  Gebir  follows 
upward  his  bewildered  way  till  again  he  finds  himself  within  the 
tents  of  his  people.  They  have  resumed  their  labors  successfully ; 
but  in  the  court  of  the  young  queen  there  is  jealousy  and  discontent, 
and  in  her  own  breast,  as  she  is  told  of  each  new  development  of  the 
invader's  power,  fear  contends  with  love. 

"  Charoba,  though  indeed  she  never  drank 

The  liquid  pearl,  or  twined  the  nodding  crown,* 
Or,  when  she  wanted  cool  and  calm  repose, 
Dreamt  of  the  crawling  asp  and  grated  tomb, 
Was  wretched  up  to  royalty !  " 

This  is  the  subject  of  the  Fourth  Book.  Her  wretchedness  is  im- 
bittered  by  the  cry  raised  from  the  court  against  the  followers  of 
Gebir,  which  the  wiser  few,  who  dare  to  suggest  that  invaders  may  be 
bringers  even  of  good  rather  than  evil,  are  at  first  powerless  to  resist. 
The  rejoinder  to  these  wiser  hopes  had  an  application  of  wide  signifi- 
cance seventy  years  ago,  made  to  such  proposals  abundantly  in  later 
time. 

"  '  Build  they  not  fairer  cities  than  our  own, 
Extravagant  enormous  apertures 
For  light,  and  portals  larger,  open  courts 
Where  all  ascending  all  are  unconfined, 
And  wider  streets  in  purer  air  than  ours? 
Temples  quite  plain  with  equal  architraves 
They  build,  nor  bearing  gods  like  ours  imbost. 
0  profanation !  0  our  ancestors ! '  " 

Foremost  among  the  discontented  is  the  queen's  nurse  Dalica,  to 
whom  she  cannot  bring  herself  frankly  to  confess  her  love,  even  while 
she  pleads  witli  herself  for  kindlier  consideration  to  him.  But  apart 
from  the  intriguers  in  the  court,  the  mass  of  the  people  outside  have 
raised  a  clamorous  shout  for  peace,  making  common  cause  with 
Gebir  s  followers  ;  and  they  who  would  have  resisted  the  invader  are 
overborne.  On  all  sides  the  demand  goes  up  for  an  embassy  to  the 
tents  proposing  terms  of  friendship,  and  cries  of  eager  joy  are  heard 
uniting  with  the  name  of  Gebir  that  of  their  young  queen. 

"  Then  went  the  victims  forward  crowned  with  flowers. 
Crowned  were  tame  Crocodiles,  and  boys  white-robed 
Guided  their  creaking  crests  across  the  stream. 

*  An  allusion  to  Cleopatra's  shaking  poison   into  Antony's  cup  from  the  crown  <  f 
flowers  in  her  hair,  to  cure  him  of  his  useless  precautions  against  the  fear  of  poisoa. 


^T.  22-30.] 


GEBIR.  5  7 


In  gilded  barges  went  the  female  train,  .  .  . 
Sweet  airs  of  music  ruled  the  rowing  palms, 
Now  rose  they  glistening  and  aslant  reclined, 
Now  they  descended  and  with  one  consent 
Plunging,  seemed  swift  each  other  to  pursue, 
And  now  to  tremble  wearied  o  'er  the  wave." 

A  picture  follows  of  the  grave  invading  warriors,  in  welcome  of 
whom  the  riotous  festivities  had  broken  forth. 

"  Through  all  the  plains  below  the  Gadite  men 
Were  resting  from  their  labor:  some  surveyed 
The  spacious  site  ere  yet  obstructed;  walls 
Already,  soon  will  roofs  have  interposed; 
Some  ate  their  frugal  viands  on  the  steps 
Contented;  some,  remembering  home,  prefer 
The  cot's  bare  rafters  o'er  the  gilded  dome, 
And  sing  (for  often  sighs  too  end  in  song), 
1  In  smiling  meads  how  sweet  the  brook's  repose 
To  the  rough  ocean  and  red  restless  sands ! ' 
But  others  trip  along  with  hasty  step 
Whistling,  and  fix  too  soon  on  their  abodes; 
Haply  and  one  among  them  with  his  spear 
Measures  the  lintel,  if  so  great  its  height 
As  will  receive  him  with  his  helm  unlowered." 

The  embassy  from  Charoba  to  Gebir,  with  its  message  and  gifts  of 
peace,  next  comes  upon  the  scene. 

"  Meantime,  with  pomp  august  and  solemn,  borne 
On  four  white  camels  tinkling  plates  of  gold, 
Heralds  before  and  Ethiop  slaves  behind  .  .  . 
The  four  ambassadors  of  peace  proceed. 
Rich  carpets  bear  they,  corn  and  generous  wine, 
The  Syrian  olive's  cheerful  gift  they  bear, 
With  stubborn  goats  that  eye  the  mountain-top 
Askance,  and  riot  with  reluctant  horn.  .  .  . 
The  king,  who  sat  before  his  tent,  descried 
The  dust  rise  reddened  from  the  setting  sun." 

But  while  friendliest  words,  and  a  bidding  to  the  banquet  that  is  to 
proclaim  to  the  reconciled  nations  the  union  of  their  two  monarchs, 
are  laid  at  Gebir's  feet,  the  nurse  Dalica,  who  had  seemed  to  favor 
most  the  projected  festivity,  has  already  begun  her  treacherous  enter- 
prise. This  is  the  subject  of  the  Fifth  Book.  It  is  not  wholly  the 
desire  to  retain  power  over  her  mistress  that  animates  her.  She 
really  loves  Charoba,  and  cannot  understand  the  change  that  the 
presence  of  Gebir  has  wrought  in  her.  The  lines  following,  the 
reader  may  be  pleased  to  know,  were  specially  singled  out  for  admira- 
tion by  Shelley,  Humphry  Davy,  Scott,  Charles  Lamb,  and  many  re- 
markable men. 

"  '  Past  are  three  summers  since  she  first  beheld 
The  ocean;  all  around  the  child  await 
Some  exclamation  of  amazement  here: 
She  coldly  said,  her  long-lasht  eyes  abased, 
Is  this  the  mighty  ocean  ?   is  this  all  f 
That  wondrous  soul  Charoba  once  possest, 
Capacious  then  as  earth  or  heaven  could  hold, 
Soul  discontented  with  capacity, 
Is  gone  (I  fear)  forever.     Need  I  say 
She  was  enchanted  by  the  wicked  spells 


58  gebir;  axd  earliest  friendships.  [,^ 

Of  Gebir,  whom  with  lust  of  power  inflamed 
The  western  winds  have  landed  on  our  coast? 
I  since  have  watcht  her  in  her  lone  retreat, 
Have  heard  her  sigh  and  soften  out  the  name  .  .  ." 

Gebir,  too,  has  been  watched  by  Dalica ;  spies  set  on  by  her  have 
followed  him,  and  have  reported  his  solitary  wanderings  and  self- 
comniuningsj,  even  his  strange  loud  laughter  and  his  ghastly  smile  : 
until  finally  his  death  is  resolved  on.  And  for  this  dread  purpose 
she  makes  her  way  to  the  lonely  and  deserted  ruins  of  the  city  of 
Masar,  in  which  her  sister  Merthyr,  a  sorceress  and  enchantress, 
practises  her  foul  spells.  This  was  another  of  the  passages  which 
Shelley  was  never  tired  of  reciting ;  and  certainly  in  the  modulation 
of  the  verse,  the  beauty  of  the  flow  and  pause  in  the  rhythm,  there 
is  what  might  have  satisfied  the  ear  of  Milton  himself. 

"  Once* a  fair  city,  courted  then  by  kings, 
^  Mistress  of  nations,  thronged  by  palaces, 

pjk.  Raising  her  head  o'er  destiny,  her  face 

™  Glowing  with  pleasure  and  with  palms  refresht,     . 

Now  pointed  at  by  Wisdom  or  by  Wealth, 

Bereft  of  beauty,  bare  of  ornament, 

Stood,  in  the  wilderness  of  woe,  Masar. 

Ere  far  advancing,  all  appeared  a  plain; 

Treacherous  and  fearful  mountains,  far  advanced; 

Her  glory  so  gone  down,  at  human  step 

The  fierce  hyena  frighted  from  the  walls 

Bristled  his  rising  back,  his  teeth  unsheathed, 

Drew  the  long  growl  and  with  slow  foot  retired." 

A  recognition  takes  place  between  the  sisters,  and  the  witch  be- 
lieves that  Dalica,  tired  of  the  lamps  and  jewels  of  a  court,  has  come 
to  close  her  life  in  vigils  of  the  moon  ;  until  she  confesses  that  the 
purpose  of  her  visit  is  to  obtain  a  poisoned  robe  which  she  may  fling 
over  Gebir  at  the  coming  festival,  offering  homage  and  giving  death. 
Merthvr  eagerly  consents ;  and  even  Dalica  is  appalled  as  she 
watches  her  grim  enjoyment  through  each  successive  stage  of  horrible 
preparation,  gathering  the  herbs,  mutilating  venomous  creatures  for 
their  poison,  and  weaving  on  her  spindle  the  dread  dark  purple 
woof. 

"  Her  thus  entranced  the  sister's  voice  recalled: 
'  Behold  it  here!  dyed  once  again,  't  is  done.' 
Then  Merthvr  seized  with  bare  bold-sinewed  arm 
The  gray  cerastes,  writhing  from  her  grasp* 
And  twisted  oil' his  horn,  nor  feared  to  squeeze 
The  viscous  poison  from  his  glowing  gums  .  ■  • 
Together  those  her  scient  hand  combined  .  .  ■ 
Which  done,  with  wc.rds  most  potent,  thrice  she  dipt 
The  reeking  garb;  thrice  waved  it  through  the  air. 
She  ceast;   and  suddenly  the  creeping  wool 
Shrank  up  with  crisped  dryness  in  her  hands: 
'  Take  tins,'  she  cried,  '  and  <  iehir  is  no  more.'  " 

The  Sixth  and  Seventh  Books  remain,  of  which  the  purpose  is  to 
exhibit,  in  vivid  contrast,  the  happy  issue  of  the  love  of  Tamar  and 

*  I  poi«e«s  a  copv  of  Gebir,  in  which  at  these  picturesque  lines  Landor  mentions  that 
in  this  and  other  matters  lie  had  drawn  information  from  the  pages  (not  then  appre- 
ciated as  they  ought  to  have  been)  of  the  great  traveller  Bruce. 


JET.  22-30.] 


GEBIR.  59 


the   disastrous   close   of  that   of  Gebir.      To    Gebir   warnings   are 

abroad,  — 

"  With  horrid  chorus,  Pain,  Diseases,  Death, 
Stamp  on  the  slippery  pavement  of  the  proud, 
And  ring  their  sounding  emptiness  through  earth," 

—  even  while  the  sea-nymph  offers  to  his  brother  "  the  ocean,  her, 
himself,  and  peace."  On  the  morning  that  is  to  unite  them,  the  very 
waves  over  which  she  is  to  lead  him  to  her  home  prefigure  the  com- 
ing happiness. 

"  The  waves  beneath  in  purpling  rows,  like  doves 
Glancing  with  wanton  coyness  tow'rd  their  queen, 
Heaved  softly;  thus  the  damsel's  bosom  heaves 
When  from  her  sleeping  lover's  downy  cheek, 
To  which  so  warily  her  own  she  brings 
Each  moment  nearer,  she  perceives  the  warmth 
Of  coming  kisses  fanned  by  playful  Dreams." 

His  countrymen  are  watching  from  the  beach  (this  is  very  Greek)  :  — 

"  But  nothing  see  they,  save  a  purple  mist 
Roll  from  the  distant  mountain  down  the  shore: 
It  rolls,  it  sails,  it  settles,  it  dissolves : 
Then  shines  the  Nymph  to  human  eye  revealed, 
And  leads  her  Tamar  timorous  o'er  the  waves. 
Immortals  crowding  round  congratulate 
The  shepherd  ..." 

But  even  in  these  hours  of  supreme  joy  the  evil  brooding  over  his 
-brother  shakes  the  heart  of  the  shepherd  prince  ;  and,  "  leaning  o'er 
the  boy  beloved,"  the  morning  after  their  espousals,  "  in  Ocean's 
grot,  where  Ocean  was  unheard,"  the  sea-nymph  has  to  kiss  his  fears 
away.  His  grief  dispersed,  pleasure  and  strength  return ;  and,  as 
she  touches  his  eyes,  the  wonders  of  the  watery  realm  are  successively 
revealed  to  them  :  — 

"  First  arose 

To  his  astonisht  and  delighted  view 

The  sacred  isle  that  shrines  the  queen  of  love. 

It  stood  so  near  him,  so  acute  each  sense, 

That  not  the  symphony  of  lutes  alone 

Or  coo  serene  or  billing  strife  of  doves, 

But  murmurs,  whispers,  nay  the  very  sighs 

Which  he  himself  had  uttered  once,  he  heard. 

Next,  but  long  after  and  far  off,  appear 

The  cloud-like  cliffs  and  thousand  towers  of  Crete, 

And  farther  to  the  right  the  Cyclades  .  .  . 

He  saw  the  land  of  Pelops,  host  of  Gods, 

Saw  the  steep  ridge  where  Corinth  after  sto6d 

Beckoning  the  Ionians  with  the  smiling  Arts 

Into  her  sunbright  bay.  .  .  . 

And  now  the  chariot  of  the  Sun  descends, 

The  waves  rush  hurried  from  his  foaming  steeds, 

Smoke  issues  from  their  nostrils  at  the  gate, 

Which,  when  they  enter,  with  huge  golden  bar 

Atlas  and  Calpe  close  across  the  sea." 

The  Seventh  and  last  Book  tells  its  story  in  a  series  of  pictures. 
The  first  shows  the  warriors  at  their  games,  while 

"  Others  push  forth  the  prows  of  their  compeers, 
And  the  wave,  parted  by  the  pouncing  beak, 


CO  GEBIR;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  ireT-'iftol 


I797-1S04 

Swells  up  the  sides  ami  closes  far  astern: 

The  silent  ours  now  dip  their  level  wings, 

Ami  weary  with  strong  stroke  the  whitening  wave. 

Others,  afraid  of  tardiness,  return: 

Now,  entering  the  still  harbor,  every  surge 

Runs  with  a  louder  murmur  up  their  keel, 

And  the  slack  cordage  rattles  round  the  mast." 

Gebir  is  then  presented  to  us  :  — 

"  Sleepless  with  pleasure  and  expiring  fears 
Had  Gebir  risen  ere  the  break  of  dawn, 
And  o'er  the  plains  appointed  for  the  feast 
Hurried  with  ardent  step:  the  swains  admired 
What  so  transversely  could  have  swept  the  dew!  " 

Charoba  next ;  a  masterpiece  of  exquisite  description  : — 

"  Not  thus  Charoba:  she  despaired  the  day: 
The  day  was  present;  true;  yet  she  despaired. 
In  the  too  tender  and  once  tortured  heart 
Doubts  gather  strength  from  habit,  like  disease; 
Fears,  like  the  needle  verging  to  the  pole, 
Tremble  and  tremble  into  certainty.  .  .  . 
Next  to  her  chamber,  closed  by  cedar  doors, 
A  bath  of  purest  marble,  purest  wave, 
On  its  fair  surface  bore  its  pavement  high: 
Arabian  gold  enchased  the  crystal  roof, 
With  fluttering  boys  adorned  and  girls  unrobed; 
These,  when  you  touch  the  quiet  water,  start 
From  their  aerial  sunny  arch,  and  pant 
Entangled  'mid  each  other's  flowery  wreaths, 
And  each  pursuing  is  in  turn  pursued. 
Here  came  at  last,  as  ever  went  at  morn, 
Charoba:  long  she  lingered  at  the  brink, 
Often  she  sighed,  and,  naked  as  she  was, 
Sat  down,  and  leaning  on  the  couch's  edge, 
On  the  soft  inward  pillow  of  her  arm 
Rested  her  burning  cheek:  she  moved  her  eyes; 
She  blusht;  and  blushing  plunged  into  the  wave." 

Gebir  has  made  no  declaration  yet,  but  the  day  when  he  is  to  meet 
the  queen  is  that  which  all  expect  to  be  their  nuptial-day  ;  and  this 
meeting  of  the  monarchs,  amid  the  frantic  exultation  of  the  peoples, 
is  the  scene  next  presented  to  us  :  from  which,  onward  to  the  end,  an 
accumulating  wealth  of  imagery,  and  of  descriptions  outvying  each 
other  in  picturesqueness,  is  poured  out  with  marvellous  and  appar- 
ently unconscious  ease.  As  Hazlitt  so  finely  said  when  Shakespeare's 
scene  was  also  laid  in  Egypt,  there  is  a  richness  like  the  overflowing 
of  the  Nile.     I  can  spare  however  but  small  space  for  it. 

"Now  brazen  chariots  thunder  through  each  street, 
And  neighing  steeds  paw  proudly  from  delay. 
While  o'er  the  palace  breathes  the  dulcimer, 
Lute,  and  aspiring  harp,  and  lisping  reed, — 
Loud  rush  the  trumpets  bursting  through  the  throng 
And  urge  the  high-shouldered  vulgar  .  .  . 
Now  murmurs,  like  the  sea  or  like  the  storm 
Or  like  the  flames  on  forests,  move  and  mount 
From  rank  to  rank,  and  loud  and  louder  roll, 
Till  all  the  people  is  one  vast  applause. 
Yes,  't  is  herself,  Charoba!     Now  the  strife 


MT.  22  -  30.] 


GEBIR.  61 


To  see  again  a  form  so  often  seen.  .  .  . 

She  goes,  the  king  awaits  her  from  the  camp: 

Him  she  descried,  and  trembled  ere  he  reacht 

Her  car;  but  shuddered  paler  at  his  voice. 

So  the  pale  silver  at  the  festive  board 

Grows  paler  filled  afresh  and  dewed  with  wine ; 

So  seems  the  tenderest  herbage  of  the  spring 

To  whiten,  bending  from  a  balmy  gale. 

The  beauteous  queen  alighting  he  received, 

And  sighed  to  loose  her  from  his  arms ;  she  hung 

A  little  longer  on  them  through  her  fears." 

That  is  very  delicate  and  truthful;  and  the  same  gentleness  of 
touch  is  repeated  where,  as  Gebir's  face  changes  under  the  influence 
of  the  poisoned  robe,  Charoba  in  her  tenderness  misinterprets  it,  and 
expects  the  declaration  of  his  love.  The  lofty  thrones  had  been 
erected  for  their  meeting  on  the  shore,  commanding  land  and  sea; 
and  as  queen  and  monarch  take  their  seats, 

"  The  brazen  clarion  hoarsens :  many  leagues 
Above  them,  many  to  the  south,  the  heron 
Rising  with  hurried  croak,  and  throat  outstretcht, 
Ploughs  up  the  silvering  surface  of  her  plain. 
Tottering  with  age's  zeal  and  mischiefs  haste 
Then  was  discovered  Dalica;  she  reacht 
The  throne,  she  leant  against  the  pedestal, 
And  now  ascending  stood  before  the  king. 
Prayers  for  his  health  and  safety  she  preferred, 
And  o'er  his  head  and  o'er  his  feet  she  threw 
Myrrh,  nard,  and  cassia,  from  three  golden  urns ; 
His  robe  of  native  woof  she  next  removed, 
And  round  his  shoulders  drew  the  garb  accursed, 
And  bowed  her  head,  departing.     Soon  the  queen 
Saw  the  blood  mantling  in  his  manly  cheeks. 
And  feared,  and  faltering  sought  her  lost  replies. 
And  blessed  the  silence  that  she  wished  were  broke. 
Alas,  unconscious  maiden !  .  .  . 
Scarcely,  with  pace  uneven,  knees  unnerved, 
Reacht  he  the  waters:  in  his  troubled  ear. 
They  sounded  murmuring  drearily ;  they  rose 
Wild,  in  strange  colors,  to  his  parching  eyes ; 
They  seemed  to  rush  around  him,  seemed  to  lift 
From  the  receding  earth  his  helpless  feet. 
He  fell:  Charoba  shriekt  aloud;  she  ran 
Frantic  with  fears  and  fondness,  mazed  with  woe, 
Nothing  but  Gebir  dying  she  beheld. 
The  turban  that  betrayed  its  golden  charge 
Within,  the  veil  that  down  her  shoulder  hung, 
All  fallen  at  her  feet !  the  farthest  wave 
Creeping  with  silent  progress  up  the  sand 
Glided  through  all,  and  raised  their  hollow  folds." 

She  appeals  to  Dalica  ;  she  acquits  her  of  any  complicity  with  what 
she  thinks  the  demons  of  her  land  have  done  ;  she  invokes  the  pity 
and  protection  of  her  dead  mother ;  she  upbraids  the  Gods  ;  she  pours 
out  unrestrained  the  whole  wild  passion  of  her  love  for  Gebir. 

"  Thus  raved  Charoba :  horror,  grief,  amaze, 
Pervaded  all  the  host;  all  eyes  were  fixt; 
All  stricken  motionless  and  mute :  the  feast 
Was  like  the  feast  of  Cepheus,  when  the  sword 
Of  Phineus,  white  with  wonder,  shook  restrained, 


62  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  Sto-1** 

And  the  hilt  rattled  in  his  marble  hand.* 
She  heard  not.  saw  not,  every  sense  was  gone; 
One  passion  banisht  all:  dominion,  praise, 
The  world  itself,  was  nothing.     Senseless  man! 
What  would  thy  fancy  figure  now  from  worlds?  ' 
There  is  no  world  to  those  that  grieve  and  love." 

The  dying  chief's  last  thought,  meanwhile,  is  not  of  grandeur  or 
of  glory,  or  even  of  the  desire  fur  life,  but  of  his  happiness  in  carrying 
with  him  to  the  unknown  realm,  "  more  precious  than  the  jewels  that 
surround  the  necks  of  kings  entombed,"  the  pity  and  the  tears  of 
Charoba.  The  peoples  are  driven  asunder  once  again;  and  there  falls 
upon  the  separating  hosts  all  the  darkness  of  which  there  was  fore- 
boding even  while  the  morning  broke  in  happiness,  —  that  night 
would  close,  and  love  and  sovranty  and  life  dissolve,  and  Egypt  be 
"  one  desert  drencht  in  blood." 

It  may  now  be  a  matter  of  some  interest  to  the  reader  to  know 
that  every  passage  thus  quoted  appeared  in  the  poem  as  originally 
published  in  1 798,  and  that  not  a  line  in  any  of  them  underwent 
alteration  in  the  three  subsequent  reprints.  The  first,  published 
early  in  the  present  century  at  Oxford,  and  to  which  further  allusion 
will  shortly  be  made,  was  a  careful  reproduction  of  the  original,  with 
some  lines  added  and  none  omitted,  but  with  correction  of  its  multi- 
tude of  misprints,  and  with  explanatory  notes  and  arguments.  This 
earliest  reprint  appeared  under  the  editorship  of  Mr.  Robert  Landor, 
who  from  his  youth  has  had  the  admiration  of  a  thinker  and  poet  for 
this  extraordinary  poem  ;  and  the  third,  or  latest,  which  appeared  in 
the  Collected  Works  of  18-46,  was  as  careful  a  reproduction  of  the  copy 
which  Landor  had  before  included  in  his  volume  of  Poems  published 
in  1831,  where  again  his  additions  were  but  very  few,  though  his 
omissions  were  too  full  of  meaning  not  to  have  mention  here. 

In  the  year  when  Gebir  was  written  the  world  was  ringing  with  the 
victories  of  Bonaparte  ;  and  a  part  of  the  vision  of  his  descendants 
revealed  to  Tamar  on  his  nuptial  voyage,  while  they  passed  the 
islands  of  Sardinia  and  Corsica,  had  prefigured  as  arising  amid  the 
latter 

"  A  mortal  man  above  all  mortal  praise," 

and  had  depicted,  under  color  of  the  triumph  of  the  race  of  Tamar,  a 
victorious  march  of  the  French  Republic  from  the  Garonne  to  the 
Rhine  :  — 

"  How  grand  a  prospect  opens !     Alps  o'er  Alps 

Tower,  to  survey  the  triumphs  that  proceed. 

There,  while  Garumna  dances  in  the  gloom 

Of  larches,  'mid  her  naiads,  or  reclined 

Leans  on  a  broom-clad  bank  to  watch  the  sports 

Of  some  far-distant  chamois  silken-haired, 

The  chaste  Pyrem*,  drying  up  her  tears, 

*  The  intense  dramatic  force  and  suddenness  of  this  allusion  will  especially  strike 
the  reader  who  remembers  the  story,  as  told  by  Ovid,  of  Phineus  changed  to  marble  by 
the  Gorgon  shield  of  Perseus. 


JET.  22-30.]  GEBIR.  63 

Finds,  with  your  children,  refuge :  yonder,  Rhine 
Lays  his  imperial  sceptre  at  their  feet." 

Nay,  even  Time  itself,  and  the  Seasons,  were  now  to  acknowledge 
their  masters ;  for  had  not  the  months  and  weeks  and  days  them- 
selves taken  new  names  ! 

"  What  hoary  form  so  vigorous  vast  bends  there  ? 
Time,  —  Time  himself  throws  off  his  motley  garb 
Figured  with  monstrous  men  and  monstrous  Gods, 
And  in  pure  vesture  enters  their  pure  fanes, 
A  proud  partaker  of  their  festivals. 
Captivity  led  captive,  War  o'erthrown, 
They  shall  o'er  Europe,  shall  o'er  Earth  extend 
Empire  that  seas  alone  and  skies  confine, 
And  glory  that  shall  strike  the  crystal  stars." 

But  now  that  these  hopes  had  broken  down,  and  the  glorious  ex- 
pectation was  over,  the  lines,  with  sundry  others  in  similar  strain, 
were  swept  entirely  away  ;  Landor  merely  remarking  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  Southey  that  he  had  cut  out  the  political  allusions.  With 
one  exception,*  all  the  passages  thus  omitted  were  taken  from  the 
Third  and  Sixth  Books,  and  consisted  of  something  over  150  lines. 
The  additions,  on  the  other  hand,  did  not  exceed  fifty  lines,  and  were 
intended  to  make  more  intelligible  those  passages  of  the  tale  in  which 
the  pruning-knife  had  before  been  used  too  freely.  Speaking  of  this 
himself  in  his  Preface  to  the  1831  edition  of  the  Poems,  —  after  tell- 
ing us  that  Gebir  was  written  in  his  twentieth  year  ;  that  many  parts 
were  first  composed  in  Latin,  and  he  doubted  in  which  language  to 
complete  it ;  and  that  he  had  lost  the  manuscript,  but  found  it  after- 
wards in  a  box  of  letters,  —  he  adds,  that  before  printing  it  he  re- 
duced it  nearly  to  half.  In  substance  this  was  the  account  he  always 
gave,  though  the  circumstances  varied  a  little  in  his  memory. f    Writ- 

*  Of  this  exception  I  will  preserve  in  a  note,  for  their  beauty  of  cadence  and  expres- 
sion, and  because  they  were  especially  liked  by  Southey,  the  few  lines  that  opened  the 
poem:  — 

"  When  old  Silenus  called  the  Satyrs  home, 
Satyrs  then  tender-hooft  and  ruddy-homed, 
With  Bacchus  and  the  Nymphs,  he  sometimes  rose 
Amidst  the  tale  or  pastoral,  and  showed 
The  light  of  purest  wisdom ;  and  the  God 
Scattered  with  wholesome  fruit  the  pleasant  plains." 

t  For  example,  adverting  in  a  poem  of  his  later  life  to  these  early  days  in  Wales,  and 
his  adventures  with  his  pony  Fidler,  he  gives  a  different  version  of  Gebir's  loss  and 
recovery:  — 

"  Sixty  the  years  since  Fidler  bore 
^  My  grouse-bag  up  the  Bala  Moor; 

Aoove  the  lake,  along  the  lea, 

Where  gleams  the  darkly  yellow  Dee ; 

Through  crags,  o'er  cliffs,  I  carried  there 

My  verses  with  paternal  care, 

But  left  them,  and  went  home  again 

To  wing  the  birds  upon  the  plain. 

With  heavier  luggage  half  forgot, 

For  many  months  they  followed  not. 

When  over  Tawey's  sands  they  came 

Brighter  flew  up  my  winter  flame.  .  .  . 

Gebir!  men  shook  their  heads  in  doubt 

If  we  were  sane :  few  made  us  out 

Beside  one  stranger  ..." 


64  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  ^"; 

ing  to  me  in  1857  of  Aurora  Leigh*  he  exclaims  :  "What  loads  I 
carted  off  from  Gebir  in  order  to  give  it  proportion,  yet  nearly  all 
would  have  liked  it  better  with  incorrectness  "  ;  and  in  a  letter  to 
Southey,  forty  years  curlier,  he  had  written:  "As  to  Gebir,  I  am 
certain  that  I  rejected  what  almost  every  man  would  call  the  best 
part.  I  am  afraid  that  I  have  boiled  away  too  much,  and  that  some- 
thing of  a  native  flavor  has  been  lost  in  procuring  a  stronger  and 
more  austere  one." 

But  though  it  is  probable  that  some  stop  was  thus  put  to  the 
popularity  of  a  poem  where,  as  Coleridge  said  of  it,  the  eminences 
were  so  excessively  bright  and  the  ground  so  dark  around  and 
between  them,  Landor  is  in  a  greater  measure  to  be  accounted 
fortunate,  that  thus  early  he  coidd  exercise  the  power  invaluable  to 
a  poet,  and  which  even  to  the  best  arrives  often  too  late,  of  selection 
and  compression.  Among  its  advantages  in  the  present  case  is  un- 
doubtedly this,  that  what  the  poem  was  at  its  first  publication,  it 
remains  still ;  it  has  not  been  improved  into  something  altogether 
different ;  and  the  reader's  certainty  that  the  passages  of  it  now  laid 
before  him  are  unaltered  since  the  boyish  years  when  they  were 
written,  will  increase  his  interest  in  the  further  development  of  so 
extraordinary  a  mind. 

II.     SOME  OPINIONS  OF  GEBIR. 

The  publication  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Robert  Landor  :  "  Of 
Gebir  he  had  the  highest  expectations,  and  yet  it  was  intrusted  to  a 
very  small  bookseller  at  Warwick,  without  any  one  to  correct  the 
press,  in  the  form  of  a  sixpenny  pamphlet.  Excepting  to  some  per- 
sonal friends,  it  remained  quite  unknown  till  an  article  appeared, 
written  by  Southey,  in  the  Critical  Review,  full  of  generous  commen- 
dation. This  was  the  beginning  of  their  friendship.  A  few  literary 
men  only  —  Shelley,  Reginald  Heber,  and,  I  think,  Coleridge  —  read 
the  poem  even  then ;  and  hardly  a  hundred  copies  were  sold,  till  a 
much  better  edition,  with  a  Latin  translation,  was  published  at 
Oxford  under  my  superintendence.  I  discharged  the  office  of  editor 
quite  unassisted  by  the  author,  who  always  seems  to  have  felt  a  ner- 
vous bashfulness  which  transferred  his  works  to  the  care  of  other 
people.      Bashfulness  doubtful  of  their  success,  not  of  their  merits." 

This  remark  explains  the  brief  preface  to  the  poem  in  which  was 
thrown  down  so  characteristically  the  measure  of  its  author's  expec- 


*  "  I  am  reading  a  poem,"  ho  says,  "  full  of  thought  and  fascinating  with  fancy,  — 
Mrs.  Browning's  Aurora  Leigh,  in  many  pages,  and  particularly  126  and  127,  there 
is  the  wild  imagination  of  Shakespeare.  I  nave  not  yet  read  much  further.  I  had  no 
idea  that  any  one  in  this  age  was  capable  of  bo  much  poetry.  I  am  half  drunk  with  it. 
Never  did  I  think  I  should  nave  a  good  hearty  draught  of  poetry  again:  the  distemper 
had  got  into  the  vineyard  that  produced  it.  Here  are  indeed,  even  here,  some  flies 
apon  tho  Burface,  us  there  always  will  be  upon  what  is  sweet  and  strong.  I  know  not 
yet  what  the  story  is.     Few  possess  tho  power  of  construction." 


iET.  22-30.]  SOME    OPINIONS    OF    GEBIR.  65 

tations.  After  describing  it  as  principally  written  in  Wales,  and  the 
fruit  of  idleness  and  ignorance,  for  "  had  he  been  a  botanist  or  miner- 
alogist it  never  had  been  written,"  he  mentions  the  Arabian  tale  he 
had  taken  the  hint  of  its  story  from,  speaks  of  the  few  English 
writers  who  had  succeeded  in  blank  verse,  distinguishing  above  all 
"  the  poet  of  our  republic "  ;  and  closes  by  saying  :  "  1  am  aware 
how  much  I  myself  stand  in  need  of  favor.  I  demand  some  little 
from  Justice  :  I  entreat  much  more  from  Candor.  If  there  are  now 
in  England  ten  men  of  taste  and  genius  who  will  applaud  my  poem, 
I  declare  myself  fully  content.  I  will  call  for  a  division ;  I  shall 
count  a  majority." 

The  late  Mr.  De  Quincey  grudged  him  even  the  ten.  He  pro- 
tested there  were  only  two,  and  that  he  had  for  some  time  vainly 
"  conceited  "  himself  to  be  the  sole  purchaser  and  reader.  Landor 
remarked  upon  this  with  amusing  warmth  in  one  of  his  letters  to  me 
in  1853  :  "  It  must  have  been  under  the  influence  of  his  favorite 
drug  that  he  fancied  Southey  telling  him  he  believed  they  were  the 
only  two  who  had  read  Gebir.  Mr.  De  Quincey  was  not  acquainted 
with  Southey  until  very  many  years  after  he  had  written  a  noble 
panegyric  on  the  poem  inserted  in  the  Critical  Review  in  1798.  He 
did  not  know  me  until  long  after  :  but  he  had  in  that  year  recom- 
mended the  poem  to  Charles  Wynne,  who  told  me  so  ;  and  to  the 
two  Hebers  ;  and  to  Coleridge,  who  praised  it  highly  until  he  was 
present  when  Southey  read  or  repeated  parts  of  it  before  a  large' 
company,  after  which,  if  ever  he  mentioned  it  at  all,  it  was  slight- 
ingly, '  Mr.  De  Quincey  appears  to  have  had  another  dream,  too,  of  a 
conversation  with  Southey  in  which  they  agreed  that  I  imitated 
Valerius  Flaccus,  whose  poem  I  never  had  opened,  but  have  looked 
into  lately,  and  find  it  intolerable  to  get  through  beyond  200  lines.* 
These  dreams  and  the  records  of  them  will  pass  away  ;  but  '  exoriare 
aliquis  nosti'is  ex  ossibus  ultor.'  I  think  I  know  who  this  will  be,  and 
I  expect  no  earlier  vindication." 

Not  in  the  year  of  its  publication,  but  in  the  September  of  the 
year  following,  Southey's  notice  appeared  in  the  Critical  Review.  This 
I  shall  remark  upon  here,  because  of  its  writer ;  though  my  mention 
of  the  only  other  published  review,  which  dates  several  months  later, 
and  was  conceived  in  a  very  different  spirit,  must  be  reserved  to 
another  section.  Southey's  criticism  was  thin  and  colorless,  but  his 
tone  was  sufficiently  laudatory.  An  outline  of  the  story  was  given  ; 
such  passages  as  "  the  Shell  "  were  quoted,  with  the  remark  that  the 
reader  who  did  not  instantly  perceive  their  beauty  must  have  a  soul 
blind  to  the  world  of  poetry  ;  other  passages  were  characterized  as 
more  Homeric  than  anything  in  modern  poetical  writing  ;  and  while, 

*  That  this  was  not  altogether  a  dream,  however,  is  presumable  from  the  fact  that 
Southey,  in  a  notice  in  the  Annual  Review  of  Landor's  Poetry  by  the  Author  of  Gebir,  to 
be  presently  mentioned,  used  this  very  comparison;  and  probably  De  Quincey  derived 
bis  impression,  not  from  the  conversation,  but  from  the  review. 

5 


GG  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  ^»°1^! 

of  the  faults  of  the  poem,  those  of  an  ill-chosen  story  and  of  a  fre- 
quent absence  of  perspicuity  in  the  language  were  pointed  out  as 
the  most  conspicuous,  it  wad  said  of  its  beauties  that  they  were  of  the 
first  older,  and  that  every  circumstance  was  displayed  with  a  force 
and  accuracy  which  painting  could  not  exceed.  "  It  is  not  our  busi- 
ness," Souther  said  in  conclusion,  after  quoting  the  .challenge  from 
the  author's  preface  given  above,  "  to  examine  whether  he  has  under- 
stated the  number  of  men  of  taste  and  genius  in  England,  but  we 
have  read  his  poem  repeatedly  with  more  than  common  attention, 
and  with  far  more  than  common  delight." 

Before  the  review  appeared,  Southey  had  been  speaking  of  the  poem 
in  the  same  strain  to  his  private  friends.  To  Cottle  he  wrote  : 
"  There  is  a  poem  called  Gehir,  of  which  I  know  not  whether  my  re- 
view of  it  in  the  Critical  be  yet  printed  ;  but  in  that  review  you  will 
find  some  of  the  most  exquisite  poetry  in  the  language.  ...  I  would 
go  a  hundred  miles  to  see  the  (anonymous)  author."  To  Grosvenor 
Bedford  in  the  following  month  he  wrote  :•  "  There  is  a  poem  called 
Gehir,  written  by  God  knows  who,  sold  for  a  shilling  ;  it  has  miracu- 
lous beauties."  Of  William  Taylor,  of  Norwich,  a  few  days  later,  he 
asked  if  he  had  seen  the  poem  ;  called  it  the  miraculous  work  of  a 
madman  ;  said  it  was  like  a  picture  in  whose  obscure  coloring  no  plan 
was  discoverable,  but  in  whose  every  distinct  touch  the  master-hand 
wras  visible  ;  and  compared  its  intelligible  passages  to  flashes  of  light- 
ning at  midnight.  After  a  few  months  he  started  for  Lisbon  to  visit 
his  Uncle  Hill,  and  before  going  wrote  to  Coleridge  :  "  I  take  with 
me  for  the  voyage  your  poems,  the  Lyrics,  the  Lyrical  Ballad^  and 
Gehir, — these  make  all  my  library.  I  like  Gebir  more  and  more; 
if  you  ever  meet  its  author,  tell  him  I  took  it  with  me  on  a  journey.'' 
Detained  on  the  point  of  sailing  by  westerly  winds  at  Falmouth,  he 
wrote  to  his  brother  the  sea-captain  that  his  time  had  been  passed 
in  walking  on  the  beach  sighing  for  northeasters,  admiring  the  sea- 
anemonies,  and  reading  Gehir.  On  arrival  at  Lisbon  he  wrote  again  to 
Coleridge,  advising  him  once  more  to  read  Gehir;  "he  grows  upon 
me."  He  was  now  himself  writing  Tkalaba,  and  in  the  preface  men- 
tions the  great  improvement  to  his  own  verse  in  vividness  and 
strength  which  he  was  sensible  of  having  at  this  time  derived  from 
the  frequent  perusal  of  Gebir.  After  his  return,  in  another  letter  to 
Coleridge,  he  alludes  to  the  circumstance  of  their  friend  Humphry 
Davy  having  fallen  stark  mad  with  a  play  called  the  Conspiracy  of 
Gowrie,  which  was  by  Rough,  and  a  mere  copy  of  that  wonderful 
original,  Gebir.  This  was  in  July,  L801  ;  at  which  date  also  he  was 
writing  to  Davy  himself  the  letter  before  quoted,*  which  notices  his 
first  acquaintance  with  Landor's  name,  and  his  recollection  of  him  at 
Oxford:  "  How  could  you  compare  this  man's  book  with  Rough's1! 
The  lucid  passages  of  Gebir  are  all  palpable  to  the  eye  ;  the\  are  the 
master-touches  of  a  painter,  —  there  is  power  in  them,  and  passion, 

*  Ante,  p.  29. 


jET.  22-30.]  SOME    OPINIONS    OF    GEBIR.  67 

and  thought,  and  knowledge."     The  other  he  regarded  as  imitations 
merely,  with  a  leading  dash  of  Gebir  through  the  whole. 

This  was  not  substantially  unjust,  though  harshly  expressed ;  but 
Rough  nevertheless  was  a  clever  and  noteworthy  person,  whose  ad- 
miration Landor  was  glad  to  have  for  his  own  poem,  and  to  repay  in 
a  generous  fashion  by  no  niggard  praise  of  the  poem  written  in  imi- 
tation of  it.  They  were  for  some  time  on  very  friendly  terms  ;  and 
some  letters  of  Rough's  between  the  date  of  1800  and  1802  are  pre- 
served among  Landor's  papers.  It  will  be  time  to  advert  to  them 
when,  with  other  friends  of  this  early  date  connected  with  Warwick 
and  its  neighborhood,  Rough  will  shortly  reappear.  I  must  not, 
meanwhile,  omit  to  add  that  even  among  those  Warwickshire  ac- 
quaintance Gebir  was  not  so  fortunate  as  to  find  only  friends. 

At  his  father's  house,  in  the  two  years  between  his  retreat  to 
Wnles  and  the  publication  of  his  poem,  Landor  had  been -a  frequent 
visitor ;  and  during  the  seven  unsettled  years  that  followed  before 
Doctor  Landor's  death,  when  neither  pursuit  nor  place,  nor,  indeed, 
persons,  attracted  him  for  many  months  together,  he  was  made  wel- 
come whenever  he  returned  to  Warwick  ;  but  to  his  father's  especial 
friends,  there  can  be  little  doubt,  he  was  at  all  times  less  accommo- 
dating than  he  might  have  been.  One  of  them  was  Miss  Seward,  a 
Staffordshire  bluestocking  so  celebrated  in  those  days  that  no  less  a 
person  than  Walter  Scott  became  one  of  her  editors  ;  and  her  he 
flatly  refused  to  meet  only  a  few  months  before  Gebir  appeared.  The 
lively  lady  remembered  the  slight ;  and  took  revenge  characteristi- 
cally in  the  remark  of  one  of  her  letters,*  that  nobody  but  the  author  of 
such  a  poem  as  Gebir  could  have  written  the  review  of  it  in  the  Critical. 
Southey  (whom  she  thought  a  greater  poet  than  Wordsworth  or  Cole- 
ridge, and  was  fond  of  comparing  to  Milton)  tried  to  propitiate  Lan- 
dor's wrath  and  protect  his  fair  friend's  memory,  when  this  unlucky 
letter  came  to  light ;  but  he  was  not  successful.     Landor  replied  with 

*  The  letter  is  dated  in  July,  1800,  and  addressed  to  one  of  the  hangers-on  of  Parr,  a 
clergyman  named  Fellowes,  who  wrote  a  "  Picture  of  Christian  Philosophy "  and 
other  volumes  savoring  more  of  the  sentimental  than  the  orthodox;  but  known' in  later 
years  more  favorably  by  active  participation  in  some  good  works.  "  There  is  no  longer 
any  wonder  that  the  Critical  Review  should  praise  that  obscure  fustian  epic,  Gribor 
(sic),  since  I  learn  from  you  that  the  author  and  critic  are  one  person.  I  have  been 
told  that  he  has  considerable  talents  and  learning.  Gabor  is  no  proof  of  the  first,  since 
to  think  clearly  is  inseparable  from  great  strength  of  intellect;  though  we  often  see 
scholastic  knowledge  exist  in  a  mind  where  the  lights  of  imagination,  if  they  shine  at 
all,  shine  but  by  glimpses,  and  where  the  judgment  is  wholly  opake  "  (v.*  295).  A 
couple  of  years  later  she  wrote  to  Todd,  the 'editor  of  Spenser  and  Milton,  to  console 
him  for  some  adverse  notice  in  the  Critical  by  telling  him  how  malicious  she  had  al- 
ways found  "  that  tract"  to  be  in  noticing  herself;  "  though  I  think  I  can  stand  it  un- 
wounded,  beneath  the  reflection  that  I  have  seen  that  tract  lavishing  encomiums' on 
the  most  unintelligible  fustian  that  ever  bore  the  name  of  an  epic  poem.  It  called 
itself  Gebir.'''  (She  had  got  the  right  name  at  last.)  "  Southev  told  a  friend  of 
mine  lately  that  it  was  the  finest  poetic  work  which  had  appeared  these  fifty  years. 
So  Johnson  stilted  up  Blackmore  "  (vi.  29).  A  few  months  later,  too,  when  Mr.  Fel- 
lowes had  sent  a  fresh  supply  of  ill-natured  gossip  about  Landor.  she  tells  him  how 
"  charmed  "  she  is  with  what  he  says  of  the  author  of  Gebir,  "  and  his  other  projected 
epic  "  (vi.  77).  One  cannot  but  feei  that  there  is  a  relish  of  personal  offence  in  all  this, 
and  that  Landor's  way  of  accounting  for  it  is  probably  the  right  one. 


G8  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  (^;..     ' 

a  heat  which,  in  its  amazing  disproportion  to  both  the  offence  and 
the  offender,  is  too  characteristic  to  be  lost. 

"  I  shall  not  see  anything  more  than  the  backs  of  Miss  Seward's  Letters.  I 
attempted  to  read  her  Life  of  Darwin,  but  was  so  disgusted  by  her  impu- 
dence 1  threw  it  down.  Some  of  her  poetry  may  be  better.  My  father 
ami  my  aunts  were  rather  intimate  with  her.  I  never  saw  her.  She  was 
SO  polite  as  to  say  she  should  be  very  happy  to  see  me,  and  added  some 
high-flown  and  idle  compliment  on  verses,  very  indifferent,  which  I  wrote 
at  seventeen.  T  am  not  surprised  she  liked  them  better  than  Gebir.  They 
were  more  like  her  own.  In  reply  to  her  courtesy  I  said  what  she  never 
should  have  heard,  'that  I  preferred  a  pretty  woman  to  a  literary  one.' 
From  that  time  to  the  present,  about  thirteen  years,  I  never  heard  any- 
thing more  about  her  in  which  I  was  concerned.  It  vexes,  I  must  own  to 
you  it  more  than  vexes,  it  afflicts  and  torments  me,  to  have  it  disseminated 
in  circulating  libraries  and  country  book-clubs  that  I  condescended  to  that 
last  and  vilest  of  all  baseness,  my  own  praises  in  a  review.     I  know  not  any 

accusation  so  hateful.     And  this  impudent seems  well  to  have  known 

my  character  in  selecting  it  for  her  rancor.  I  do  not  imagine  that  Mr. 
Gilford  himself  said  this.  Other  men  have  the  privilege  of  complaining 
which  God  and  nature  never  permitted  me.  This  stigma  may  burn  into 
me  till  it  burns  through  me :  meaner  men  would  bite  and  scratch  it  off." 

This  letter  was  written  in  1811,  before  I  was  born  ;  and  a  quarter 
of  a  century  later,  as  I  well  remember,  one  of  the  first  of  his  letters 
addressed  to  myself  contained  an  entire  battery  of  the  epigrams 
which  he  had  now  fired  off  against  Miss  Seward  and  her  friends,  and 
had  thought  worth  preserving  all  those  years. 

One  of  the  friends  was  the  Mr.  Fellowes  who  seems  to  have  told 
her  first  of  the  supposed  identity  of  the  poet  and  his  critic,  "  very 
cavalierly,"  as  Southey  wrote  to  his  friend.  "  This  Fellowes,"  Landor 
replied,  "is  a  person  I  often  met  at  Parr's.  I  never  knew  that  he 
spoke  cavalierly  exeept  to  his  wife,  whom  he  beat  and  separated  from. 
I  never  exchanged  a  syllable  with  him.*  At  Parr's  I  converse  only 
with  Parr."  Somewhat  unconsciously  a  characteristic  trait  is  here 
let  drop,  of  winch  there  is  an  accurate  illustration  in  one  of  his 
brother's  letters.  Referring  to  what  was  certainly  true  of  Landor  to 
the  last,  that,  with  noble  bursts  of  energy  in  his  talk,  his  temperament 
disqualified  him  fur  anything  like  sustained  reasoning,  and  he  in- 
stinctively turned  awav  from  discussion  or  argument,  his  brother  had 
mentioned  having  seen  him  in  Ins  youth  rush  from  the  table  of  one 
of  his  own  political  friends,  provoked  by  some  slight  contradiction 
that  appeared  disrespectful,  when  in  truth  there  was  no  disrespect 

*  That  remark  would  probably  explain  the  sentence  in  "no  <>f  Mr.  Fellowes's  letters 
which  quite  enchanted  Miss  Seward  when  she  road  it.    "The  author  of  Gebir,  who 

lives  in  this  neighbor! I.  has  lately  made  another  attempt  to  convey  the  waters  of 

Helicon  by  leaden  pipes,  and  many  'lark  subterranean  ways,  into  the  channel  of  the 
Avon.  I  have  not  seen  these  last  effusions  of  his  Muse;  but,  having  trod  tho  dark  pro- 
found of  Gebir,  I  feel  no  inclination  to  begin  another  journey  which  promises  so  little 
pleasure^  ;l'"'  probably  where  only  a  few  occasional  Bashes  will  enlighten  the  road." 
the  attempt  thus  charitably  spoken  of  was  a  thin  little  volume  of  Poetry  by  (he  Author 
of  Gtbir  to  be  presently  again  mentioned. 


JET.  22-30.]  SOME    OPINIONS    OF    GEBIR.  GO 

but  only  a  slight  difference  threatening  controversy.  "  Tt  was  from 
Doctor  Parr's  table,"  Mr.  Robert  Landor  replied  to  my  further  inquiry, 
"  that  he  rushed  so  furiously  ;  but  not  in  anger  with  the  Doctor, 
whom  he  always  liked  and  with  whom  he  never  quarrelled.  His 
anger  was  provoked  by  a  Warwick  physician  whom  he  met  there,  —  a 
Doctor  Winthrop,  —  who  felt  astonished  at  the  offence  he  had  given. 
A  very  feeble  reasoner  who  could  govern  his  temper  might  be  sure 
of  victory  over  one,  ten  times  his  superior,  who  could  not.  Some 
slight  interruption,  even  a  smile,  was  provocation  enough,  if  there 
were  many  witnesses  present  at  the  controversy,  to  decide  it."  His 
own  assertion  that  at  Parr's  he  never  conversed  but  with  Parr  is 
made  quite  intelligible  to  us  by  this  comment.  Yet  his  intercourse 
with  the  old  liberty -loving  scholar  and  divine  was  very  much  the  hap- 
piest, and  far  from  the  least  profitable,  of  this  period  of  his  life  ;  and 
it  continued,  without  abatement  of  regard  on  either  side,  for  many  years. 

Before  account  is  given  of  it,  one  more  opinion  of  Gebir  shall  be 
interposed.  It  anticipates  my  narrative  by  a  few  years,  but  expresses 
with  singular  vividness  the  fascination  with  which  the  poem  seized 
from  time  to  time  on  minds  of  the  highest  order,  the  attention  there- 
by directed  to  its  author  from  men  whose  notice  constituted  fame, 
and  the  degree  of  compensation  so  afforded  by  the  few  for  the  persist- 
ent neglect  and  dislike  of  the  many. 

Four  years  before  Gebir  appeared,  Shelley  was  born,  and  its  influ- 
ence over  him  at  more  than  one  period  of  his  life  is  recorded  by  his 
wife  in  her  edition  of  his  Poems.  When  he  was  at  Oxford  in  1811, 
we  are  told  by  the  friend  and  fellow-collegian  who  was  most  intimate 
with  him  there,  he  would  at  times  read  nothing  else ;  and  Mr.  Hogg 
relates  that  on  the  frequent  occasions  when  he  found  him  so  occupied, 
it  was  hopeless  to  draw  his  attention  away.  There  was  something  in 
the  poem  which  in  a  peculiar  manner  caught  his  fancy.  He  would 
read  it  aloud  to  others,  or  to  himself,  with  a  tiresome  pertinacity. 
One  morning  his  friend  went  into  his  rooms  to  tell  him  something 
of  importance,  but  he  would  attend  to  nothing  but  Gebir  ;  whereupon 
Hogg  describes  himself  with  a  young  impatience  snatching  the  book 
"  out  of  the  obstinate  fellow's  hand  "  and  throwing  it  through  the  open 
window  into  the  quadrangle  ;  but  unavailingly,  —  for  as  it  fell  upon 
the  grass-plat,  and  was  brought  presently  back  by  the  servant,  again 
Shelley  became  absorbed  in  it,  and  the  something  of  importance  had 
to  wait  to  another  time.  "  I  related  this  incident  at  Florence,"  adds 
Mr.  Hogg,  "  some  years  afterwards,  and  after  the  death  of  my  poor 
friend,  to  the  highly  gifted  author.  He  heard  it  with  his  hearty, 
cordial,  genial  laugh.  '  Well,  you  must  allow  it  is  something  to  have 
produced  what  could  please  one  fellow-creature,  and  offend  another, 
so  much.'  "  * 

*  Life  of  Shelley,  I.  201.  "  I  regret,"  Mr.  Hogg  concludes,  "  that  these  two  intellect- 
ual persons  were  not  acquainted  with  each  other.  If  I  could  confer  a  real  benefit  upon 
a  friend,  I  would  procure  for  him,  if  it  were  possible,  the  friendship  of  Walter  Savage 
Landor." 


70  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  [^ 


Nothing  has  been  said  of  Gebir  better  than  that ;  and  when -correct 
adjustment  has  been  made  of  the  relative  values  of  praise  and  cen- 
sure received  by  it,  from  those  it  so  greatly  pleased  and  those  it  so 
much  offended,  its  place  will  at  last  be  accurately  ascertained. 


III.    DOCTOR  PARR. 

In  the  first  article  written  by  Sydney  Smith  in  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, he  reproachfully  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  by  far  the 
most  learned  man  of  his  day  *  was  languishing  on  a  little  paltry 
curacy  in  Warwickshire.  This  was  Doctor  Parr,  whose  name  at  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  little  as  it  is  now  remembered -where  learn- 
ing and  literature  are  in  question,  was  held  in  undeniable  respect  by 
the  first  scholars  in  Europe.  Parr  never  indeed  stood  higher  in  esteem 
than  at  the  time  of  the  publication  of  Gebir,  to  the  admiration  of 
whose  ardent  writer  he  presented  a  threefold  claim.  To  the  skilled 
Latin  student  he  was  the  author  of  the  Preface  to  Bellendenus ;  to 
the  eager  politician  he  was  the  friend  of  Fox  and  Grey  ;  to  the  young 
adventurer  in  literature  he  had  the  charm  of  association  with  a  greater 
Doctor  Samuel,  the  chief  of  English  men  of  letters,  who  had  lately 
passed  away.  "  Sir,"  said  Johnson  to  Bennet  Langton,  in  one  of 
those  conversations  which  Boswell's  wonderful  book  had  just  then 
given  to  the  world,  "  Parr  is  a  fair  man.  I  do  not  know  when  I  have 
had  an  occasion  of  such  free  controversy."  They  had  talked  upon 
the  liberty  of  the  press ;  and  Johnson,  stamping  unconsciously  in  the 
heat  of  the  argument,  had  stopped  suddenly  on  seeing  Parr  give  a 
great  stamp.  "  Why  did  you  stamp,  Doctor  Parr  1 "  he  asked. 
"Sir,"  replied  Parr,  "because  you  stamped;  and  I  was  resolved  not 
to  give  you  the  advantage  even  of  a  stamp  in  the  argument."  This 
was  good  Johnsonian  give-and-take,  and  woidd  certainly  not  lower  his 
namesake  in  Johnson's  opinion  ;  but  it  must  be  'added  that  the  trick 
of  stamping  remained  too  much  with  the  lesser  Samuel,  who  also  prac- 
tised afterwards  pompous  oracular  ways,  and  dealt  greatly  in  sonorous 
words,  apparently  derived  from  the  same  source.  But,  notwithstand- 
ing much  pretentious  and  preposterous  writing,  what  was  most  promi- 
nent in  Parr's  character  was  neither  assumed  nor  commonplace. 
Johnson  said  it  was  a  pity  that  such  a  man  and  such  a  scholar  should 
be  a  Whig  ;  and,  considering  that  with  the  dispensers  of  church 
patronage  in  those  days  the  most  moderate  forms  of  Whiggism  were 
but  other  forms  of  Atheism,  Deism,  Socinianism,  or  any  of  the  rest 
of  the  isms  that  to  a  clergyman  meant  infamy  and  poverty,  a  more 
judicious  choice  of  opinions  might  undoubtedly  have  been  made. 
But  in  his  way  Parr  was  quite  as  sincere  a  man  as  Johnson,  and 
opinions  were  as  little  a  matter  of  mere  choosing  to  the  one  as  to  the 
other. 

*  Porson  was  then  dead.     While  Tio  lived  Pnrr  would  say,  "  Tho  first  Greek  scholar 
is  Porson,  and  the  third  Ehnsley:  I  won't  Bay  who  the  second  is." 


JET.  22-30.]  DOCTOR   PARR.  71 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution  Doctor  Landor  had  him- 
self been  a  Whig,  as  all  Warwickshire  had  reason  to  know ;  for  it 
was  he  who  brought  forward  Sir  Robert  Lawley  and  Mr.  Ladbroke  at 
the  election  which  broke  down  Lord  Warwick's  predominance  in  the 
county.  But  when  the  split  in  the  party  came,  and  Burke  carried 
over  the  deserters  from  Fox,  Doctor  Landor  cast  in  his  lot  with  them, 
and  became  also  Pitt's  vehement  supporter.  His  son  Walter,  on  the 
other  hand,  went  as  far  as  he  coiild  in  the  opposite  extreme ;  and 
would  doubtless  have  gone  to  the  other  side  of  England  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  greeting  a  friend  of  Mr.  Fox  so  loud  and  uncompromising 
as  Doctor  Parr  was  at  this  time.  As  it  was,  he  had  to  do  little  more 
than  cross  the  threshold  of  his  father's  door. 

At  Hatton  (Heath-town),  a  retired  village  on  an  eminence  near 
what  was  then  a  wide  tract  of  heath,  two  or  three  miles  from  War- 
wick on  the  Birmingham  Road,  Parr  had  lived  since  1783,  when  Lady 
Trafford  presented  him  to  its  perpetual  curacy.  He  was  a  poor  man 
when  he  went  there  ;  but  when  more  prosperous  days  came  to  him  he 
•was  too  fond  of  the  place  to  leave  it,  and  there  he  died.  At  the 
small  brick  parsonage  he  built  out  a  good-sized  library,  which  he  filled 
with  books  of  which  the  printed  catalogue  is  still  consulted  with  in- 
terest by  scholars  ;  and  this  became  at  last  his  dining-room  also, 
where  not  seldom,  at  his  frequent  festivities,  neither  books  nor  friends 
were  visible  for  the  clouds  of  tobacco  that  rose  and  enveloped  them 
from  his  morning,  afternoon,  and  evening  pipes.  Sydney  Smith  says 
he  had  too  much  of  his  own  way  at  these  social  parties,  and  would 
have  been  better  for  more  knocking  about  among  his  equals  ;  but  the 
same  sentence  that  laughs  at  him  for  his  airs  of  self-importance  cele- 
brates not  the  less  his  copious  and  varied  learning,  the  richness  of  his 
acquisitions,  the  vigor  of  his  understanding,  and  above  all  the  genuine 
goodness  of  his  heart.  Undue  prominence  was  indeed  given  by  two 
circumstances  to  the  weak  points  in  Parr's  character :  they  were  all 
upon  the  surface,  and  they  were  all  of  the  quizzible  kind.  He  had  a 
quantity  of  foolish  personal  vanity ;  a  lisp  made  more  absurd  his 
pompous  way  of  speaking ;  and  a  corpulent  figure  set  off  disadvanta- 
geously  his  vagaries  of  dress.  When  he  lost  the  Mastership  of 
Harrow  it  was  said  that  he  went  far  completely  to  console  himself  by 
mounting  that  famous  obumbrating  wig,  which,  as  Sydney  said  of  it, 
swelled  out  behind  into  boundless  convexity  of  frizz.  But  there  is 
something  not  difficult  to  forgive  in  absurdities  of  this  kind,  when 
accompanied  by  unworldliness  of  nature  ;  and  it  is  undoubtedly  the 
case  that  Parr  was  at  the  bottom  a  very  kindly  and  a  very  simple 
man.  He  could  stand  by  those  who  had  claims  on  his  friendship, 
though  all  the  rest  of  the  world  should  fall  from  them ;  and  it  is  the 
remark  of  a  keen  and  unsparing  judge  of  men,  William  Taylor,  of 
Norwich,  in  a  comparison  he  makes  between  Parr  and  Mackintosh, 
that,  whereas  the  latter  inspired  admiration  rather  than  attachment, 
there  was  a  lovingness  about  Parr  and  a  susceptibility  of  affection  that 


72  gebir;  and  earliest  friendship.  i-w"*^ 

gave  him  an  immense  superiority.*  The  time  when  Landor  first 
knew  ran*  was  that  of  Mackintosh's  greatest  intimacy  with  him  ;  and 
of  the  characteristic  traits  of  their  intercourse  still  remembered  there 
are  few  better  than  the  remark  made  by  Parr  after  a  lung  argument. 
"Jemmy,  I  cannot  talk  you  down;  but  I  can  think  you  down, 
Jemmy."  It  expresses  at  the  same  time  one  of  those  weaknesses  by 
which  it  so  often  came  to  pass  that  Parr's  company  was  inferior  to 
himself,  and  such  as  he  could  talk  down  only  too  easily.  But,  even. 
with  Mackintosh,  he  had  not  seldom  the  upper  hand.  "  Formerly," 
wrote  Landor  in  one  of  his  latest  letters  to  Southey,f  "I  used  to 
meet  Mackintosh  rather  frequently.  I  never  knew  that  he  was  so 
stored  and  laden  as  you  give  me  to  believe.  He  was  certainly  very 
inaccurate,  not  only  in  Greek  but  in  Latin.  Once  at  breakfast  with 
Parr  in  Cary  Street,  where  I  was  and  Hargrave  and  Jekyl,  he  used 
the  word  anabasis.  Parr  said,  '  Very  right,  Jemmy  !  very  right  !  it 
is  anabasis  with  you,  but  anabasis  with  me  and  Walter  Landor.'  I 
was  very  much  shocked  and  grieved  ;  indeed,  to  such  a  degree,  that  I 
felt  indisposed  to  take  any  part  in  the  conversation  afterwards ;  only 
saying  (which  was  not  quite  true)  that  I  did  not  know  it  until  then  : 
which  obtained  me  a  punch  of  the  elbow  under  the  rib,  and  the  inter- 
jection of  lying  dog  !  " 

Some  of  the  points  I  have  thus  thought  it  fair  to  prefix  to  such 
mention  of  Landor's  intercourse  with  Parr  as  will  appear  in  these 
pages  from  time  to  time,  receive  also  illustration,  valuable  because  of 
personal  knowledge,  from  one  of  Mr.  Kobert  Landor's  letters.  He 
begins  by  speaking  of  a  recent  paper  on  Parr  by  Mr.  De  Quince v, 
published  in  the  sixth  volume  of  his  collected  works ;  and  it  is 
proper  to  remark  that  he  writes  with  less  sympathy  for  Parr's  politi- 
cal opinions  than  for  those  of  his  critic.  "  If  Mr.  De  Quincey  had 
been  desirous  to  show  us  how  far  it  might  be  possible  to  convey  the 
most  false  and  injurious  notions  of  a  man  in  language  which  no  one 
could  contradict,  which  said  nothing  but  the  truth,  he  could  hardly 
have  succeeded  better.  What  he  has  written  is  very  true  and  very 
false  ;  but  there  are  some  old  people,  like  myself,  who  may  wish  that 
the  mixture  had  been  less  skilfully  malicious,  and  a  great  deal  more 
honest.     There  was  some  resemblance   between  the  doctor  and  my 

*  Among  Landor's  papers  I  found  the  following:  — 

"  From  the  old  brown  portfolio.    Presented  to  Parr  as  an  Epitaph,  December  21, 1799. 

.'•  Here  lies  our  honest  friend  Sam  Parr: 
A  better  man  than  most  men  are. 
Sn  [earned,  he  could  well  dispense 
Sometimes  with  merely  common  sense: 
So  voluble,  <<>  eloquent, 
You  little  needed  what  he  meant: 
So  generous,  he  could  spare  a  word 
To  throw  at  Warburton  or  Hurd: 
S'>  loving, every  village  maid 
Sought  his  caresses,  though  afraid." 

t  August,  1832. 


JET. 


20.]  DOCTOR   PARR.  73 


brother.  Never  could  there  be  a  vainer  man  than  the  one,  or  a 
prouder  man  than  the  other  :  the  comic  part  of  the  same  selfish  pas- 
sion, and  the  tragic.  Both  demanded  admiration, —  the  Doctor  of 
His  wig,  his  cassock,  the  silk  frogs  on  his  new  coat ;  Walter  of  his 
very  questionable  jests  recommended  by  a  loud  laugh.  Both  were 
very  delightful  when  in  good  humor,  and  dangerously  offensive  when 
displeased.  Mr.  De  Quincey  represents  the  Doctor  as  talking  gross 
nonsense ;  and  so  he  often  did.  But  then,  at  other  times,  his  con- 
versation was  the  most  eloquent  and  abundant  in  charming  imagery 
that  it  has  ever  been  my  fortune  to  hear.*  Both  resented  the  slight- 
est appearance  of  disrespect :  but  Parr  was  much  the  most  placable 
and  willing  to  be  reconciled.  Mr.  De  Quincey  should  have  recorded 
his  warm-hearted  sincerity  in  friendship,  which  hardly  failed  when 
friendship  had  become  not  only  dangerous  but  discreditable.  Per- 
haps you  would  have  thought  that  my  brother  excelled  in  genius, 
imagination,  power,  and  variety,  when  at  his  best,  as  much  as  Parr 
exceeded  him  in  all  kinds  of  acquired  knowledge.  There  was  the 
same  resemblance  in  the  warmth  of  their  love  and  hatred ;  but  Parr's 
love  lasted  the  longest,  and  so  did  Walter's  hatred.  It  would  be  im- 
possible to  determine  which  of  them  hated  one  particular  connection 
the  most ;  nor  whether  either  had  ever  hated  any  one  else  so  much. 
Beside  the  great  difference  in  the  age  of  these  competitors  (Walter 
was  twenty-three  at  the  publication  of  Gebir,  and  Parr  fifty-one),  and, 
at  that  time,  of  reputation,  I  think  that  they  were  kept  from  quarrels 
by  mutual  respect,  by  something  like  awe  of  each  other's  temper, 
and  a  knowledge  that,  if  war  began  at  all,  it  must  be  to  the  knife. 
"  It  would  be  great  impertinence  in  me,"  Mr.  Landor  adds,  "  if  any 
opinions  were  offered  here  on  the  Doctor's  literary  pretensions.  But 
surely  the  pretensions  of  a  writer  and  reasoner  familiar,  during  many 
years,  with  Charles  Fox,  James  Mackintosh,  Bobus  Smith,  Richard 
Sharp,  Samuel  Rogers,  and  other  distinguished  people,  could  hardly 
have  been  so  contemptible  as  it  is  now  the  fashion  to  suppose.  I  say 
this,  though  he  once  treated  me  more  offensively  than  any  one  else 
ever  did." 

The  correspondence  of  Parr  and  Landor,  while  the  latter  was  still 
at  Oxford,  has  been  mentioned  in  a  preceding  page ;  f  ana<  such  of 
Parr's  later  letters  as  I  possess,  with  one  or  two  of  Landor's,  though 
of  not  much  moment  in  themselves  and  but  a  fragment  of  what 
passed  between  them,  will  show  well  enough,  as  I  quote  them  from 
time  to  time  in  my  memoir,  the  character  of  their  intercourse.  Gebir, 
as  soon  as  published,  found  its  way  to  Hatton,  with  a  letter  in  which 
the  writer  told  Parr  that,  however  proud  and  presumptuous  he  might 
have  shown  himself  in  the  effort  he  had  made,  he  rather  thought  that 
during  the  time  the  Doctor  was  reading  and  examining  it  he  should 
himself  be  undergoing  much  the  same  sensation  as  the  unfortunate 

*  This  is  entirely  borne  out  by  the  account  of  William  Taylor,  of  Norwich, 
t  Ante,  p.  25. 


74  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  i79°7°-K^s'. 

Polydorus,  while  his  tomb,  new  turfed  and  spruce  and  flourishing, 
was  plucked  for  a  sacrifice  to  ^Fmeas.  But  the  Doctor's  weak  point 
was  poetry ;  his  taste  in  that  respect  was  "  Bromwychian,"  as  Can- 
dor described  it  to  Southey  ;  and  the  poem  awakened  little  interest 
in  him  till  it  appeared  in  its  Latin  form.  Yet  was  he  swift  to  recog- 
nize a  rigor  and  animation  in  his  young  friend's  mode  of  writing, 
whether  verse  or  prose,  which  he  knew  to  be  out  of  the  common  at 
that  time  ;  and  with  amusing  eagerness  he  did  his  best  to  eidist  him 
on  Fox's  side  in  the  strife  of  politics  and  papers  then  raging. 

The  share  that  Coleridge  and  Southey  had  in  that  memorable 
strife  is  well  known,  and  even  Lloyd  and  Lamb  were  taking  part  with 
their  puns  and  pleasantries.  They  had,  all  of  them,  engagements  on 
the  Courier  or  on  the  Morning  Post;  Dan  Stewart,  Mackintosh's 
brother-in-law,  of  whom  Lamb  has  left  a  whimsical  sketch,  being 
Magnus  Apollo  at  the  Post,  and  exercising  at  the  Courier  also  not  a 
little  of  the  influence  which  he  handed  over  a  few  years  later  to 
Coleridge.  But  very  different  was  Lanylor's  position  from  theirs. 
Those  were  days  when  Southey  would  often  walk  the  street  dinner- 
less  at  dinner-time,  without  a  shilling  in  his  pocket  for  the  ordinary, 
or  for  bread  and  cheese  at  his  lodgings  ;  when  he  and  Coleridge  were 
content  with  Dan  Stewart's  guinea  a  week;  and  when  he  thought  it 
"  not  amiss,"  as  he  tells  his  brother  Tom,  by  eight  months'  contribut- 
ing to  monthly  magazines  and  reviews,  to  make  as  much  as  seven 
pounds  and  two  pairs  of  breeches.  Landor's  bread  and  cheese  and 
breeches  were  found  for  him.  He  was  not  a  hired  soldier,  but  a 
volunteer ;  and  seems  never  to  have  sought  acquaintance  with  the 
regular  rank  and  file.  His  contributions,  chiefly  to  the  Courier, 
were  in  the  form  of  letters  with  or  without  his  name  ;  and  though  as 
fierce  against  Pitt  and  the  war  party  as  even  Pair  could  desire,  they 
had  an  awkward  trick  of  bolting  out  of  the  Fox  preserves  and  run- 
ning after  game  that  was  more  to  the  writer's  liking.  For  a  time, 
nevertheless,  Parr  ajmears  to  have  kept  him  within  bounds,  by  the 
help  mainly  of  Fox's  fidus  Achates  Robert  Adair. 

Several  of  Adair's  letters  to  Landor  are  before  me,  between  the 
dates  of  1800  and  180G.  They  show  what  difficulty  Pair  had  in  bring- 
ing them  together  ;  what  a  shrewd  opinion  of  Landor's  possible  value 
in  the  press  Adair  formed  at  once ;  how  willing  he  was  to  overlook 
even  such  Anti-Whig  heresies  as  Landor's  dislike  of  William  the  de- 
liverer ;  and  what  pains  were  taken  to  put  so  clever  a  fellow  in  the 
proper  way.  lie  and  Adair  would  meet  at  Debrett's,  in  Piccadilly, 
and  go  down  together  to  the  House  of  Commons,  "the  most  costly 
exhibition  in  Europe,"  as  Landor  amused  Adair  by  calling  it  ;  and 
ultimately  it  was  so  arranged  that  access  to  the  reporters'  gallery 
should  generally  be  open  to  him.  They  were  present  together, 
among  other  occasions,  at  the  stormy  debate  of  that  March  night  of 
1801  when  Lord  Castlereagh  brought  in  his  bill  to  prolong  the  act 
enabling  the  Lord-Lieutenant    to   put    Ireland    under    martial    law. 


JET.  22-30.]  DOCTOR    PARR.  75 

Landor  meanwhile  was  busy  with  his  pen  against  Pitt  and  the  Minis- 
try. He  would  send  letters  for  Adair's  approval,  seldom  satisfied 
with  them  himself ;  whereas  Adair  only  admitted  his  right  to  under- 
value such  compositions  on  the  ground  that  rich  men  might  be  al- 
lowed to  be  prodigal,  and  to  scatter  about  their  liberalities  without 
too  severely  reckoning  up  the  amount  of  them.  When  Landor  was 
absent  from  London,  too,  I  find  Adair  making  it  his  business  to  ex- 
amine back  files  of  the  Courier  to  see  if  a  particular  letter  of  his  had 
been  given  ;  writing  to  him  that  he  considers  its  omission  to  be  evi- 
dence of  the  degraded  state  of  the  English  press  ;  exceptir^  Mr. 
Perry  from  this  remark,  as  a  man  of  inviolable  honor  ;  and  promising 
Landor  better  treatment  at  the  Morning  Chronicle,  if  he  will  but 
consent  to  contribute  to  that  paper. 

Adair  had  some  cause  for  his  bitterness  about  the  press,  the  Anti- 
Jacohin  having;  singled  him  out  for  a  succession  of  its  most  scurrilous 
jokes,  and  the  ministerial  papers  ever  since  keeping  up  the  merciless 
battery.  He  had  in  truth  become  a  special  mark  for  them  by  exactly 
such  service  to  the  other  party  as  he  was  now  trying  to  render  in  the 
instance  of  Landor  ;  his  appearance  in  the  reporters'  gallery  among 
the  press-men,  or  his  introduction  of  some  new  pamphleteer  to  Ridg- 
way  or  Debrett,  being  frequent  subjects  of  derision  with  Ellis,  Frere, 
and  Canning. 

"  I  whom,  dear  Fox,  you  condescend 
To  call  your  honorable  friend, 

Shall  live  for  everlasting: 
The  Stygian  gallery  I  '11  quit, 
Where  printers  crowd  me  as  I  sit 

Half  dead  with  rage  and  fasting. 
Scotch,  English,  Irish  Whigs  shall  read 
The  pamphlets,  letters,  odes  /  breed, 

Charmed  with  each  bright  endeavor,  — 
Alarmists  tremble  at  my  strain, 
E'en  Pitt,  made  candid  by  champagne, 

Shall  hail  Adair  the  clever." 

The  same  laugh  at  his  pretensions  and  taste  in  letters  is  in  Canning's 
Counter-Epistle. 

"  Or  art  thou  one,  the  party's  flattered  fool, 
Trained  in  Debrett's  or  Ridgway's  civic  school, 
Who  sees  nor  taste  nor  genius  in  these  times 
Save  Parr's  buzz  prose  —  " 

and  in  his  Oriental  letter  from  "  Bauba-Dara-Adul-Phoola,"  the  same 
unscrupulous  wit,  showing  what  scant  accommodation  might  suffice 
for  a  brace  of  Whig  bedfellows,  again  coupled  Adair *  and  Parr. 

"  There  was  great  Dr.  Parr,  whom  we  style  Bellendenus: 
The  Doctor  and  I  have  a  hammock  between  us." 

*  But  this  was  the  kind  of  thing  that  in  those  days  all  had  to  expect 
who  set  themselves  resolutely  against  the  "  drunken  democracy  of 
Mr.  William  Pitt,"  as  Landor  not  inaptly  christened  the  Anti-Gallican 
frenzy.     He  had  soon   to    encounter  it  in  his   own  person.      "  The 

*  "  Bauba-Dara-Adul-Phoola"  is  of  course  "  Bob  Adair,  a  dull  fool." 


7G  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  ^'-'is": 

A iiti- Jacobin,'"*  he  wrote  to  Parr,  "has  assailed  mc  with  much  viru- 
lence,—  I  am  a  coward  and  a  profligate.  On  the  latter  expression, 
as  I  know  not  the  meaning  of  it,  I  shall  be  silent.  The  former  is  a 
plain  intelligible  word  :  and  if  I  discover  the  person  who  has  made 
this  application  of  it,  1  will  give  him  some  documents  that  shall  en- 
lighten his  judgment  at  the  expense  of  liis  skin.  Could  you  imagine 
it?  You  also  are  mentioned  with  a  proportionate  share  of  insolence. 
Let  them  pass.  Who  would  stop  a  cloud  that  overshadows  his  gar- 
den 1  The  cloud  is  transitory,  the  garden  blooms.  Thank  God,  I 
have  »  mind  more  alive  to  kindness  than  to  contumely.  The  statue 
of  Memnon  is  insensible  to  the  sands  that  blow  against  it,  but  answers 
in  a  tender  tone  to  the  first  touches  of  the  sun.  Come,  come,  let  me 
descend  from  these  clouds  and  this  romance,  at  which  you  will  laugh 
most  heartily,  and  quote  in  my  favor  the  example  of  Mr.  Lemuel 
Gulliver  who,  when  the  Liliputians  climbed  and  crept  over  him,  for- 
bore that  contention  which  a  more  equal  or  a  more  formidable  enemy 
would  have  aroused."  "We  have,  nevertheless,  now  to  show  how  weak 
was  Mr.  Gulliver's  deterring  example,  and  how  little  formidable  after 
all  was  the  enemy  by  whose  censure  the  young  poet  could  be  moved 
to  resentment  and  reply. 


IV.  ATTACK  OF  THE  MONTHLY  REVIEW. 

At  the  20Gth  page  of  the  thirty-first  volume  of  the  Monthly  Review, 
published  in  1800,  will  be  found  the  following  :  — 

"  Gebir. 

"An  unpractised  author  has  attempted,  in  this  poem,  the  difficult  task 
of  relating  a  romantic  story  in  blank  verse.  His  performance  betrays  all 
the  incorrectness  and  abruptness  of  inexperience,  but  it  manifests  occasion- 
ally some  talent,  for  description.  He  has  fallen  into  the  common  error  of 
those  who  aspire  to  the  composition  of  blank  verse,  by  borrowing  too 
many  phrases  and  epithets  from  our  incomparable  Milton.  We  must  fur- 
ther observe  that  the  story  is  told  very  obscurely,  and  should  have  been 
assisted  by  an  Argument  in  prose.  Young  writers  are  often  astonished  to 
find  that  passages,  which  seem  very  clear  to  their  own  heated  imagina- 
tions, appear  very  dark  to  their  readers.  The  author  of  the  poem  before 
us  may  produce  something  worthy  of  more  approbation,  if  he  will  lahor 
hard,  and  delay  for  a  few  years  the  publication  of  his  next  performance." 

Exactly  so.  An  ordinary  reviewer  cannot  help  this  sort  of  thing 
when  an  original  book  falls  in  his  way  ;  and  Land  or,  who  had  pro- 
fessed his  readiness  to  he  content  with  less  than  a  dozen  admirers  if 
they  were  but  of  the  worthiest,  might  very  well  have  smiled  at  this 
harmless  review.     Not  small,   indeed,   was  his   amusement    in   later* 

*  Tils';  was  not  Canning's  Anti-Jncnbin  and  iYi'elti/  Examiner,  but  its  successor,  the 
Anti-Jacobin  Review  and  Magazine:  tin-  sunn'  that  libelled  Southey,  Coleridge,  Lloyd, 
and  Lamb,  in  the  "  toad-and-frog  "  caricature,  and  which  is  generally  confounded  with 
its  hardly  mure  respectable  parent  and  predecessor. 


;et.  22-30.] 


ATTACK    OF    THE    MONTHLY    REVIEW.  77 


years  at  precisely  such  critical  effusions  ;  when  he  wcmld  picture  him- 
self watching  the  appearance  of  a  first-rate  book  as  the  rarest  of  all 
occurrences,  and  laugh  at  ordinary  people's  ways  in  slowly  rising  up 
to  the  unaccustomed  visitor.  They  were  like  nothing  so  much,  he 
said,  as  carp  in  a  pond  when  food  is  thrown  in  :  some  snatching 
suddenly  at  a  morsel  and  swallowing  it ;  others  with  their  barb  gently 
touching  it  and  passing  it  by ;  others  more  disdainfully  wriggling  and 
rubbing  against  it ;  and  others,  in  sober  truth,  such  as  our  friend 
here  of  the  Monthly,  in  a  genuine  and  puzzled  ignorance  what  to 
make  of  it,  "  swimming  round  and  round  it,  eying  it  on  the  sunny 
side,  eying  it  on  the  shady,  approaching  it,  questioning  it,  shoulder- 
ing it,  flapping  it  with  the  tail,  turning  it  over,  looking  askance  at  it, 
taking  a  pea-shell  or  a  worm  instead  of  it,  and  plunging  again  their 
heads  into  the  comfortable  mud." 

In  his  own  comfortable  mud,  however,  the  reviewer  was  not  to  be 
left  on  this  particular  occasion.  Landor  resolved  to  drag  him  forth 
and  punish  him,  and  with  this  view  planned  a  Prose  Postscript  to 
Gehir.  This  was  a  wonderful  production  of  its  kind  :  impressed  with 
character,  impetuous,  scornful,  eloquent,  confident ;  sparkling  with 
turns  of  wit  and  with  bright  fancies  ;  critical  in  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
replete  with  other  scholarship,  particularly  of  good  old  English  :  but 
withal  so  personal,  and  so  vehemently  as  well  as  (if  it  must  be  said) 
coarsely  wrong  in  many  ways,  that  for  Landor  it  must  be  esteemed  a 
fortunate  occurrence  that  before  the  final  step  was  taken  with  it  a 
friendly  judgment  should  have  interposed.  It  was  suppressed  ;  but, 
finding  it  among  his  papers,  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  give  such  portions 
of  it  here  as  may  now  with  propriety  be  preserved.  Some  touches  in 
it  personal  to  himself  are  full  of  value  ;  and  it  is  remarkable  for  the 
complete  promise  it  gives  thus  early  of  what  was  ultimately  to  place 
him  in  so  high  a  rank  among  writers  of  English  prose. 

He  preaches  from  a  peaceful  text,  as  men  bent  upon  war  are  apt  to 
do,  prefixing  a  sentence  from  one  of  the  letters  of  Linnajus  to  Grono- 
vius  :  "  Ego  potius  tranqiiille  vivere  desidero  quam  ab  adversariis 
victorias  et  tropsea  reportare  "  :  the  adversaries  from  whom,  after  this 
self-deirying  ordinance,  he  straightway  proceeds  to  pluck  their  trophies 
and  victories,  being  it  should  be  premised  not  alone  the  Monthly 
Reviewers,  and  prominently  among  them  a  certain  Mr.  Pybus  who 
had  dabbled  in  verse  and  was  siipposed  to  have  written  the  offending 
notice,  but  also  the  Anti-Jacobins  and  their  allies,  including  Mr.  Isaac 
DTsraeli  who  was  just  then  coming  up,  Mr.  Mathias  of  surprisingly 
absurd  reputation,  and  some  others. 

The  Anti-Jacobins  and  the  general  character  of  their  literature  were 
'  well  sketched  at  the  opening.  "  Gehir  in  different  quarters,"  he  says, 
"  has  been  differently  received.  I  allude  not  to  those  loyal  critics, 
who,  recently  mounted  on  their  city  war-horse,  having  borrowed  the 
portly  boots  and  refurbished  the  full-bottomed  perukes  of  the  ancient 
French  chevaliers,  are  foremost  to  oppose  the  return  of  that  traitor, 


78  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  17°?°^ 

whom  while  he  was  amongst  them  Englishmen  called  Freedom,  but 
now  they  have  expelled  him,  Anarchy  :  since  the  very  first  Reviews 
of  this  association  were  instituted,  not  merely  fur  parade,  but  for 
hostility  ;  not  for  exercise,  correctness,  and  precision,  but,  so  adven- 
turous and  impetuous  were  the  conscripts,  for  actual  and  immediate 
battle." 

To  the  Critical  and  Monthly,  as  being  of  the  old  establishment,  he 
passes  next,  and  refers  gratefully  to  the  notice  by  Southey,  ignorant 
still  of  his  name.  "  In  respect  to  Gebir  the  one  is  perhaps  conducted 
by  a  partial,  but  certainly  by  a  masterly  hand.  It  objects,  and  indeed 
with  reason,  to  a  temporary  and  local  obscurity,  which  I  have  not 
been  able,  or  I  have  not  been  willing,  or  I  have  not  been  bold  enough, 
to  remove  :  but  never  on  the  whole,  since  its  first  institution,  lias  a 
poem  been  more  warmly  praised."  Turning  then  to  the  Monthly,  he 
describes  it  as  consisting  of  two  misstatements  :  "  that  the  poem  was 
nothing  more  than  the  version  of  an  Arabic  tale  ;  and  that  the 
ant  ho)-,  not  content  with  borrowing  the  expressions,  had  made  the 
most  awkward  attempts  to  imitate  the  phraseology  of  Milton."  To 
which  he  replies,  that  there  is  not  a  single  sentence  in  the  poem  nor 
a  single  sentiment  in  common  with  the  Arabian  tale.  Some  charac- 
ters were  drawn  more  at  large,  some  were  brought  out  more  promi- 
nently, and  several  were  added.  He  had  not  changed  the  scene, 
which  would  have  distorted  the  piece  ;  but  every  line  of  appropriate 
description,  and  every  shade  of  peculiar  manners,  were  originally  and 
entirely  his  own.  Thus,  whether  "this  gentleman"  had  read  the 
poem  or  not,  and  whether  he  bad  read  the  romance  or  not,  his 
account  equally  was  false  and  malicious.  "For  the  romance  is  in 
English,  therefore  he  could  have  read  it ;  the  poem  is  in  English,  and 
therefore  he  could  have  compared  it.  There  is  no  disgrace  in  omit- 
ting to  read  them  :  the  disgrace  is,  either  in  pretending  to  have  done 
what,  he  had  not  done,  or  in  assuming  a  part  which  he  was  incompe- 
tent to  support." 

And  there  was  a  further  and  worse  disgrace,  which  Landor  ingen- 
iously fixes  on  his  reviewer  as  an  inference  from  the  charge  against 
himself  of  having  borrowed  Milton's  epithets  and  phrases.  "  There  is 
a  disgrace  in  omitting  to  read  Milton;  there  is  a  disgrace  in  forget- 
ting him."  Thus  early  had  taken  root  in  his  mind  that  profound 
veneration  for  the  most  majestic  of  English  poets  which  steadily 
attended  him  without  abatement  to  the  close  of  life,  and  which,  as  it 
or  falls  in  England,  may  lie  taken  as  no  indifferent  or  inexact 
measure  of  value  as  well  in  poetry  as  in  the  taste  for  it.  How  could 
this  critic  possibly  have  read  or  remembered  Milton,  says  Landor, 
when  he  accuses  me  "f  borrowing  his  expressions  I  "  I  challenge  him 
to  produce  them.  If  indeed  I  had  borrowed  them,  so  little  should  I 
have  realized  by  the  dangerous  and  wild  speculation,  that  1  might 
have  composed  a  better  poem  and  not  have  been  a  better  poet.  But 
I  feared  to  break  open,  for  the  supply  of  my  games  or  for  the  main- 


JET.  22-30.]  ATTACK    OF    THE    MONTHLY    REVIEW.  79 

tenance  of  my  veteran  heroes,  the  sacred  treasury  of  the  great  repub- 
lican." Well,  but  if  you  had,  some  one  still  might  ask,  where  would 
have  been  the  crime  or  the  harm ;  and  why  assail  this  critic,  who 
may  be  paying  you  a  compliment  after  all  ]  Yes,  rejoins  Landor,  if 
my  vanity  could  stoop  so  low  and  live  on  so  little ;  but  I  have  to 
add,  "  for  the  information  of  my  young  opponent,  what  a  more  care- 
ful man  would  conceal,  and  what  in  his  present  distress  will  relieve 
him  greatly,  that  this,  which  among  the  vulgar  and  thoughtless 
might  currently  pass  for  praise,  is  really  none  at  all.  For  the  lan- 
guage of  Paradise  Lost  ought  not  to  be  the  language  of  Gebir.  There 
should  be  the  softened  air  of  remote  antiquity,  not  the  severe  air  of 
unapproachable  sanctity.  I  devoutly  offer  up  my  incense  at  the 
shrine  of  Milton.  Woe  betide  the  intruder  that  would  steal  its 
jewels !  It  requires  no  miracle  to  detect  the  sacrilege.  The  crime 
will  be  found  its  punishment.  The  venerable  saints,  and  still  more 
holy  personages,  of  Raphael  or  Michael  Angelo,  might  as  consistently 
be  placed  among  the  Bacchanals  and  Satyrs,  bestriding  the  goats  and 
bearing  the  vases  of  Poussin,  as  the  resemblance  of  that  poem,  or  any 
of  its  component  parts,  could  be  introduced  in  mine."  Nothing  could 
be  better  said  than  that. 

Full  of  character,  too,  are  the  sentences  that  follow,  showing  the 
writer  at  the  outset  of  his  life  just  as  he  was  to  its  close.  With  an 
amusing  self-consciousness  and  confidence  which  he  would  be  a  poor 
observer  who  should  describe  as  vanity,  he  calmly  tells  his  reviewer 
how  it  was  that  such  review-writers  as  he  is  cannot  help  the  dull  mis- 
takes they  make,  and  winds  up  his  lesson  with  an  offer  exactly  pre- 
figuring that  with  which  he  startled  the  reviewing  world  twenty-five 
years  later,  when  he  promised  a  hot  penny-roll  and  a  pint  of  stout  for 
breakfast  to  any  critic  who  could  show  himself  capable  of  writing  a 
dialogue  equal  to  the  worst  of  his  Imaginary  Conversations.* 

"  I  have  avoided  high-sounding  words.  I  have  attempted  to  throw  back 
the  gross  materials,  and  to  bring  the  figures  forward.  I  knew  beforehand 
the  blame  that  I  should  incur.  I  knew  that  people  would  cry  out :  '  Your 
burden  was  so  light,  we  could  hardly  hear  you  breathe ;  pray  where  is  your 
merit  ?  '  For  there  are  few  who  seem  thoroughly  acquainted  with  this  plain 
and  simple  truth,  that  it  is  easier  to  elevate  the  empty  than  to  support  the 
full.  I  also  knew  the  body  of  my  wine,  and  that  years  must  pass  over  it 
before  it  would  reach  its  relish.  Some  will  think  me  intoxicated,  and  most 
will  misconstrue  my  good-nature,  if  I  invite  the  Reviewer,  or  any  other 
friend  that  he  will  introduce,  —  but  himself  the  most  earnestly,  as  I  suspect 
from  his  manner  that  he  poetizes,—  to  an  amicable  trial  of  skill.  I  will 
subject  myself  to  any  penalty,  either  of  writing  or  of  ceasing  to  write,  if  the 

*  Even  when  writing  his  boyish  "  Moral  Epistle,"  there  was  the  same  amusing  self- 
confidence;  some  capital  couplets  at  the  close  of  that  satire,  in  which  the  patriots  Par- 
ham  and  Shippen  are  celebrated,  closing  with  a  promise  to  them  that  each  should, be 
immortal ;  but  that  if  any  accident  should  prevent  it,  they  were  neveVtheless  to  lie 
tranquil  in  their  tombs  and  say:  — 

"  Ye  Powers 
Of  Darkness !  it  is  Landok's  fault,  not  ours !  " 


80  GEBIR  I    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  KS°^- 

author,  who  criticises  with  the  Mightiness  of  a  poet,  will  assume  that  charac- 
ter at  once,  ami  taking  in  series  my  twenty  worst  verses,  write  better  an 
equal  number  in  the  period  of  twenty  years.  I  shall  be  rejoiced  if  he  will 
open  to  me  any  poems  of  my  contemporaries,  of  my  English  contemporaries 
I  mean,  and  point  out  three  pages  more  spirited,  I  will  venture  to  add 
more  classical,  than  the  three  least  happy  and  least  accurate  in  Gelir." 

Well  :  shall  wc  be  angry  at  this  1  There  is  a  remark  of  Doctor 
Johnson's  on  the  most  affecting  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  —  where  he 
says  the  characters  of  that  poet,  however  distressed,  have  always  a 
conceit  left  them  in  their  misery,  "  a  miserable  conceit," —  which  has 
probably  suggested  to  many  a  humane  reader  that  if  a  conceit  should 
be  all  that  is  left  to  poor  misery,  it  might  be  hard  at  least  to  grudge 
it  that.  One  would  in  like  manner  say,  that  if  a  poet  distressed  by 
want  of  readers  should  comfort  his  loneliness  with  a  trifle  of  self- 
praise,  it  can  be  hardly  worth  while  to  punish  him  for  it,  Vanity  in 
the  vulgar  sense,  bred  of  abundance  of  worshippers  and  of  the  fumes 
of  perpetual  incense,  it  undoubtedly  is  not  ;  and  with  a  somewhat 
touching  sense  of  what  it  really  is,  Landor  follows  up  the  remark  just 
quoted  :  pleading  with  simplicity  the  precedent  of  contenders  for  a 
prize  in  old  Greek  days,  and  saying  that  if  others  would  have  spoken 
for  him,  he  should  himself  have  been  silent.  He  describes  the  cir- 
cumstances and  way  in  which  Gebir  was  written,  and  refers  to  the 
earlier  poems  published  by  him  on  leaving  Oxford.  The  passage  has 
the  interest  of  autobiography,  and  all  of  it  is  worth  preservation. 

"  Many  will  think  that  I  should  have  suppressed  what  I  have  said  ;  but 
let  them  recollect  that  among  those  ancient  poets  who  contended  for  the 
public  prize,  each  must  not  only  have  formed  the  same  determination  (for 
defects  are  not  usually  compared  with  defects,  but  are  generally  contrasted 
with  beauties),  but  have  actually  engaged,  and  that  too  more  openly  and 
personally,  in  a  still  more  strenuous  competition.  If  my  rights  had  not  been 
refused  me,  I  should  not  have  asserted  my  claims.  Rambling  by  the  side  of 
the  sea,  or  resting  on  the  top  of  a  mountain,  and  interlining  with  verses 
the  letters  of  my  friends,  I  sometimes  thought  how  a  Grecian  would  have 
written,  hut  never  what  methods  he  would  take  to  compass  popularity. 
The  nearer  I  approached  him,  though  distant  still,  the  more  I  was  delighted. 

I  may  add, 

'  0  bolle  agli  oeclu  miei  tende  latinel 
Aura  spira  da  voi  che  mi  ricrea, 
E  mi  con  fort  a  pur  die  m'awicine  ' 

Tasso,  Gems.  Liberata. 

Several  of  these  sketches  were  obliterated,  still  more  laid  aside  and  lost; 
vari<  us  ideas  I  permitted  to  pass  away,  unwilling  to  disturb  by  the  slightest 
action  the  dreams  of  reposing  fancy.  So  little  was  I  anxious  to  publish 
my  rhapsodies,  that  I  never  sat  down  in  the  house  an  hour  at  once  for  the 
purpose  of  composition.  Instead  of  making,  or  inviting,  courtship,  1  de- 
clared with  how  little  1  should  resl  contented.  Far  from  soliciting  the  atten- 
tion of  those,  who  are  passing  by,  Gebir  is  con  lined,  1  believe,  to  the  shop  of 
cue  bookseller,  and  1  never  beard  that  he  had  even  made  his  appearance  at 
the  window.  I  understand  nol  the  management  of  those  matters,  but  I  lind 
that  the  writing  of  a  book  is  the  least  that  an  author  has  to  do.     My  ex- 


JET.  22-30.]  ATTACK    OF    THE    MONTHLY    REVIEW.  81 

perience  has  not  been  great ;  and  the  caution  which  it  has  taught  me  lies 
entirely  on  the  other  side  of  publication.  Before  I  was  twenty  years  of 
age  I  had  imprudently  sent  into  the  world  a  volume  *  of  which  I  was  soon 
ashamed.  It  everywhere  met  with  as  much  commendation  as  was  proper, 
and  generally  more.  For,  though  the  structure  was  feeble,  the  lines  were 
fluent ;  the  rhymes  showed  habitual  ease,  and  the  personifications  fashion- 
able taste.  I  suffered  any  of  my  heroes,  the  greater  part  of  whom  were 
of  a  gentle  kind,  to  look  on  one  side  through  the  eye  of  Pity,  on  the  other 
through  that  of  Love ;  and  it  was  with  great  delight,  for  I  could  not  fore- 
see the  consequences,  that  I  heard  them  speak  or  sing  with  the  lips  of 
soft  Persuasion.  So  early  in  life  I  had  not  discovered  the  error  into  which 
we  were  drawn  by  the  Wartons.  I  was  then  in  raptures  with  what  I  now 
despise.  I  am  far  from  the  expectation,  or  the  hope,  that  these  deciduous 
shoots  will  be  supported  by  the  ivy  of  my  maturer  years." 

Then  succeed  passages  not  less  calling  for  suppression  now  than 
when  originally  written  ;  but  connected  with  others  in  which  the  style 
of  reviewing  then  prevalent,  and  not  excused  by  any  special  capacity 
in  the  reviewers,  is  condemned  too  characteristically  not  to  be  worth 
preservation.  For,  though  wit  and  invective  are  here  also  used  un- 
sparingly, what  is  said  to  the  critic  on  the  author's  behalf  is  a  thing 
not  too  often  remembered,  and  very  often  much  needed  to  be  said. 
Certainly  the  best  critic  will  be  least  disposed  to  object  to  it.  The 
remarks  are  introduced  by  an  apology  for  the  haste  and  incorrectness 
with  which  Gebir  had  been  printed. 

"  Still  there  was  nothing  to  authorize  the  impertinence  with  which  the 
publication  was  treated  by  the  Monthly  reviewer.  These  are  not  the 
faults  which  he  complains  of;  though  these  might,  without  his  conscious- 
ness, have  first  occasioned  his  ill-humor.  I  pity  his  want  of  abilities,  and  I 
pardon  his  excess  of  insolence.  The  merit  is  by  no  means  small  of  a  critic 
who  speaks  with  modesty.  For  his  time  being  chiefly  occupied,  at  first,  in 
works  fundamentally  critical,  at  least  if  we  suppose  him  desirous  to  learn 
before  he  is  ambitious  to  teach,  he  thinks,  when  he  has  attained  their  ex- 
pressions and  brevity,  he  has  attained  their  solidity  and  profoundness.  He 
must  surely  be  above  what  he  measures,  else  how  can  he  measure  with 
exactness  ?  He  must  be  greater  ex  officio  than  the  person  he  brings  before 
him ;  else  how  can  he  stigmatize  with  censure,  or  even  dismiss  with 
praise  ?  " 

But  how  if  he  should  not  be  all  this,  nor  have  learned  anything 
befoi-ehe  began  to  teach  everything  1  How  if  it  should  suffice  him, 
insect-like,  to  enclose  in  his  flimsy  web  what  he  would  be  hopeless  of 
reaching  in  its  flight  1  How  if  his  production,  too,  should  be  only 
after  the  kind  of  the  miserable  insect,  a  month  in  generating,  a  mo- 
ment in  existence  1 

"  Miserable  do  I  call  them  ?  Alas  for  the  wise  and  virtuous ;  alas  for 
human  nature  !  Though  Justice,  in  descending  on  the  world  again,  has 
given  it  a  partial  revolution,  so  that  some  who  were  in  sunshine  are  in 
shade, —  some  of  the  highest  and  most  prominent, —  yet,  when  I  cast  my 

*  See  ante,  p.  35. 
6 


82  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  w^lsSc 

eyes  immediately  around  me,  and  can  discern  what  passes  both  in  public  and 
in  private,  I  find  too  often  that  those  arc  the  least,  miserable  who  occasion 
the  most  misery.  For,  when  any  one  has  done  an  injury,  the  power  that 
enabled  him  to  do  it  comes  back  upon  the  mind,  and  fills  it  with  such  a  com- 
placency as  smooths  away  all  the  contrition  thai  the  action  of  this  injury 
would  have  left.     And  little  power  is  requisite  to  work  much  mischief." 

Some  personal  applications  follow,  rounded  off  by  a  passage  where 
the  wit  and  eloquence  are  at  least  as  conspicuous  as  the  bitterness. 

"  Flies  and  reviewers  fill  their,  bellies  while  they  irritate.  Both  of  them 
are  easily  crushed,  but  neither  of  them  easily  caught  They  lead  pleasant 
lives  in  their  season.  The  authors  who  can  come  into  a  share  of  a  monthly 
publication  are  happy  as  playwrights  who  manage  a  theatre,  or  as  debtors 
who  purchase  a  seat  in  our  excellent  House  of  Commons. 

'They  in  what  shape  they  choose, 
Dilated  or  condensed,  bright  or  obscure, 
Can  execute  their  airy  purposes, 
And  works  of  love  or  enmity  fulfil.' 

They  hunt  over  domains  more  extensive  than  their  own ;  trample  down 
fences  which  they  cannot  clear;  strip  off  the  buds  and  tear  away  the 
branches  of  all  the  most  promising  young  trees  that  happen  to  grow  in 
their  road;  plough  up  the  lawns  ;  muddy  the  waters;  and  when  they  re- 
turn benighted  home  again,  carouse  on  reciprocal  flattery.  Men  of  genius, 
on  the  contrary,  may  be  compared  to  those  druidical  monument-,  stately 
and  solitary,  reared  amidst  barrenness,  exposed  to  all  weather,  unimpaired, 
unaltered,  which  a  chdd  perhaps  may  move,  but  which  not  a  giant  can 
take  down." 

The  manuscript  closes  with  a  comment  on  the  reviewer's  charge  of 
" borrowing,"  interesting  for  its  evidence  of  Landors  literary  reading 
thus  early.  Particularly  should  evidence  and  instances  be  adduced, 
he  remarks,  where  accusations  of  plagiarism  are  preferred  ;  for  the  gen- 
eral charge  can  be  almost  always  made  excuse  for  ignorance  and  malice. 
"  Plagiarism,  imitation,  and  allusion,  three  shades  that  soften  from 
blackness  into  beauty,  are  by  the  glaring  eye  of  the  malevolent 
blended  into  one."  Yet  how  different  they  are,  he  has  as  little  diffi- 
culty in  showing  as  in  demonstrating  the  Spartan  character  of  even 
the  blackest  of  the  three.  You  are  punished,  not  because  you 
steal,  but  because  you  are  detected,  through  want  of  spirit  and  ad- 
dress in  carrying  off  your  booty.  Some  of  his  illustrations  are  excel- 
lent, and  were  new  to  me. 

In  connection  with  the  passage  from  Montaigne,  for  example, 
which  represents  the  goose  arguing  after  his  fashion  :  "All  the  parts 
of  the  universe  I  have  an  interest  in  :  I  have  advantage  by  the  winds, 
and  convenience  by  the  waters :  the  earth  serves  me  to  walk  upon, 
the  sun  to  light  me,  the  sky  to  cover  me  :  I  am  the  darling  of 
nature;  and  is  it  not  man  that  treats,  lodges,  and  serves  me!"* 

*  The  passage  is  in  the  12th  chapter  of  the  2d  book  of  the  Essays,  and  will  be  found 
in  Cotton,  II.  348. 


MT.  22-30]  ATTACK    OF    THE   MONTHLY    EEVIEW.  83 

—  he  places  two  couplets  by  Pope,  taken  from  the  first  and  the 
third  epistle  of  the  Essay  on  Man :  the  ai't  of  the  plagiarism  con- 
sisting in  the  different  application  made  of  the  several  parts  of  the 

original. 

"  Seas  roll  to  waft  me,  suns  to  light  me  rise, 
My  footstool  earth,  my  canopy  the  skies." 

"  While  man  exclaims,  '  See  all  things  for  my  use ' : 
'  See  man  for  mine,'  replies  a  pampered  goose." 

Beside  the  famous  lines  on  Addison,  too,  — 

"  Damn  with  faint  praise,  assent  with  civil  leer, 
And,  without  sneering,  teach  the  rest  to  sneer,"  — 

he  places  this  capital  passage  out  of  a  personification  of  Envy,  from 
"  a  poet  seldom  read,  though  of  a  vigorous  mind  and  lively  imagina- 
tion," as  he  justly  characterizes  Phineas  Fletcher  :  — 

"  When  needs  he  must,  yet  faintly  then  he  praises, 
Somewhat  the  deed,  but  more  the  means,  he  raisej; 
So  marreth  what  he  makes,  and  praising  most  dispraises  " ; 

drawing  from  it  the  remark  that  if  Pope  had  scrupled  to  apply  to  his 
own  use  the  colors  thus  prepared  by  Fletcher,  he  might  have  failed 
in  the  exquisite  perfection  of  his  satire  ;  and  appending  this  further 
reflection,  that  the  lines  which  had  done  nothing  for  Fletcher's  fame 
had  thus  very  materially  helped  the  later  poet  to  his  happiest  piece, 
"  in  a  department  of  writing  where  he  adds  the  observation  of  Donne 
to  the  vivacity  of  Ariosto,  and  gives  to  the  sword  of  Juvenal  the 
point  of  Boileau." 

In  a  spirit  not  less  fair  or  discriminating  he  proceeds  to  say  of 
Addison,  in  his  double  character  of  essayist  and  poet,  that  even  in 
the  former,  where  indeed  he  is  perfectly  at  home,  there  is  often  more 
to  commend  in  the  cleanliness  of  his  dishes  than  in  the  flavor  of  his 
meat.  "  His  success,  like  that  of  most  men,  is  the  result  of  keeping 
within  the  scope  of  his  abilities.  He  had  wit,  yet  he  never  could 
have  been  a  Moliere ;  and  he  was  penetrating  in  inquiry  and 
skilful  in  argument,  yet  he  never  could  have  been  a  Beccaria.  He  is 
cool  and  dispassionate ;  he  is  therefore  a  good  observer  and  a  bad 
poet :  but  there  is  something,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  inexpressibly 
charming  in  the  manner  of  his  narration.  There  is  the  slyness 'of 
Cupid  and  the  sweetness  of  the  Graces."  Times  there  were  also, 
Landor  seems  to  have  thought,  when  there  was  the  slyness  without 
the  attractiveness.  He  takes  Pope's  side  in  their  quarrel ;  and  ex- 
presses surprise  that  while  Boileau  was  attacking,  in  Quinault  and 
others,  men  of  more  lively  fancy  than  his  own,  Pope  should  so  often 
have  been  content  to  place  himself  lower  than  Addison.  But  this 
reminds  him  again  of  his  own  Monthly  and  Anti-Jacobin  assailants, 
and  that  the  fashion  of  Pope's  day  had  mightily  altered  since. 

"  The  French  and  we  still  change;  but  here  's  the  curse, 
They  change  for  better,  and  we  change  for  worse." 


84  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  i797°*to£ 

Abroad,  continues  Landor,  poets  and  men  of  letters  support  even 
each  other's  imbecility  by  mutual  embraces,  while  we  waste  our  little 
strength  in  personal  animosities.     These  remarks  are  excellent  :  — 

'l  In  France  ami  Germany  men  of  talents  are  received  with  cordiality  by 
their  brethren.  In  England,  if  their  brethren  look  upon  them,  it  is  with  a 
grudging  eye;  as  upon  those  no  otherwise  connected  with  them  than  to 
share  their  fortune.  There,  it  is  thought  that  genius  and  wit  enhance  the 
national  glory.  In  England,  it  is  the  acquisition  of  sugar  and  slaves.  .  .  . 
Yet  in  England  too,  if  we  look  a  century  baek,  wre  shall  find  that  poetry 
in  particular,  while  it  was  current,  rose  marvellously  above  its  level.  In 
contemporary  authors  we  still  read  the  praises  of  Parnell,  of  Mallet,  of 
Ambrose  Phillips,  and  of  many  others  inferior  even  to  those;  and  John- 
son has  written  the  Lives  of  several  whose  productions  would  hardly  gain 
admittance  in  the  corner  of  a  provincial  newspaper.  Even  the  biographer 
himself,  who,  whatever  may  have  been  his  taste,  is  too  weighty  to  be 
easily  reprehended,  seems  often  to  rest  with  the  greatest  complacency  on 
poets  the  most  inelegant  and  feeble  ;  and  one  might  think  that,  in  his  esti- 
mation, Collins  and  Oray  are  no  higher  than  Addison  and  Pomfret." 

In  all  this  the  just  feeling  is  not  more  apparent  than  the  correct 
taste. 

But  there  is  little  more  to  praise.  I  will  take  only  another  sen- 
tence occurring  towards  the  close,  and  which  probably  led  to  the 
suppression  of  what  had  been  written  with  so  much  wise  pains  and 
foolish  anger.  After  attacking  Mr.  Mathias  and  (with  no  very 
evident  reason)  Mr.  D'Israeli,  he  speaks  of  the  latter  as  claiming  to 
be  descended  from  an  Italian  family,  and  adds  :  "  He  is  one  of  the 
children  of  Israel  nevertheless,  as  is  also  announced  by  the  name.* 
1  mark  this  circumstance  not  by  way  of  reproach,  for  in  the  number 
of  my  acquaintance  there  is  none  more  v  valuable,  there  is  not  one 
more  lively,  more  inquiring,  more  regular  ;  there  is  not  one  more  vir- 
tuous, more  beneficent,  more  liberal,  more  tender  m  heart  or  more 
true  in  friendship,  than  my  friend  Mocatta,  —  he  also  is  a  Jew."  It 
was  <>n  this  being  shown  to  Mr.  Mocatta  that  he  desired  to  read  the 
whole,  and  the  result  was  his  successful  appeal  to  Landor  that  it 
should  be  entirely  suppressed.  In  such  passages  as  I  have  now 
quoted  it  first  sees  the  light. 

A- letter  of  Mr.  Isaac  Mocatta's  may  be  added,  which,  besides  its 
allusion  to  these  matters,  shows  that  already  Landor  was  meditating 
a  tragedy  for  the  stage,  and  his  friend  had  the  sense  to  warn  him,  that, 
even  if  lie  got  so  far  as  the  theatre  door,  the  chamberlain  would  be 

*  The  writings  of  Mr.  D'Israeli  seem  to  me  always  deserving  of  respect;  ami  he 
valued,  as  well  aa  did  what  he  could  to  raise,  the  literary  character.  But  some  of  his 
critical  opinions  had  amazed  Landor,  who  reprehends  bim  also  amusingly  for  his  too 
great  familiarity  with  learned  men,  as  where  tie  calls  the  great  French  printer  Henry 
ISte/ilit-ris.  "  Here  let  me  inform  this  gentleman  that  though  Scholars  have  sometimes 
taken  this  liberty,  it  is  not  allowed  to  other  folks.  He  might  as  well  cull  Cicero  Vetch, 
ami  Fabius  Maxima-  Broad  Sean.  Either  Benri  Etienne,  which  was  hi>  name,  or 
Henricus  Stephanos,  as  he  wrote  it  in  Latin,  is  the  proper  term.  We  cannot  suppose 
that,  coining  over  to  England,  lie  would  have  called  himself  Henry  Stephens." 


jET.  22-30.]  SERGEANT    ROUGH.  85 

sure  to  turn  his  key  upon  him.     He  dates  from  St.  Thomas's  Square, 
Hackney,  on  the  5th  December,  1800. 

"  Dear  Landor,  —  I  cannot  a  moment  delay  (notwithstanding  I  feel  much 
indisposed)  to  express  how  kindly  I  take  your  resolution  of  suppressing 
the  Postscript  to  Gebir  which  gave  me  so  much  pain.  In  so  doing  you  have 
paid  me  a  compliment  which  1  know  how  to  value.  Since  my  last,  I  have 
given  your  work  a  perusal  which  I  do  not  intend  shall  be  the  last ;  for, 
like  a  scientific  piece  of  music,'  it  will  probably  gain  by  repetition.  It  ap- 
pears to  me,  however,  more  likely  to  please  highly  some  few  than  to  be 
generally  tasted.  The  typographic  errors  are  at  least  as  numerous  as  you 
mention ;  but  I  did  not  include  in  them  wherefor,  which,  if  you  recollect, 
I  stated  as  a  peculiarity.  Though  I  had  never  thought  on  the  subject  be- 
fore, it  immediately  struck  me  as  proper,  '  wherefor  '  being  only  by  elision 
'where  is  the  reason  or  motive  for.'  Most  undoubtedly  a  tragedy  replete 
with  sentiments  such  as  you  could  not  help  to  infuse,  would  not  be  re- 
ceived by  the  manager  or  sanctioned  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain ;  so  that  I 
much  wish  you  could  hit  on  some  other  plan  more  lucid  and  better  brought 
out  than  you  have  hitherto  produced.  For  I  honestly  think  your  talents 
equal  to  the  greatest  undertaking  ;  but  I  dread  that  impetuosity  which  dis- 
dains those  minor  niceties  of  language  which  are  yet  necessary  to  show 
where  the  narrative  stands  and  what  is  going  on.  Are  you  not  too  pro- 
found and  classical  for  most  readers  ?  I  think  I  discover  that  your  imagi- 
nation has  been  warmed  in  more  than  one  instance  by  Painting.  By  the 
by,  do  not  construe  my  approbation  to  extend  to  your  encomiums  on  pride 
ancj  revenge.     Adieu.     Yours,  Is.  Mocatta." 


V.     SERGEANT  ROUGH. 

Unhappily  Landor  soon  lost  the  advantage  of  so  wise  a  friend  as 
Isaac  Mocatta,  his  illness  proving  fatal  in  the  following  year  ;  but  an 
extract  from  one  of  his  earlier  letters  may  be  added,  as  it  touches 
another  subject  of  difference  between/them.  "  I  thank  you,"  Mocatta 
had  written  in  July,  1800,  "  for  sparing  me  the  triumph  of  Buona- 
parte's laurels.  Had  the  event  been  as  decisively  the  other  way,  I 
am  afraid  I  could  not  have  refrained  from  teasing  you  a  little.  The 
Corsican  boy  has  certainly  proved  himself  a  man.  May  he  crown  his 
victories  by  dictating  a  moderate  Peace  !  I  assure  you,  if  I  feel  for 
the  disappointment  of  the  country  I  do  not  for  that  of  Mr.  Pitt.  I 
was  reading  lately  Plutarch's  essay  on  the  character  of  Alexander, 
arguing  that  fortune  was  his  enemy  instead  of  friend,  and  that  his 
successes  were  but  equal  to  his  merit.  Some  of  his  reasoning  I  felt 
as  a  silent  reproof  of  my  own  condemnation  of  Buonaparte."  The 
time  was,  nevertheless,  approaching  when  the  occasion  for  reproof 
was  reversed,  and  it  was  Landor  who  condemned  the  ambition  and 
execrated  the  successes  of  Napoleon. 

In  July,  1801,  Mr.  Jacob  Mocatta  announced  his  brother's  death  to 
Landor,  to  whom  had  been  bequeathed  some  books  from  his  library 
(among  them  a  rare  Sophocles)  and  a  Prometheus  in  ancient  sculp- 
ture, which,  with  his  usual  vehement  appreciation  for  a  friend's  gift, 


8G  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  K£°-VJ' 

J  I797       IOOj. 

Landor  declared  to  be  by  Phidias,  and  which  is  now  the  property  of 
his  brother  Henry-  "  I  never  knew  a  better  or  wiser  man,  or  one 
more  friendly,"  is  his  indorsement  of  the  letter  that  told  him  of  the 
death  and  the  bequest.  Mocatta  had  just  lived  long  enough  to  see 
the  Peace  which  he  had  hoped  might  be  a  temperate  one,  and  which 
proved  to  be  the  one  of  which  everybody  was  glad  and  nobody 
proud. 

Landor  received  Mr.  Jacob  Mocatta's  letter  when  lodging  at  Ox- 
ford,  where  his  brother  Robert  was  now  in  residence  ;  and  the  greater 
part  of  this  year  was  passed  between  Oxford  and  London,  where  the 
peace  and  Addington's  ministry  furnished  occupation  for  everybody. 
One  other  affair,  however,  Landor  had  found  also  time  to  take  in 
hand,  and  there  is  allusion  to  it  in  a  letter  of  the  following  year  to 
his  brother  Henry.  "  This  time  year,  too,  I  was  to  have  been  mar- 
ried "  (he  is  referring  to  the  recent  marriage  of  Rough).  "  But,  after 
committing  a  piece  of  foolery  in  which  I  was  the  puppet,  the  farce 
concluded.  But  what  can  it  signify  %  I  can  only  be  sixty  thousand 
pounds  the  poorer,"  —  the  peculiarity  of  such  expressions  in  his  case 
being,  that  they  import  nothing  which  in  conduct  he  is  careful  to 
contradict,  but  may  in  general  be  taken  not  unfairly  as  the  measure 
of  what  he  did  as  well  as  said.  No  man  whom  I  have  ever  known  of 
intellect  approaching  to  his  could  so  recklessly  rush  into  the  gravest 
enterprises,  or  so  carelessly  make  escape  from  them. 

With  Rough  he  was  now  very  intimate,  and  something  must  be 
said  of  their  friendship.  When  Landor  first  knew  him  he  had  just 
left  college,  and  in  a  fit  of  admiration  for  Gebir  had  written  in  the 
manner  of  it  a  tragedy  on  the  Conspiracy  of  Gowrie  which  was  about 
as  like  Landor  as  Mr.  Rowe's  imitation  was  like  Shakespeare.  When 
I  first  heard  his  name,  his  poem  was  extinct ;  but  its  author  was  re- 
membered as  one  of  three  notorious  radicals  of  the  Midland  circuit, 
Copley  and  Denman  being  the  other  two,  of  whom  it  was  proposed 
by  old  Clarke,  also  of  the  Midland,  that  the  whole  three  should  be 
hung  up  as  republicans  to  the  sign-post  of  their  circuit  inn  with 
Copley  in  the  centre  as  the  greatest  malefactor  of  the  three.  Both 
literature  and  politics,  therefore,  recommended  Rough  to  Landor. 

Copley  was  a  little  his  junior ;  but  they  had  been  at  Cambridge 
together,  were  members  of  the  same  inn  of  court,  chose  the  same 
circuit,  and  for  some  time  were  inseparable.  But  Rough's  ambition, 
more  limited  in  one  direction  than  his  friend's,  took  in  a  greater 
variety  of  objects,  and  had  a  more  generous  though  a  weaker  side. 
What  so  many  inferior  people  discover  in  the  desire  to  attach  them- 
selves to  the  wealthy  and  noble,  this  young  lawyer  displayed  in  his 
eagerness  to  become  acquainted  with  men  distinguished  by  their 
literature  ;  and  though  his  life  had  many  failures,  his  persistent  love 
of  men  of  learning  and  letters  is  not  to  be  accounted  one'of  them. 
"He  became  familiar,"  says  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  "with  the  lake 
poets,  especially  with  Southey  ;  and  with  many  of  the  younger  peo- 


Ml.  22-30.]  SERGEANT    ROUGH.  87 

pie  before  the  age  of  Scott,  Byron,  and  Shelley.  He  was  an  intense 
admirer  of  Walter's  Gebir,  and  I  think  that  Walter  and  Southey  be- 
came ultimately  acquainted  through  him.  Before  then  he  had  pub- 
lished a  tragedy  called  The  Conspiracy  of  Gowrie.  My  brother  repaid 
his  admiration ;  for  in  such  duties  he  was  never  ungrateful.  Hence 
their  very  ardent  friendship  ;  but  Rough  was  still  more  familiar  with 
mv  brother  Henry,  who  was  then  resident  in  London.  When  called 
to  the  bar,  Mr.  Rough  selected  the  Midland  circuit ;  and  about  the 
same  time  Henry  was  established  at  Warwick  as  a  conveyancer,  which 
profession  he  exchanged  for  that  of  a  land  agent  to  some  very  large 
estates."' 

Of  the  few  of  Rough's  letters  that  Landor  kept,  the  first  is  of  the 
date  of  1801,  and  explains  a  delay  in  replying  to  one  of  Landor's  by 
showing  that  the  answer  had  gone  to  Oxford,  missed  him  there,  and 
come  back  to  London.  With  anxious  care  he  explains  these  crosses, 
and  very  eagerly  prays  his  friend  to  believe  that  very  few  things 
would  vex  him  more  than  the  loss  of  the  friendship  Landor  had  once 
encouraged  him  to  hope  would  be  extended  to  him. 

"  From  letters  and  the  pursuits  of  imagination  I  have,  since  I  saw  you, 
been  widely  sundered.  A  few  law  books  have  been  my  sole  companions : 
and  naturally  not  endowed  with  much  animation,  I  from  long  habit  am  now 
gryllo  hebethr.  For  your  '  lampoon '  on  Lord  Warwick  I  thank  you,  and 
was  not  a  little  diverted  by  it.  In  truth,  however,  I  am  displeased  with 
with  you  for  courting  the  least  pleasing  of  the  Nine,  when  so  many  others 
of  the  beauteous  sisters  would  be  gratified  by  your  suit.  He  who  retains 
in  his  cabinet  shells  gathered  from  the  Sun's  palace-porch  should  not  defile 
his  collection  with  dirty  funguses.  I  am  running  on,  however,  with  the 
confidence  of  a  man  forgiven,  forgetful  that  my  pardon  is  not  yet  assured  to 
me." 

His  next  letter,  consisting  wholly  of  expressions  of  delight  at  a  com- 
munication from  Landor,  and  making  return  in  kind  for  friendly 
Latin  verses,  we  may  assume  the  completeness  of  the  pardon ;  and 
one  of  his  confessed  reasons  for  choosing  the  Midland  circuit  a  few 
months  later  was  the  hope  of  thereby  meeting  his  friend  from  time 
to  time  in  Warwickshire.  The  letter  that  announced  this  purpose 
was  written  early  in  1802. 

"  I  have  chosen  the  Midland  circuit  as  that  which  professionally  is  as 
likely  to  be  serviceable  as  any  other  ;  and  as  I  am  not  very  sanguine  of 
expectation  on  the  score  of  interest,  I  solaced  myself  by  raising  enchanted 
visions  of  Friendship  and  Literature.  With  these  floating  across  my  brain, 
I  called  on  your  brother  Henry,  who  tells  me  that  he  fears  you  will  before 
the  23d  of  March  have  quitted  Warwickshire.  Now,  my  dear  Landor,  if 
you  wish  me  not  to  be  utterly  discomfited,  contrive  to  remain  there  a  few 
days  longer  than  you  at  present  intend,  and  let  me  at  least  have  one  hour 
of  Poetry  and  Imagination  during  my  grave  and  weary  pilgrimage.  Seri- 
ously, I  shall  be  sorry  not  to  see  you.  I  am  likely  to  have  a  sort  of  prefa- 
tory and  introductory  letter  to  a  Dr.  Lambe,  who  is  represented  to  me  to  be 
a  man  on  many  accounts  most  worth  knowing.     Your  brother  says  you 


88  GEBIRj    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  Kw-rtos 

have  a  friend  of  that  name.  If  it  be  so,  I  shall  assuredly  not  reject  the  open- 
ing. In  the  mean  while  if  you  have  any  select  companions  indicted  for  rape 
or  horse-stealing,  I  shall  he  happy  on  your  account  to  exert  my  sell'  pro/ession- 
aUy  in  their  behalf.  God  be  with  you,  and  teach  you  to  deem  me  ever  your 
obliged  and  sincere  friend,  W.  Rough.  I  have  done  nothing  of  late  but 
write  an  indifferent  prologue  for  Lewis's  tragedy.     And  you  too  are  idle  I  " 

Better  be  idle  than  writing  lampoons ;  and  that  Landor  more 
recently  had  neither  been  wholly  unoccupied,  nor  occupied  so  badly, 
will  appear  at  the  proper  time.  On  this  first  of  Rough's  circuits  the 
friends  did  not  meet ;  but  the  busy  lawyer  had  a  warm  greeting  from 
the  Landor  family,  and  found  that  what  had  been  told  him  of  Doctor 
Lambe  was  true.  This  young  physician  had  succeeded  to  the  prac- 
tice of  Doctor  Landor  on  his  retirement ;  for  him  and  his  pretty  wife 
Landor  himself  had  a  strong  liking;  and  in  his  friend's  letter  imme- 
diately after  the  circuit  they  found  very  cordial  mention. 

"I  was  much,  very  much,  pleased  with  my  reception  at  Warwick.  You 
know,  I  suppose,  that  Lambe  and  myself  dined  at  Parr's,  and  that  he  was 
very  communicative  and  good-humored.  Except  that  (as  men  of  his  age 
and  character  are  apt  to  think)  he  seemed  to  suppose  young  men  less  read 
than  they  are  now  usually  found  to  be,  he  showed  not  one  false  sentiment. 
From  your  own  family  I  received  more  attention  than  in  any  way  I  could 
have  expected  ;  and  I  had  enough  talk  with  Lambe  to  assure  myself  that 
he  was  no  ordinary  man.  His  wife,  as  you  say,  is  an  angel.  All  indeed 
Mas  fairer  than  my  hopes,  and  I  say  this  without  a  single  fee.  I  regret  that 
I  shall  not  see  you  in  town.  Is  there,  think  you,  a  probability  of  my  find- 
ing you  at  Warwick  in  July  ?     I  trust  there  is." 

One  other  acquaintance  was  then  also  made  by  Rough  ;  a  further 
acquisition  of  that  first  circuit,  though  not  mentioned  in  this  letter, 
which  especially  claims  to  be  mentioned  here.  The  reader  owes  to  it 
a  delightful  sketch  of  the  young  lawyer  himself,  taken  by  a  keen  yet 
kindly  observer,  at  this  opening  of  his  career. 

"  Rough  learnt  from  our  family,"  writes  Mr.  Robert  Landor  to  me, 
"OH  his  first  visit  to  Warwick,  that  there  was  another  brother  resi- 
dent in  Oxford  ;  and  on  his  way  back  to  town  he  paid  me  a  visit  too, 
quite  unexpectedly.  In  more  than  sixty  years  which  have  passed 
since  then,  I  hav*e  never  met  with  any  one  who  had  so  little  reserve. 
In  about  an  hour  I  had  become  acquainted  with  all  his  prospects, 
literary  and  professional  ;  and  in  this  first  circuit  he  had  taken  the 
measure  oi  all  his  future  competitors.  At  no  time  was  he  arrogant 
or  contemptuous  ;  but,  giving  ample  credit  to  the  pretensions  of  other 
people,  he  did  equal  justice  to  his  own.  In  addition  to  the  honor 
which  he  conferred  upon  so  young  a  man,  I  felt  delighted  with  so 
much  frankness,  good-humor,  and  joyous  familiarity.  1  again  met 
him  on  his  second  circuit  at  Warwick,  accompanied  by  Mr.  Copley: 
both  of  them  dined  with  my  brother  Henry.  Walter  was  not  there. 
Rough  assumed  the  superiority  which  his  greater  standing  and  expe- 
rience had  given  him  ;  for  he  had  received  a  brief  that  very  morning. 


JET.  22-30.]  SERGEANT    EOUGH.  89 

He  promised  his  future  countenance  to  Copley  as  his  junior,  and  Cop- 
ley undertook  to  prepare  himself  for  the  favor  by  ascertaining  the 
distinction  between  a  drake  and  a  duck.  It  seemed  that  Rough  had 
opened  the  prosecution  of  a  thief  who  had  stolen  a  drake  ;  and  Rough 
persisted  in  describing  the  bird  as  a  duck.  Corrected  again  and 
again,  he  repeated  the  word  '  duck '  in  court ;  and  after  dinner  he 
maintained  that  there  was  no  difference.  Copley  said  that  there  was 
the  same  difference  as  between  a  bull  and  a  cow ;  the  bull  and  the 
drake  being  the  husbands  of  the  cow  and  the  duck ;  and  also,  that  if 
any  thief  had  stolen  a  bull,  the  animal  must  be  so  described,  and  not 
as  a  cow.  '  I  woidd  have  spared  you  this  silliness,  if  it  had  not  been 
characteristic  both  of  Rough's  habits  and  of  his  future  fortune. 
Many  years  after  these  jests,  I  became  acquainted,  at  Tenby,  with  an 
elderly  solicitor  of  high  professional  character  who  was  personally 
also  familiar  with  Rough.  He  mentioned  that  the  two  friends  had 
recently  obtained  promotion,  and  regretted  that  one  of  them  had 
hazarded  a  small  practice  by  becoming  Mr.  Sergeant  Rough.  Both 
gained  the  same  rank  at  nearly  the  same  time.  My  informant  said 
that  Copley  was  quite  safe  ;  but  that  Rough  was  so  careless  and 
slovenly  in  his  practice  that  the  conduct  of  any  important  case  could 
not  be  intrusted  to  him.  I  had  left  Warwickshire,  and  had  seen  him 
but  two  or  three  times  since  my  departure.  My  brother  Henry 
always  described  him  as  not  less  happy  and  hopeful,  —  with  so  many 
plans,  literary  and  professional,  that  he  began  none  of  them.  He  was 
so  busy  that  he  did  nothing."  * 

Mr.  Landor  adds  a  remark  upon  the  sudden  and  early  close  of 
Rough's  intimacy  with  his  brother,  so  ardent  while  it  lasted,  which  I 
do  not  feel  entitled  to  omit.  To  a  great  degree  in  all  men  the  ear- 
lier and  the  later  years  explain  each  other ;  and  what  is  here  said  of 
a  point  of  character  which  time  and  experience  corrected,  but  failed 
to  the  very  last  to  remove,  will  suggest  needful  allowance  for  what  is 
to  be  said  hereafter. 

"  Rough's  intercourse  with  Walter  lasted  only  three  or  four  years. 
It  was  ended  by  some  unintentional  offence  similar  to  that  by  Dr. 
Winthrop  at  Parr's.  Either  Rough  had  smiled  at  a  false  argument, 
or  interrupted  my  brother  in  some  other  way,  before  several  guests, 
whereupon  Walter  left  his  house  and  renounced  his  acquaintance. 
Your  intercourse  did  not  begin  till  many  years,  and  a  larger  knowl- 
edge of  societv,  had  taught  more  self-control  ;  and  he  must  have  felt 
more  afraid,  as  well  as  unwilling,  to  offend  you.  But  not  twenty 
years  ago  he  refused  ever  to  see  again  a  school-fellow  whom  he  valued 
almost  as  highly  as  Birch.  It  seems  ungrateful  on  my  part  to  re- 
member these  frailties,  —  for,  long  after  our  early  affection  had 
ceased,  he  endured  much  more  patiently  my  remonstrances  and  re- 

*  One  thinks  of  Chaucer's  pleasant  couplet  in  his  picture  of  a  lawyer  of  his  time:  — 

"  No  wher  so  besy  a  man  as  he  ther  n'as, 
And  yit  he  seinede  besier  than  he  was." 


90  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  xm^i: 

proachee  than  those  of  any  other  persons,  being  resolved  that  we 
should  never  quarrel  again  us  we  had  done  almost  forty  years  ago. 
Yet  sue!)  knowledge  is  necessary  if  you  would  describe  him  truly.  It 
was  for  the  sake  of  his  peace  and  reputation  that  I  so  often  gave,  or 
hazarded,  offence." 

Nor  had  Rough  scrupled  to  hazard  it  as  well,  during  the  time  of  their 
intercourse.  His  high  admiration  for  Landor's  powers,  cherished  all 
the  more  because  shared  by  so  very  few,  made  him  keen  to  the  per- 
ception of  faults  that  obstructed  their  healthful  exercise  ;  and,  genial, 
careless,  good-natured  as  he  was,  he  remonstrated  more  than  once 
againsl  complaints  which  he  justly  thought  not  the  most  manly. 
The  Werterism  of  that  day  was  the  Byronism  of  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury later  ;  but  though  Landor  had  to  pass  through  this  and  other 
distempers  of  youth,  happily  they  left  no  mark  upon  his  writings. 
There  is  a  tone  in  Rough's  remonstrances  that  commands  respect  and 
sympathy.* 

"  Dimmer  than  my  eyes  have  been  for  this  many  a  day,"  he  writes, 
"would  they  now  be,  my  dear  Landor,  if  I  believed  your  letter  from  Bath 
written  in  other  than  a  casual  and  momentary  distemperature.  No,  no, 
my  friend,  1  cannot  and  will  not  think  but  that  you  have  strength  enough 
to  fight  against  the  sleepless  nights  you  speak  of.  This  world  of  ours,  it' 
not  a  world  of  chrysolite,  is  notwithstanding  a  bawble  worth  our  looking 
at;  and  he  who  plays  with  the  trinket  is  surely  wiser  than  lie  who  sits  in 
a  corner  and  cries  for  the  moon,  which  is  out  of  his  reach.  .  .  .  Come, 
come,  rouse  yourself  and  write.  If  you  must  die,  it  is  at  least  your  duty 
to  leave  something  behind  you;  and  though  Gebir  will  do  much,  yet  1  am 
persuaded  it  is  in  your  power  to  do  still  more.  Literature,  like  other 
things,  as  often  obtains  the  reward  of  praise  by  quantity  as  quality;  and 
we  arc  all  of  us  so  little  important  to  others,  that  unless  we  put  them  in 
mind  of  us  daily,  Ave  shall  scarcely  avoid  being  forgotten.  It  is  strange 
thai  you  should  be  so  insensible  to  the  advantages  you  possess  as  you  seem 
to  be.  lam  hourly  rating  my  hard  fate,  that  compels  me  to  pursue  a  pro- 
fession  in  which  Letters  rather  impede  than  assist,  and  in  which  I  am 
forced  to  exert  much  benevolence  to  save  me  from  despising  most  of  my 
co-laborers.  You,  on  the  other  hand,  are  at  liberty  to  move  whithersoever 
inclination  leads, — with  a  more  than  adequate  competence  now,  and  with 
an  assurance  of  a  richer  fortune  in  years  to  come;  with  the  possession,  not 
merely  of  the  love,  bul  the  power,  of  intellect  ;  with  the  consciousness  that 
you  are  pursuing  that  which  such  beings  as  Homer,  Virgil,  and  Milton  have 
cultivated  before  you:  and  with  a  chance  of  gaining  the  reward  which 
they  have  gained.  1  address  you  thus  freely  because  I  suspect  not  only 
that  you.  but  that  our  friend  Lambe  is  a  little  tinctured  with  that  sickness 
of  mind  which  prompts  us  to  fret  at  the  seeming  respect  paid  to  those  who 
sleep  on  gilded  sofas  and  whose  houses  are  castles,  —  sofas  pressed  by 
illiterate  indolence,  and  castles  inhabited  by  folly.  In  all  else  he  is  fault- 
less. II is  wife,  as  you  have  said,  is  an  angel-  ...  I  will  not  add  to  your 
naturally  disobedient  spirit  by  urging  you  to  read,  from  which  you  tell  me 
you  are  severely  prohibited.     But  that  the  cause  of  that  prohibition  may 

*  The  letter  is  dated  "May,  Thursday  13th  (1801),  10  Farrar's  Building*,  Inner 
Temple." 


JET.  22-30.]  SERGEANT    ROUGH.  91 

speedily  be  removed,  T  do  most  earnestly  pray.     Believe  me  your  grateful 
and  affectionate  friend,  W.  Rough." 

Anticipating  my  narrative  a  little,  I  may  add  that  before  the  mid- 
dle of  the  following  year  Rough's  bachelor  life  had  ended,  and,  in 
thanking  Landor  for  good  wishes  sent  to  him,  he  had  rallied  his 
friend  again  upon  his  tone  of  despondency,  adjured  him  for  Heaven's 
sake  to  keep  up  his  spirits,  and,  with  much  grateful  allusion  to  Doc- 
tor Landor  and  the  house  at  Warwick,  expressed  his  hope  to  be  in  a 
few  weeks  settled  in  a  house  of  his  own,  where  he  should  at  all  times 
be  eager  to  receive,  and  when  necessary  to  nurse,  the  friend  to  whom 
he  owed  so  much.  "  My  Henrietta  I  have  at  present  left  in  the 
country.  Be  assured,  however,  that  she  is  fully  disposed  to  welcome 
you  as  the  most  valued  of  her  husband's  friends."  His  Henrietta  was 
Jack  Wilkes's  daughter  ;  and  Mr.  Robert  Landor's  brief  allusion  to 
her,  and  to  the  leading  points  of  the  later  life  of  her  husband,  must 
satisfy  whatever  further  interest  my  readers  may  feel  in  Landor's 
once  celebrated,  now  forgotten  friend,  Chief-Justice  Rough* 

"  Mr.  Rough  had  married  an  illegitimate  daughter  of  the  patriot 
John  Wilkes;  attracted  rather  by  the  father's  celebrity  than  the 
daughter's  beauty.  When  he  and  I  first  met  at  Warwick,  he  pro- 
posed to  travel  a  hundred  miles  by  the  stage-coach  that  he  might 
attend  a  Christmas  ball,  and  dance  with  Doctor  Parr's  daughter, 
whom  he  had  never  seen.  As  had  been  foretold,  while  Mr.  Copley's 
profession  advanced,  Mr.  Rough's  receded,  —  and  now  he  is  a  family 
man.  Very  reluctantly,  he  relinquished  his  hopes  of  a  seat  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  —  as  solicitor-general,  attorney-general,  on  his 
way  to  better  things.     Then  he  wTould  find  leisure  to  begin,  at  last,  a 

*  Since  this  page  was  in  type  I  have  received  also  some  interesting  recollections  of 
Rough  from  my  old  friend  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  confirmatory  on  every  point  of  Mr. 
Landor's  sketch.  "  He  became  a  sergeant  on  the  30th  of  May,  1808,  before  I  settled  in 
London.  He  was  in  a  batch  of  sergeants  with  William  Manley,  and  with  Albert  Pell, 
who  afterwards  led  the  Western  circuit  and  became  a  judge  in  bankruptcy.  Five 
vears  later,  in  July,  1813,  Copley  became  a  sergeant,  and  immediately  extinguished 
Rough  on  his  circuit;  compelling  him  to  seek_  for  a  maintenance  in  some  judicial 
appointment  abroad.  He  was  made,  first,  chief  justice  of  Demerara;  where  (as  usual) 
the  lawyer-judge  quarrelled  with  the  soldier-governor  about  some  question  of  feminine 
precedence,  the  governor  taking  out  some  lady  before  the  judge's  wife:  and  here,  I 
think,  Rough  lost  his  wife.  But  to  go  back  to  1808.  I  used  "to  hear  a  great  deal,  and 
see  a  little,  of  him  in  the  societv  of  Mrs.  Barbauld,  Lucv  Aikin,  Mr.  Aikin  (son  of  the 
Doctor),  and  Mrs.  Aikin  (daughter  of  Gilbert  Wakefield).  They  all  had  the  highest 
opinion  of  him,  and  expected  him  to  be  a  great  success  at  the  bar:  nor  were  his  claims 
contemptible.  His  countenance  was  pleasing,  his  voice  agreeable,  his  conversation 
lively;  if  not  powerfully,  he  talked  always  well  and  fluently,  and  in  public  his  com- 
mand of  language  never  failed  him;  but  for  great  business  he  was  unfit.  He  was  more 
literary  than  legal,  and  had  more  elegance  than  strength.  From  what  I  used  always  to 
hear  of  his  strong  affections,  his  good  temper,  and  amiable  character,  I  can  understand 
a  great  intimacy  between  him  and  Landor  or  Mackintosh,  —  such  as  exists  between 
the  vine  and  the  forest-trees  that  support  it.  I  never  saw  his  verses,  but  they  were 
greatly  commended  by  Miss  Burges  and  the  o[  i^i.  In  1813  I  married,  and  saw  very 
little  more  of  that  literary  society,  which  seemed  to  meet  merely  that  they  might  praise 
each  other.  I  saw  Rough's  declining  business,  and  heard  with  pleasure  of  his  appoint- 
ment. He  did  not  return  to  the  bar;  and  I  think  I  never  saw  him  again.  He  died 
chief  justice  of  Ceylon." 


92  GEBIR;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  i^rito£ 

very  great  poem  !  Perhaps  it  was  through  the  interest  of  the  first 
Lord  Lansdowne  that  he  became  chief  justice  in  one  of  the  West  Indian 
Islands;  but  his  heart  was  left  for  the  House  of  Commons,  and  he 
soon  returned  to  it.  Some  quarrel  about  precedency  at  the  governor's 
ball,  between  Mrs.  hough  and  the  wife  of  a  general  or  colonel  who 
commanded  the  garrison  there,  was  decided  unsatisfactorily;  and  the 
chief  justice,  if  such  was  his  title,  returned  to  England.  I  think 
that  by  this  time  Copley  had  succeeded  Lord  Eldon  as  lord  chancellor  ; 
and  if  so,  there  were  few  men  who  could  congratulate  him  more  sin- 
cerely than  Rough  ;  for  Rough  seemed  quite  incapable  of  jealousy, 
and  his  own  turn  must  come  soon.  Meanwhile  he  could  not  resume 
his  former  practice,  and  he  had,  I  believe,  two  or  three  children.  It 
was  thought,  unjustly,  that  his  old  friend  might  have  forwarded  his 
wishes  more  effectually  by  obtaining  for  him  some  such  appointment 
as  would  keep  him  at  home.  But  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  lord 
chancellor  may  have  doubted  his  qualification  for  much  responsibility 
so  near  to  the  House  of  Commons;  and  Rough  never  changed  his 
political  opinions,  as  Copley  had  done.  At  last,  Mr.  Rough  was  con- 
strained to  accept  the  chief-justiceship  of  Ceylon.  There  he  lost  his 
wife  ;  and  after  the  customary  residence  his  own  health  failed,  and 
for  its  restoration  he  returned  to  England.  My  brother  Henry  saw 
him,  but  I  did  not ;  and  I  must  caution  you  against  too  much  confidence 
in  my  accuracy  after  more  than  fifty  years.  I  cannot  consult  my 
brother,  as  his  memory  is  far  worse  than  mine  ;  and  we  have  outlived 
all  our  contemporaries.  Unable  to  accomplish  such  an  exchange  as 
he  desired,  Mr.  Rough  returned  to  Ceylon,  and  died  there.  He  was 
kind,  friendly,  social  ;  and  of  much  more  than  average  capacity  :  but 
too  whimsical  for  much  success  even  as  a  poet." 

How  many  a  like  career  may  we  read  in  this,  of  brilliant  design 
and  imperfect  execution,  of  the  eagerness  without  the  purpose  to  ex- 
cel, of  judgment  ready  for  a  friend's  guidance  and  insufficient  for  our 
own,  and  yet  of  ardent  hopes  so  surviving  every  disappointment  as 
to  be  themselves  no  mean  compensation  for  all. 

VI.     CORRESPONDING  WITH  PARR  AND  ADAIR. 

When  South ey  was  at  Cintra  in  the  summer  of  1800  he  had  writ- 
ten to  his  friend  Humphry  Davy  at  Bristol:  "I  seethe  author  of 
Gebi/r  has  been  translating  from  the  Arabic  and  Persian.  Can  there 
possibly  be  Arabic  and  Persian  poetry  which  the  author  of  Gebir  may 
be  excused  for  translating  1 "  *     This   was  another  of  those   "little 

*  Tn  n  letter  to  Mr.  Crabb  Robinson  of  the  26th  April,  1886, -writing  of  Goethe's 
translations  and  translators,  he  adds:  "  It  is  curious  that,  when  I  was  about  three-and- 
twenty,  I  wrote  some  poetry  in  imitation  of  the  Persian  and  Arabic.  Few  copies, 
I  believe,  were  printed,  and  perhaps  none  sold.  I  never  thought  of  making  an  inquiry 
about  thrin.  There  arc  three  or  four  of  Safiz  not  bad, —  I  question  where  there  i-  any- 
thing else  positively  good  in  the  whole  range  of  Eastern  poetry,  except  the  Jewish  " 
Two-and-twenty  years  later  he  reproduced  some  of  these  imitations  (Dry  Sticks),  with  the 


JET.  22-30.]  PARR    AXD    ADAIR.  93 

publications "  of  which  his  brother  has  spoken,,  hastily  conceived, 
more  hastily  printed,  forgotten  as  soon  as  published,  yet  with  fancies 
and  thoughts  that  deserved  more  careful  presentment  and  a  longer 
life.  It  was  not  from  the  Arabic  and  Persian  at  all,  but  was  a  very 
clever  imitation  of  such  specimens  of  Eastern  literature  as  were  then 
derived  chiefly  through  French  translations  ;  and  consisting  altogether 
of  not  more  than  twenty  quarto  pages,  was  accompanied  by  notes  in 
about  an  eqtial  number  that  might  have  set  by  the  ears  as  many 
score  of  learned  combatants,  if  the  notice  drawn  to  them  had  borne 
any  kind  of  proportion  to  the  loudness  of  the  demand  made  for  it. 
But  as  their  scholarship  attracted  nobody,  it  was  quite  as  well  that 
what  else  they  contained  should  have  passed  unchallenged.  The 
thing  fell  dead-born,  no  one  caring  even  to  raise  a  doubt  of  the 
authenticity  of  the  so-called  Orientalisms ;  and  Landor  used  always 
to  say  that  the  imposition  certainly  had  succeeded  with  Parr.  The 
old  scholar  was  never  an  adept  at  poetry,  and  his  brain  was  just  now 
occupied  and  overfilled  with  politics. 

"  My  good  friend,"  runs  one  of  his  notes  at  this  time  (Landor  be- 
ing in  London),  "  pray  go  to  the  House.  I  have  prepared  Mr.  Adair 
for  an  interview  with  you,  —  as  a  man  of  intellect,  and  my  valuable 
friend.  Call  on  him  in  Great  Marlborough  Street,  and  leave  a  card. 
The  mighty  are  not  fallen,  but  they  have  descended  to  avoid  being- 
pushed  down  now,  and  to  secure  being  raised  up  hereafter.  God 
bless  you.  Mrs.  Parr  desires  her  kind  regards.  We  often  talk  of 
you,  Walter.     I  am  truly  yours,  S.  Parr." 

"  The  mighty  "  were  Mr.  Pitt  and  his  friends  Windham,  Grenville, 
and  Dundas,  who  had  just  retired  to  make  room  for  Mr.  Addington. 
The  whole  business  is  now  so  completely  dead  and  gone  that  it  would 
only  tiy  the  reader's  patience  to  tell  him  how  Pitt,  in  carrying  the 
Union,  is  alleged  to  have  made  promises  to  the  Irish  Catholics  which 
he  could  neither  keep  nor  break  with  decency  ;  how  he  was  thereupon 
supposed  to  have  had  nothing  for  it  but  to  quit  the  seat  of  power  for  a 
time,  putting  somebody  in  to  ,  keep  it  warm  and  disengaged  till  he 
should  be  able  to  return  to  it ;  and  how  it  was  that  thus  came  about 
that  ludicrous  thing  called  the  Addington  Administration.  But 
though  all  the  animation  and  interest  have  gone  out  of  it  now,  it  was 
once  filled  vividly  with  both ;  and  the  best  kind  of  notion  I  can  give 
of  Landor's  pursuits  and  habits  of  thought  at  this  time  in  connection 
with  it  will  be  derived  from  a  few  extracts  of  letters  then  addressed 
to  him,  and  of  letters  written  by  himself. 

Truth  to  say,  however,  this  is  not  an  easy  task,  with  Parr's  letters 
at  least.     It  is  as  difficult  to  decipher  his  handwriting  *  as  to  connect 

remark  that  they  had  originated  in  a  friend's  having  observed  to  him,  on  his  seeming 
to  undervalue  the  Orientals,  that  he  should  be  glad  to  see  how  any  one  would  succeed 
in  an  attempt  to  imitate  them. 

*  "  You  always  wrote  hieroglyphically,"  says  Charles  Lamb  to  George  Dyer, 
"  yet  not  to  come  up  to  the  mystical  notations  and  conjuring  characters  of  Doctor 
Parr.'"  And  for  au  amusing  illustration  of  Parr's  hieroglyphics,  see  Rogers's  Table- 
Talk,  p.  64. 


94  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  iw^&I.' 

his  sentences  when  deciphered.  He  has  twelve  words  where  one 
would  do,  and  as  many  seventhlies  and  lastlies  for  every  division  of  a 
subject  as  one  of  the  old  Puritan  preachers.  In  vehemence  as  well 
as  abundance  of  language,  too,  his  example  was  a  bad  one  for  Lan- 
dor  ;  whose  own  self-sufficient  way  of  judging  both  men  and  things, 
if  at  this  time  happily  restrained  rather  than  encouraged  by  any  one 
whose  judgment  lie  respected,  might  not  have  grown  into  the  unfortu- 
nate habit  which  tyrannized  over  him  in  later  years.  Certainlv  no 
lessons  were  to  be  drawn  from  Parr,  cither  of  prudence  in  forming 
opinions  or  moderation  in  expressing  them. 

Upon  the  first  news  of  Pitt's  resignation  he  wrote  to  Landor  to  ex- 
what  he  called  the  deep  and  mischievous  craft  of  the  impostor. 
He  wanted  it  laid  open  to  the  piiblic  in  parliamentary  speeches,  in 
newspaper  paragraphs,  in  general  conversation,  and  in  political  pam- 
phlets ;  and  with  a  view  to  each  and  all,  Landor  was  to  do  what  he 
could.  Again  and  again  the  alarm  was  to  he  sounded  in  every  quar- 
ter ;  and  in  every  quarter  were  to  be  proclaimed  the  aggravations  of 
his  misbehavior  to  the  king  and  the  Irish.  lie  had  betrayed  the  king 
and  insulted  the  Irish,  he  had  betrayed  the  Irish  and  insulted  the 
king.  But  it  should  all  lie  ripped  up  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Why  did  he  pledge  himself  to  the  Irish  without  consulting  the  king  I 
Why  did  he  not  consult  the  king  before  pledging  himself  to  the  Irish'? 
If  .he  did  consult  the  king,  who  was  to  blame?  If  he  did  not  con- 
sult the  king,  what  was  the  reason?  If  he  expected  assent,  then  had 
he  most  wantonly  brought  the  king  into  a  scrape.  If,  at  the  moment 
of  consultation,  he  expected  efcssent,  then,  at  the  moment  of  action,  he 
must  have  intended  to  compel  assent.  And  so,  to  give  but  a  few  faint 
echoes  of  a  letter  that  would  take  as  many  pages  to-print  as  are  here 
compressed  in  lines,  and  as  many  weeks  completely  to  decipher,  the 
excited  old  Whig  seesaws  through  a  bill  of  indictment  against  the  re- 
tiring  minister,  to  which  he  wishes  Landor  to  give  all  the  "attrac- 
tiveness of  his  style,  all  the  power  of  his  eloquence,  and  all  the  bit- 
terness of  his  sarcasm." 

Landor  nevertheless  had  some  difficulty,  which  it  was  the  object  of 
a  second  letter  to  remove  ;  and  from  this  I  am  able  to  extract,  with 
sufficient  compendiousness,  ten  several  heads  of  accusation,  width, 
r  due  time  for  reflection,  Parr  submitted  as  the  objects  Pitt  must 
have  had  in  view,  and  the  advantages  he  had  proposed  to  himself,  in 
resigning.  The  shrewdness  of  the  matterand  pomposity  of  the  man- 
ner are  Parr  all  over. 

"  I  will  enumerate  the  advantages  he  hopes  to  derive.  1.  Puhlic  atten- 
tion is  turned  from  the  perils  of  war  to  the  change  of  administration.  2. 
Pitt  will  rise  by  comparison  with  the  weakness  of  his  successors  ;  and.  while 
on  is  suspended,  his  power  to  act  will  he  forced  upon  men's  memories. 
sifted  in  their  conversations,  and  enlarged  in  their  imaginations,  by  contrast 
with  notorious  incapacity  ;  ami  thus  he  escapes  from  their  anger,  he  diverts 
that  anger  to  other  objects,  and  he  recalls  to  our  minds  the  brighter  parts 


JET.  22-30.]  PARR   AND    ADAIR.  95 

of  his  character  at  a  crisis  when  every  man  feels  that  ministerial  talents  are 
necessary  for  national  safety.  3.  He  has  carried  off  his  whole  strength  in 
a  mass,  and  in  a  mass  he  Avill  preserve  it,  that  it  may  be  brought  again  into 
action  in  a  mass.  4.  He  has  gone  out  in  defence  of  a  popular  measure,  and 
the  circumstance  will  secure  a  stout  party  in  Ireland,  and  will  not  be  un- 
welcome to  the  sectaries  of  England.  5.  He  has  thrown  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility upon  the  junto  and  the  king ;  so  as  to  induce  a  suspicion  that 
he  neither  has  been  nor  will  be  governed  by  that  secret  and  mischievous 
Cabal,  which  controlled  his  father,  which  excludes  Mr.  Fox,  and  to  which, 
as  their  primary  source,  all  the  disasters  of  the  reign  are  usually  traced  up. 
6.  His  descending  orb  is  surrounded  with  that  glory  which  accompanied 
its  meridian  height,  for  it  is  he  who  with  magnanimity  conducts  .the  loan, 
and  it  is  he  upon  whose  wisdom  the  money-holders  rely.  7.  He  has  con- 
trived to  show  the  inflexibility  of  the  king's  mind  towards  the  Whigs,  when 
in  preference  to  them  even  the  weakest  persons  are  called  into  office,  at  a 
most  dangerous  juncture.  And  this  consideration  will  have  its  due  weight 
with  the  selfish  and  corrupt  Parliament.  8.  By  his  organ  Lord  Grenville 
he  has  instructed  his  followers  what  part  they  are  to  take  fn  supporting  the 
same  principles  under  the  guidance  of  other  men,  and  consequently  he  for- 
bids them  to  prepare  for  acting  according  to  other  principles  with  the  mem- 
bers of  opposition.  9.  He  will  assume  an  air  of  moderation  ;  he  will  affect 
not  to  clog  the  wheels  of  government ;  he  will  claim  the  merit  of  assist- 
ing measures  which  he  no  longer  guides ;  he  will  find  in  them  opportuni- 
ties sometimes  for  vindicating  his  own,  when  they  were  similar,  and  some- 
times for  praising  his  own,  when  they  were  better ;  and  thus  he  will 
encourage  the  superficial  to  believe,  and  the  cunning  to  maintain,  that  his 
ambition  and  his  resentment  are  quelled  by  his  disinterested  loyalty  and 
unfeigned  patriotism.  Finally,  he  knows  that  between  himself  and  his 
sovereign  there  is  only  one  strong  point  of  difference  ;  but  that  between 
his  rivals  and  the  crown  there  is  not  only  the  same  point  of  difference  with 
greater  provocations,  but  other  points  of  even  superior  magnitude  from 
which  Mr.  Fox  will  never  swerve,  and  to  which  the  king  will  never  accede. 
He  therefore  has  quitted  his  power  at  a  time  when  it  was  most  difficult  to 
retain  it,  and  when  he  could  take  the  best  preparatory  measures  for  resum- 
ing it ;  and,  at  the  moment  of  resuming  it,  he  will  convert  the  odium  of 
beginning  and  misconducting  the  war  into  popularity  by  making  the 
peace." 

These  were  the  texts  he  would  have  Landor  write  upon.  Even 
yet  the  mischief  might  be  stayed.  In  the  matter  of  the  old  Tories 
Pitt  had  been  reckoning  without  his  host.  They  would  be  inflamed 
by  all  this.  If  proper  measures  were  taken,  never  was  a  period  more 
favorable  for  hunting  him  down  ;  and  never  such  a  favorable  period 
for  his  return  to  power,  if  such  measures  were  not  taken.  Some  mis- 
giving, nevertheless,  whether  Landor  was  the  man  to  take  them,  and 
whether  he  could  be  trusted  for  not  straying  too  far  afield,  creeps 
into  the  letter.  "  I  wish,"  says  Parr,  "you  would  expand  the  matter 
contained  in  this  letter,  and  publish  it  in  the  Courier,  and  lay  out 
upon  it  that  vigorous  eloquence  with  which  you  often  charm  my  ears. 
It  will  have  effect,  if  you  will  keep  back  some  of  your  favorite  and 
perhaps  erroneous  opinions."  There  were  also  other  difficulties  that 
made   Landor  not  very  manageable.     From  the  earlier  attempts  to 


9G  gebir;  axd  earliest  friendships.  [,^.k^ 

get  him  into  regular  harness,  and  pnt  him  under  proper  leaders,  he 
seems  to  have  shied  and  bolted  incessantly.  "Why,"  asks  Parr,  in 
the  same  letter,  "  don't  you  go  down  to  the  House  1  I  will  give  you 
letters  of  introduction  to  men  you  will  like  ;  and  from  the  civility  of 
being  introduced  by  them  into  the  House,  why  should  you  shrink?" 
These  strenuous  efforts  arc  not  without  their  effect,  and  we  see  him 
at  the  House  at  last  under  charge  of  Adair. 

But  before  turning  to  the  letters  of  that  stanchest  of  Whigs,  a  few 
further  notes  may  be  given  from  those  of  Landor  and  Parr.  Here  is 
an  acknowledgment  from  the  young  poet  of  the  old  scholars  sugges- 
tions and  praise  :  — 

"  I  am  rejoiced  to  find  that  you  have  not  forgotten  me,  and  I  raise  my- 
self up  from  the  bosom  of  indifference  to  the  voice  and  the  blandishments 
of  praise.  I  never  court  the  vulgar,  and  howimmense  a  majority  of  every 
rank  and  description  this  happy  word  comprises  1  Perhaps  about  thirty  in 
the  universe  may  be  excepted,  and  never  more  at  a  time.  But  I  know 
how  to  value  the  commendation  you  bestow  on  me;  for,  though  I  have 
not  deserved  it,  nor  so  largely,  yet  it  will  make  me  attempt  to  conquer  my 
idleness,  my  disgust,  and  to  reach  it  some  time  or  other.  You  will  find 
that  I  have  taken  courage  to  follow  the  path  you  pointed  out,  in  pursuing 
the  execrable  [Pitt].  I  subjoin  my  letter.  At  present  I  have  not  sent  it 
to  the  printer,  though  it  has  been  finished  a  fortnight.  The  reason  is  this: 
I  wrote  one  a  thousand  times  better  than  the  present,  in  which  I  aimed 
my  whole  force  at  a  worse  man  than  [Pitt],  —  there  are  only  two,  and  it 
was  not  Wpndham],  —  and  I  sent  it  for  insertion  to  the  Courier.  Now, 
such  is  my  indifference,  that,  when  once  I  have  written  a  thing,  I  never  in- 
quire for  it  afterwards  ;  and  this  was  the  case  in  respect  to  my  letter.  I 
have  not  Seen  the  Courier  since,  but  I  have  some  suspicion  that  it  was  not 
inserted." 

That  is  just  the  man  as  he  was  known  to  me  forty  and  fifty  years 
later  :  fancying  always  that  he  could  place  himself  "on  a  hill  apart" 
even  from  those  witli  whom  he  was  actually  contending;  and  mistak- 
ing- for  indifference, both  to  opinions  and  to  consequences,  what  was 
l)i it  exaggerated  impatience  of  contradictory  opinion  and  a  running 
away  from  consequences. 

What  the  tone  of  his  letters  to  the  Courier  is  likely  to  have  been, 
we  are  not  without  hints  of :  — 

"Did  Mr.  Pitt  expect,  or  did  lie  not,  the  royal  assent  to  his  transaction 
with  the  Irish?  I  hardly  know  in  which  instance  of  the  two  his  crime 
would  be  the  greater.  If  he  did  not,  how  gross  the  deception;  how  deep 
and  unpardonable  the  insult;  how  cruel  and  killing  a  mockeryl" 

To  which  Parr  rejoins  in  a  letter  taking  a  less  favorable  view  than 
before  of  Pitt's  chances  of  success  in  his  "diabolical"  scheme.     The 

peace  had  now  been  made  by  Addington,  and  that  advantage  lost  to 
his  expecting  heir  and  successor  :  — 

"Pitt  has  insulted  tin-  king  by  pledging  his  word;  he  has  betrayed  him 
by  throwing  responsibility  upon  him  for  the  disappointment  of  the   Irish. 

lie  means  to  compel  the  sovereign  to  recall  his  former  ministers  when  the 


JET.  22-30.]  PARR   AND    ADAIR.  97 

inefficiency  of  their  successors  appears  to  the  crown,  the  Parliament,  and 
the  country ;  and  when  the  alternative  lies  between  Pitt,  who  contends 
only  for  one  point,  and  Fox,  who  will  insist  upon  many.  But  he  cannot 
recover  his  popularity  with  the  nation ;  he  cannot  regain  all  his  strength 
in  Parliament ;  he  cannot  efface  our  remembrance  of  the  war,  by  seizing 
upon  office  to  make  the  peace  ;  and  yet  he  may  re-establish  his  influence 
over  the  mind  of  his  sovereign.  My  friend,  we  have  gained  one  point  by 
these  struggles  between  the  ministry  and  the  junto ;  and  the  people,  if 
they  are  wise,  will  direct  their  suspicions,  indignation,  and  resistance 
against  both.  I  wish  you  would  look  into  the  second  book  of  Xenophon's 
'EWrjviKa.  for  the  character  of  Meno.  Many  but  not  all  the  circumstances 
have  the  very  strongest  resemblance.  Pray  consider  this  last  passage,  for 
it  luminously  describes  the  subserviency  of  arrogance  to  cunning  in  the 

bosom  of  this  man My  printing  goes  on  but  slowly.     You  estimate 

rightly  the  great  intellectual  power  of  Mr.  Wynne.  Catherine  [Parr's 
daughter]  is  at  Mackintosh's,  No.  14  Searle  Street.  She  leaves  town  in  a 
day  or  two,  and  you  may  send  any  message  by  her.  Watch  what  is  pass- 
ing. Mrs.  Parr  joins  me  in  best  wishes  and  best  thanks.  I  am,  my  dear 
Walter,  ever  your  friend,  S.  Parr."  * 

I  have  spared  the  reader,  there,  ten  lines  of  Xenophon ;  though 
Greek  is  more  legible  than  English  in  the  writing  of  Parr,  and  a  sub- 
stantial scrap  interlarded  from  the  ancients  is  some  help  to  his  own 
puffs  and  pastry.  But  he  carried  the  habit  to  excess,  as  he  did  most 
things  ;  and  Holofernes  himself  was  not  more  ridiculous  in  chopping 
and  changing  for  Latin  or  Greek  the  baldest  phrases  of  his  mother 
tongue  than  this  genuine  scholar  often  was.  See  how  he  acknowl- 
edges a  gift  from  Landor  :  — 

"  I  have  been  eager  to  acknowledge  the  $a6v  XP*0S  under  which  you 
have  laid. Mrs.  Parr  and  myself  by  the  present  of  a  very  instructive  book; 
and  of  maps  the  most  accurate,  the  most  splendid,  and  the  most  interesting 
that  ever  came  into  my  possession." 

See  also  how  he  talks,  or  perorates,  about  the  peace  :  — 

"  True  it  is  that  by  the  cessation  of  hostilities  there  will  be  less  flutter 
of  curiosity  and  less  anxiety  of  expectation  than  we  felt  during  the  war. 
But,  in  a  calmer  and  a  more  permanent  and  a  more  pleasing  state  of  mind, 
we  can  now  trace  the  progress  of  the  victors  and  the  retreat  of  the  van- 
quished. There  will  be  a  mellowness  in  our  satisfaction  and  a  distinctness 
in  our  conceptions  that  will  amply  compensate  for  the  want  of  those  feel- 
ings which  accompany  perturbation,  and  therefore  partake  of  hope  and 
fear,  and  of  rapture  and  agony.  Glad  shall  I  be  when  you  sit  down  with 
us  again,  and  chat  on  the  virtues  of  Moreau,  the  talents  of  Buonaparte, 
the  humors  of  Paul,  and  Ahe  perilous  condition  of  this  oppressed  and  in- 
sulted kingdom.  As  to  late  events,  the  ostensible  is  not  the  sole  nor  the 
chief  cause  of  Mr.  Pitt's  plot, 

carat  \toov  Zta]  xpr)-  Kai  ttl0t]kos  iv  fiepei," 

[which  I  may  translate  to  the  effect  that  Pitt  was  to  play  the  lion's  part 
when  necessary,  and  the  monkey's  in  division  of  spoil].     "  The  wrangle 

*  Addressed  to  "  Walter  Landor,  Esq.,  at  R.  Bevan's,  Esq.,  No.  10  Boswell  Court, 
Carey  Street."     April,  1801. 

7 


98  GEBIR  :    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  L™°^«H- 

J  '79/ ~ I&0^- 

about  indulgence  to  Catholics,  the  resignation  of  the  old  ministry,  the 
appointment  of  the  new,  the  strength  studiously  abducted  from  them,  the 
compliments  bestowed  upon  them,  the  assistance  solicited  for  them,  and 
the  principles  imputed  to  them,  are  one  and  all  mere  QeaaaXa  aoipianara. 
Rely  upon  it.  sooner  or  later,  Paul  will  have  Malta,  the  French  will  have 
Egypt,  and  the  Mamelukes  will  justify  the  proverb,  deivol  •ir'XtKTeiv  tol.  &c., 
&c,  &c"     [1  spare  the  reader  more.] 

Nor  was  Landor  loath  to  pay  him  back  the  same  liberal  largess 
for  kindnesses  expected  or  received.  The  old  scholar  was  just  now 
publishing-  his  Spital  Sermon,  and  had  promised  Lander  a  copy  :  hav- 
ing given  him  a  few  months  before  a  small  Catullus,  which  more  than 
half  a  century  later  I  saw,  still  cherished,  in  his  hands.  Here  is 
characteristic  acknowledgment  of  both  :  — 

"It  is  a  sign  that  I  have  conversed  with  hardly  a  human  being,  not  to 
know  that  your  Sermon  was  published!  As  you  intend  to  make  me  a 
present  of  one,  pray  do  not  keep  it  for  me,  but  send  it  me  directly.  I  wish 
for  all  enjoyment  at  once.  I  wish,  while  r  improve  my  judgment  and  my 
!,  to  indulge  my  sentiment  and  affections  in  contemplating  the  present 
of  my  friend.  I  have  a  little  Catullus.— 1  can  repeat  every  word  of  it ; 
yet  again  and  again  do  1  read  my  little  Catullus.  I  never  knew  the 
author,  and  I  should  not  have  esteemed  him  if  I  had,  unless  as  the  most 
exquisite  of  poets.  Do  I  not  know  the  author  of  the  sermon?  Do  I  not 
esteem  him  far,  infinitely,  more  than  for  being  the  most  elegant  and  ener- 
getic of  our  writers?  I  hope  this  noble  work,  for  I  can  speal  mch 
as  1  have  seen,  will  be  effectual  in  making  Englishmen  write  English. 
Our  language  is  bruised,  as  it  were,  and  swollen  by  the  Latin;  but  it  is 
contaminated,  enervated,  and  distorted  by  the  French!  If  we  are  to  bor- 
row, let  us  borrow  from  the  principal  and  not  from  the  underlings;  but 
with  a  little  good  management  1  think  we  are  quite  rich  enough." 

Catullus  again  and  again  recurs  in  the  letters  of  both.  Landor 
had  questioned  a  word  in  that  delightful  writer  :  Parr  promptly  re- 
plies :  — 

"I  looked  into  my  Catullus,  and  can  relieve  you  from  all  doubts  about 
'tympanum.'  In  Mattaire's  Corpus  Poetarum  it  is  printed  ' typanum,1  and 
that  is  the  true  reading.  It  is  a  Grecism,  and  furnishes  an  additional  prob- 
ability that  smiie  Greek  word  was  in  the  mind  of  the  Roman  writer. 
Scaliger  rends  'typanum,'  and  quotes  from  Homer, —  the  line  is  in  his 
hymn  to  the  Mater  Deorum.  Scaliger  quotes  also  from  Apollonius 
Rhodius." 

The   letter  bristles   with   Greek    and    Latin,  which   I  do  not  inflict 
upon  the  reader;  passes  into  a  disquisition  on  the  metre  of  Catullus, 
with   a  sketch   to  show  the  rhythm  and   its  variations;  and  clo 
thus : — 

"The  cretic  foot,  whether  in  'tympanum'  or  'cymbelum,'  is  quite  inad- 
missible in  the  beginning  of  the  galliambic.     It  retards  the  progress.     I 
will  show  you  Jortin's  remarks.     He  errs  once  or  twice;  but  he   r< 
'  typanum.'  " 

As  Landor  wcut  on  writing  he  seems  at  times  to  have  even  bettered 


JET.  22-30.]  PARR   AND    ADAIR.  99 

the  instruction  of  his  uncompromising  old  "pastor  and  master"  in  party 
warfare.  Remarking  on  one  of  his  political  satires  which  Landor 
had  sent  him,  Parr  thinks  "the  composition  animated,  but  the  notes 
rather  too  acrimonious."  Still  he  finds  them  spirited,  and  can  sympa- 
thize with  the  indignant  writer  in  the  matter  of  Kotzebue.  "But 
why  attack  the  father  1  he  was  not  a  discarded  player.  The  conclu- 
sion is  fierce,  but  witty  and  just." 

One  or  two  glimpses  of  their  more  private  intercourse  may  be 
added. 

RETURN    AFTER    AN    ABSENCE. 

"  I  am  very  sorry  that  we  missed  each  other  when  you  called  on  me  and 
I  on  you  ;  and  I  am  sure  that  if  Walter  Landor  had  gone  into  the  pene- 
trale  of  Hatton  Parsonage,  he  would  have  found  the  Lares  ready  to  wel- 
come with  a  smile  the  return  of  an  old  and  justly  respected  worshipper. 
Pray  do  you  and  Dr.  Lambe  dine  with  me  next  Sunday ;  and  if  you  come 
in  a  chaise,  cram  little  A into  a  corner." 

The  matter  next  adverted  to  has  no  sort  of  interest  for  us  now,  but 
seventy  years  ago  was  setting  all  the  world  at  Warwick  by  the  ears  ; 
and  the  colonel  mentioned  is  the  same  we  made  acquaintance  with  in 
one  of  Mr.  Robert  Landor's  letters.  Indeed  one  may  discern  in  the 
tone  here  taken  by  Parr,  and  what  it  reveals  of  the  part  in  a  personal 
dispute  taken  by  Landor  himself,  some  connection  with  allusions 
made  in  that  letter. 

ABOUT    STONELEIGH    LIVING. 

"  What  a  truth  is  there,  and  what  lies,  about  Stoneleigh  living  !  Upon  one 
canticle  of  that  Cy clean  poem  (for  there  is  such  a  want  of  regularity  in  the 
structure,  and  of  dignity  in  the  agents,  that  I  cannot  call  any  part  the  epi- 
sode of  an  epic),  I  would  assume  the  office  of  a  critic ;  strict  indeed,  but 
precise,  as  Aristarchus.  Colonel  Packwood  certainly  applied  to  Lord 
Hertford  for  his  son;  Lord  Hertford  certainly  applied  to  the  chancellor,  but 
without  mentioning  Colonel  Packwood's  son ;  and  Lord  Hertford,  if  his 
application  had  been  successful,  certainly  would  not  have  given  the  living 
to  Colonel  Packwood's  son.  Colonel  Packwood  certainly  knows  these  are 
the  facts  as  well  as  I  do,  and  before  I  did  ;  nor  would  he,  as  a  gentleman 
lonsible  for  veracity  and  honor,  ever  attempt  to  dispute  the  correctness, 
of  one  tittle  of  this  my  statement.  You  may  say  what  I  have  said ;  and 
quote  my  authority  for  saying  it  positively.  I  am,  dear  Walter,  truly 
yours,  S.  Parr."  * 

What  follows  is  later  in  date  by  a  year  or  two ;  but  it  shows  what 
a  fierce  enemy  as  well  as  fast  friend  this  eager  old  man  could  be,  and 
how  genuine  the  regard  was  that  Landor  had  inspired  in  him.  The 
letter  is  very  characteristic,  and  there  is  no  need  to  supply  the  blank 
with  a  name. 

AN    OLD    ASSOCIATE    OP   PARR'S    AT    HARROW. 

"  Dear  Walter,  —  I  have  known for  thirty-six  years  and  more.    But 

I  do  not  like  him ;  and,  for  various  reasons  in  the  politics  of  Harrow,  we 

*  "  December  23, 1802." 


100  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  i?™-1^": 

are  not  on  very  amicable  terms.  A  letter  from  me  would  do  you  no  good. 
If  there  were  the  smallest  chance  of  advantage  or  convenience  to  you,  I 
would  write  to  him.  But  he  is  not  likely  to  fall  into  any  measure  because 
I  take  an  interest  in  it.  Write  to  him  at  once;  in  this  there  is  no  trouble 
and  can  be  no  harm.  I  much  doubt  whether  he  would  sell,  or  exchange; 
and  if  he  knew  your  genius,  your  attainments,  your  politics,  your  elo- 
quence, and  your  dignified  way  of  thinking  and  acting  upon  all  subjects  in 
private  and  public  life,  he  would  dread  you,  hate  you,  and  drive  you  into 
the  sea.  I  know  him  well,  and  he  knows  that  I  know  him.  But  his  sun 
is  a  most  high-minded,  generous-hearted,  clear  and  full-headed  hero.  He 
would  do  for  a  friend  to  you,  or  to  myself.  Harry  is  his  name  ;  and  he  is  a 
tutor  at  Harrow,  and  fellow  of  King's  College,  Cambridge.  When  Butler 
resigns,  Harry  shall  be  his  successor,  if  my  aid  can  effect  so  desirable  an 
end.  I  am  very  well,  and  rather  busy,  and  quite  content  with  my  own 
share  of  loss  by  the  change  of  ministry.  You  hate  Bonaparte.  But  I  do 
not  suspect  you  have  any    strong  affection  for  George  and  his  present 

advisers Farewell,  God  bless  you,  dear  Walter.      I  am  truly,  ay 

with  real  and  great  respect  and  regard  I  am  your  friend,  S.  Parr." 

My  two  closing  extracts,  from  letters  of  the  date  of  1800  and  1801, 
concern  persons  more  widely  known. 

A   GLIMPSE    OF    SHERIDAN. 

"  Beware,  dear  Walter,  of  prophecies  about  politicians.  On  Friday  at 
3  p.  m.  I  said,  Sheridan  will  never  meet  me  !  On  that  very  day  at  G  p.  m. 
Sheridan  came  in  where  I  was  dining,  on  purpose  to  meet  me.  I  sat  with 
him  enjoying  my  pipe  after  dinner,  and  he  sat  with  his  claret." 

A   PARTY    AT    MACKINTOSH'S. 

"  My  Jemmy  (Mackintosh)  was  delightful,  and  I  will  tell  you  who  were 
with  us.  1.  A  sturdy  democratic  yeoman.  2.  A  university  bedel,  who,  I 
find,  is  always  reading  in  the  Bodleian,  and  who  is  a  shrewd,  argumenta- 
tive, sceptical,  anti-ministerial  dog.  3.  What  is  more  surprising,  a  doctor 
of  divinity;  whom  I  have  known  twenty-four  years  and  not  seen  these 
ten ;  who  took  his  degree  twenty  years  ago,  and  has  not  been  at  Oxford 
since;  who  reads  Greek  well,  has  more  Greek  books  than  myself,  makes 
war  upon  all  bishops  and  archbishops,  and  is  a  rank,  fire-away,  uncompro- 
mising Whig  in  Church  and  State.  These  were  our  companions.  There 
never  was  such  good  luck." 

Adair's  letters  of  this  date  in  a  great  measure  deal  with  the  same 
circumstances  ;  but  in  the  few  extracts  I  give  it  will  be  possible  to 
avoid  repetition.  Though  he  feels  strongly,  he  writes  always  with 
ability  and  a  command  of  temper  ;  and  in  him,  even  while  yet  he  was 
a  constant  butt  for  the  sarcasm  of  Canning  and  his  friends,  I  seem  to 
recognize  the  s;une  quiet  courteous  gentleman  whom  I  remember 
meeting  at  dinner  at  Holland  House  nearly  forty  years  later.  Here  is 
one  of  his  references  to 

THE    DUKE    OF    PORTLAND'S    DEFECTION. 

"  I  have  long  ceased  all  intercourse,  public  or  private,  with  the  Duke  of 
Portland ;  and  as  my  connection  with  him  was  one  of  the  earliest  of  my 


/ET. 


,_,01  PARR   AND    ADAIR.  101 


life  I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  my  resentments  are  bounded  by  the 
wish  of  never  seeing  him  more,  or  hearing  the  mention  of  his  name.  But 
lie  has  forfeited  all  right  to  my  interposition  with  others  to  spare  him  the 
reproaches  which  he  has  deserved  from  his  country  and  from  mankind." 

Here  he  "speaks  of  a  subject  in  some  degree  affecting  his  loyalty  as 
a  Whig,  but  on  which,  with  all  his  ardor  in  the  cause,  he  could  agree 
to  differ  with  Landor. 

WILLIAM    THE    DELIVERER. 

"  With  regard  to  King  William,  I  profess  my  gratitude  to  him  to  arise 
from  public  "principle,  and  public  principle  alone;  but  having  no  other 
means  of  forming  my  judgment  of  his  character  than  those  which  are  com- 
mon to  everybody,  I  do  not  feel  myself  authorized  to  claim  the  concurrence 
of  any  man  living  who  has  the  faculty  of  reasoning  for  himself.  With  your 
permission  I  will  show  your  letter  to  Mr.  Perry,  but  without  mentioning 
your  name." 

It  recurs  briefly  in  a  letter  where  he  alludes  to 

parr's  sermon  and  landor's  newspaper  writings. 

"  I  sent  your  letter  to  Doctor  Parr  this  day.  I  have  the  pleasure  to  tell 
you  that  he  will  be  in  town  next  week.  As  you  may  wish  to  read  his  ser- 
mon before  his  arrival,  I  take  the  liberty  of  sending  you  my  copy.  There 
are  some  noble  passages  in  the  notes.  You  seem  not  to  be  quite  sure 
whether  or  no  the  editor  of  the  Courier  has  rejected  your  letter.  I  will 
take  the  opportunity  of  looking  at  the  file,  and  will  let  you  know.  The 
degraded  state  of  the  English  press  induces  me  to  suspect  that  it  has  been 
omitted.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  for  myself,  and  can  answer  for 
many  of  my  friends,  that  we  should  have  been  much  gratified  to  have  seen 
it  in  print.  I  confess  that  I  think  better  of  King  William  than  you  seem  to 
do,  but  perhaps  I  am  a  little  blinded  by  my  gratitude  (to  use  a  G-odwin- 
ism).  This  however  is  but  a  difference  of  opinion,  and  cannot  detract  from 
the  substantial  merits  of  the  writing.  I  am  acquainted  with  the  Editor  of 
the  Courier,  but  am  almost  sure  that  you  would  find  an  easy  access  to  the 
Morning  Chronicle  if  you  would  permit  me  to  speak  to  Mr.  Perry.  I  would 
not  name  this  to  you,  did  I  not  know  Mr.  Perry  to  be  a  man  of  inviolable 
honor.  I  will  not  vex  you  with  praises,  but  only  wish  you  to  think  as 
well  of  my  judgment  as  you  do  of  my  patriotism  and  my  politeness  when 
I  apply  those  praises  to  your  compositions." 

Landor's  ability  had  made  a  strong  impression  on  Adair,  but  he 
saw  also  his  defects,  and,  as  in  a  letter  where  he  criticises  one  of  his 
attacks  on  the  new  government,  could  give  him  wise  and  useful  hints 
for  guidance. 

ADAIR    TO    LANDOR  :    A    CORRECTION    AND    A   WARNING. 

"  That  the  Catholics  were  '  promised  '  emancipation  in  the  fair  meaning 
of  the  word  '  promise,'  as  the  price  of  their  support  of  the  Union,  I  have  not 
the  smallest  doubt ;  but  since  the  positive  denial  of  the  fact  in  Parliament, 
I  do  not  think  we  are  authorized  to  state  it  as  '  uncontroverted.'  When 
you  ask,  very  justly  as  I  think,  '  Where  is  the  constitution  but  in  the  bosom 
of  such  affectionate  and  disinterested  defenders  as  the  solicitor-general  ?  ' 


102  GEBIR  ;    AXD    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  iw^toj 

I  am  infinitely  more  afraid,  T  confess,  of  his  reply  ex  officio  as  a  lawyer  than 
logician.  Believe  me  the  press  is  absolutely  enslaved.  Coupled  with 
r  sentences  in  your  letter,  which  by  innuendo  might  be  laid  as  f<  mling 
tn  bring  the  governmenl  into  disrepute  (a  crime  quite  or  modem  date),  1 
am  afraid  a  jury  tnighl  be  found  to  condemn  it.  But,  of  all  men,  you  I 
the  least  reason  to  despair  as  a  public  writer,  for  you  possess  such  resources 
for  escape  in  your  powers  of  satire  and  of  irony  that  you  will  always  be 
able,  as  soon  as  you  have  found  out  the  trim  of  the  vessel,  to  state  the 
strongest  truths,  and  to  state  them  safely." 

One  more  subject,  an  appeal  in  arrest  of  judgment  as  to  one  of 
Landor's  personal  attacks,  must  close  these  extracts  for  the  present. 
Landor,  in  one  of  his  political  letters  on  the  defection  of  the  Duke  of 
Portland  and  his  friends,  had  laughed  at  the  Abbe'  Delille,  at  this 
time  a  refugee  in  London,  much  petted  by  the  Whigs  and  bringing 
out  a  poem  under  their  patronage.  "The  Abbe  Delille  ran  away 
fnun  his  property,  the  Abbe  Delille  wrote  some  Georgics,  and  the  Abbe 
Delille  talks  of  Virgil."  Commenting  on  this  letter,  and  giving  up 
the  duke  to  its  wrath,  Adair  writes  to  Landor  :  — 

A    WORD    FOR   THE    ABBE    DELILLE. 

"I  could  much  rather  intercede  for  the  poor  old  Abbe*  Delille,  were  it 
only  because  he  had  the  boldness  to  defy  Robespierre  on  his  throne  of 
blood,  and  to  publish.  I  believe  to  recite  before  him,  his  fine  verses  on  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  The  occasion  of  his  writing  them  was  as  follows. 
In  1794,  the  Comite  de  Saint  Public  sent  to  him  to  compose  some  verses 
for  a  festival  which  they  had  ordered  in  honor  of  God,  whom  Robespierre 
had  previouslv  recognized  by  a  decree  of  the  Convention.  Delille  refused. 
It  was  told  him  that  lie  had  been  permitted  to  live  quietly  at  Paris  till  that 
time,  but  that  those  who  had  protected  him  might  possibly  not  be  able  to 
protect  him  any  longer  if  he  persisted  in  his  refusal.  He  composed,  there- 
fore, an  ode,  which  he  recited  to  some  of  them,  in  which  are  the  following 

stanzas :  — • 

'  Dans  sa  demouro  inebranhible 
Assise  sur  IV'tei-nite 
I. a  tranquille  immortalite, 

Propice  an  I et  terrible  an  conpable, 

Pu  tems  cpii.  sous  sea  yeux,  marcne  a  pas  de  gdant, 
Pdfend  I'ami  <  1  *>  la  justice, 
Et  ravit  a  I'espoir  era  vice, 
L'asile  horrible  du  ndant. 

'  0  vim-,  qui  de  l'Olympe  usurpant  le  tonnerre, 
Des  dternels  lois  renversez  les  autels, 
Lftches  oppresseurs  de  la  terre, 
Tremblez —  vous  §tes  immortels: 
Et  vous  —  vous  « 1  ii  malheur  victimes  passageres, 
Surqui  veillent  d'un  Dieu  les  regards  paternels, 
Vbyageurs  d'un  moment  aux  tern'-  dtrangeres, 
Consolez  vous  —  voua  Stes  immortels.' 

If  yon  have  never  seen  these  lines,  nor  heard  of  the  anecdote  before,  the 
Abbe"  Delille  may.  perha]  s,  rise  in  your  estimation.  At  all  events  1  think  I 
shall  plead  for  him  more  successfully  to  you  than  Corneille  would  to  the 
attorney-general,     'Sa   probite*  stupide,'  applied  as  you  have  applied  it, 

would  have  been  dangerous  al  anytime;  but  would  he  particularly  so  at 
present,  when  the  object  of  it  has  lost  even  the  remnant  of  his  wits." 


JET.  22-30.]  AT    PARIS    IX    1802.  103- 

Perhaps  it  may  be  owing  to  a  favorable  impression  made  thus  early 
by  this  kindly  plea  of  Adair  for  the  good  old  abbe,  that  Landor  made 
him  afterwards  an  interlocutor  in  one  of  his  imaginary  dialogues. 
But  he  never  conquered  his  own  dislike  of  the  French  character  and 
literature.  It  was  one  of  his  earliest  and  one  of  his  latest  peculiari- 
ties. The  armed  republic  that  was  to  change  the  face  of  the  world 
had  failed  of  its  glorious  mission  ;  even  the  hopes  he  once  built  on 
Bonaparte  he  cherished  no  longer  ;  and  though  eager  to  visit  France 
as  soon  as  peace  was  declared,  and  curious  to  see  her  first  consul,  it 
was  with  very  little  of  that  kind  of  sympathy  for  the  hero  of  the 
eighteenth  Brumaire  and  now  supreme  ruler  of  France  which  carried 
over  at  the  same  time  Fox  himself,  Adair,  and  many  eager  followers. 

VII.     AT   PARIS   IN   1802. 

Landor  had  declined  all  introductions  ;  though  letters  had  been 
offered  him,  as  he  told  his  brother,  which  would  have  opened  to  him 
the  salons  of  the  second  consul  Cambaceres,  and  of  Berthier  the 
minister  of  war.  There  was  but  one  Frenchman  he  cared  to  see,  and 
one  portion  of  France.  Paris,  as  the  great  city  looked  so  soon  after 
the  storm  of  the  Revolution,  with  her  Louvre  filled  by  the  spoils  of 
Italy  ;  and  Bonaparte,  now  consul  for  life ;  when  these  had  been 
seen,  he  should  at  once  return. 

The  precise  time  of  his  arrival  was  that  to  which  Wordsworth's 
well-known  sonnet  has  referred  :  — 

"This  is  young  Bonaparte's  natal  day, 
And  his  is  henceforth  an  establisht  sway, 
Consul  for  Life." 

Upon  the  occasion  when  Bonaparte  first  publicly  assumed  the  rank 
with  which  he  had  been  thus  invested,  Landor  saw  him.  Advantage 
had  been  taken  of  it  for  a  great  holiday,  of  which,  as  the  young  Eng- 
lishman walked  the  streets,  he  saw  everywhere  the  mighty  prepara- 
tion. Yet  in  the  signs  of  enthusiasm  presented  outwardly  there  were 
curious  contrasts.  On  the  one  hand,  "  The  private  houses  wTere  no  more 
illuminated  than  usual.  The  shops  had  two  lamps  instead  of  one. 
This  was  the  only  difference."  On  the  other  hand,  "  The  palace  of  the 
government,  the  metropolitan  church,  the  arches  of  the  bridges,  the 
bridges  themselves  and  all  the  public  edifices,  were  illuminated  most 
magnificently."  That  the  enthusiasm  had  been  specially  got  up  for 
Paris,  in  short,  quite  as  much  as  any  other  part  of  the  ceremony, 
Landor  had  reason  to  suspect  ;  and  the  suspicion  became  a  certainty 
when  the  hero  of  the  day  made  his  appearance. 

This  was  in  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries  ;  and  in  a  letter  to  his  brother 
Henry,  now  lying  before  me,  he  described  the  scene.  At  various 
points  there  had  been  built  up  pyramids  of  wood,  each  of  the  height 
of  five-and-twenty  feet,  covered  with  lamps  of  extraordinary  bril- 
liancy.    In  the  same  manner  were  ornamented  "  the  sides  of  several 


104  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  >*£• 

pieces  of  water  in  which  were  fountains  playing ;  and  there  was  not 
a  statue  nor  an  orange-tree  of  which  you  could  not  distinguish  the 
minutest  part.  Seven  rows  of  benches  were  erected  over  the  grand 
flight  of  steps  which  leads  into  the  palace,  each  containing  forty 
performers,  the  first  musicians  in  the  world.  Immediately  above,  at 
the  height  perhaps  of  thirty  feet,  sat  the  principal  officers  of  state. 
On  the  leads  which  cover  the  colonnade  the  military  guards  wero 
walking.  Bonaparte  made  his  appearance  in  the  centre,  where  his 
wife  had  sat  some  time  in  company  with  the  other  two  consuls.  I 
expected  that  the  sky  would  have  been  rent  with  acclamations.  On 
the  contrary,  he  experienced  such  a  reception  as  was  given  to  Richard 
the  Third.  He  was  sensibly  mortified.  All  bowed,  —  but  lie  waved 
to  and  fro,  and  often  wiped  his  face  with  his  handkerchief.  He 
retired  in  about  ten  minutes." 

Landor's  own  mortification  could  hardly  have  been  less  than  Bona- 
parte's. Not  thus  had  he  expected  to  see  the  man  by  whose  aston- 
ishing career,  up  to  this  turning  hour  of  it,  all  the  world  had  been 
inthralled  ;  the  hero  of  Italy,  by  whom  conflicting  creeds  were  to  be 
reconciled  ;  the  armed  leader  of  the  French  Revolution,  by  whom 
decaying  nations  were  to  be  regenerated.  Was  it  possible  that  he  in 
whom  such  hopes  had  centred  could  now  consent  to  become  but 
another  life-tenant  of  the  Tuileries,  changing  the  substance  for  the 
shadows  of  greatness  1  In  the  same  year  and  month  when  these  let- 
ters were  written  by  Landor,  that  question  was  sorrowfully  put  and 
answered  by  Wordsworth  :  — 

"  I  grieved  for  Bonaparte"  with  a  vain 
And  an  unthinking  grief  !  for  who  aspires 
To  genuine  greatness  but  from  just  desires, 
And  knowledge  such  as  he  could  never  gain?  " 

Bluntly  and  characteristically,  but  to  similar  effect,  Landor  wrote 
off  to  his  brother  under  the  immediate  influence  of  what  Paris  itself 
had  shown  him  ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  amid  his  many  changes 
of  opinion,  the  opinion  now  formed  of  Napoleon,  and  of  the  people 
under  his  rule,  was  never  afterwards  materially  changed.  His  point 
of  view  was  not  that  of  Wordsworth,  and  his  wishes  and  aims  were 
different ;  but  he  had  arrived  substantially  at  the  same  result. 
"  Doubtless  the  government  of  Bonaparte,"  he  wrote,  "  is  the  best 
that  can  be  contrived  for  Frenchmen.  Monkeys  must  be  chained, 
though  it  may  cost  them  some  grimaces.  If  you  have  read  atten- 
tively the  last  senatus-consultum,  you  will  find  that  not  an  atom  of 
liberty  is  left.  This  people,  the  most  inconstant  and  therefore  the 
most  contemptible  in  the  world,  seemed  to  have  recovered  their 
senses  when  they  had  lost  their  freedom.  The  idol  is  beyond  their 
reach,  but  the  idolatry  lias  vanished.  A  consul  of  so  great  a  genius 
will  make  the  nation  formidable  to  all  the  earth  but  England  ;  but  I 
hope  there  is  no  danger  of  any  one  imitating  its  example.  As  to  the 
cause  of  liberty,  this  cursed  nation  has  ruined  it  forever."     What  he 


MT.  22-30.]  AT    PARIS    IN    1802.  105 

thus  said  in  Iris  twenty-seventh  year  he  was  saying  in  his  eighty- 
seventh,  nearly  in  the  same  words  ;  the  intervening  sixty  years  hav- 
ing failed  to  amend  or  remove  the  impression  thus  received  in  his 
youth. 

To  his  sister  Elizabeth  he  described  the  second  occasion  when  he 
saw  Napoleon.  It  was  at  a  review  in  the  court  of  the  Tuileries, 
when  he  stood  within  six  or  eight  yards  of  him  for  a  quarter  of  an 
hour.  "  His  countenance,"  he  wrote,  "  is  not  of  that  fierce  cast 
which  you  see  in  the  prints,  and  which  perhaps  it  may  assume  in 
battle.  He  seems  melancholy  and  reserved,  but  not  morose  or  proud. 
His  figure'  and  complexion  are  nearly  like  those  of  Charles  Norris. 
He  rode  a  little  white  horse,  abont  the  size  of  my  father's  ;  and  can- 
tered up  and  down  six  or  eight  lines  of  military,  drawn  out  in  the 
court  of  the  Tuileries,  which  is  about  the  size  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 
Each  line  lowered  its  colors  as  he  passed,  and  he  took  off  his  hat  in 
return.  The  French  are  not  mightily  civil,  and  one  cannot  much 
wonder,  —  but  I  got  an  admirable  place  by  a  piece  of  well-timed  flat- 
tery. After  I  had  seen  Bonaparte  canter  by  me  at  the  distance  of 
about  a  dozen  yards,  I  left  my  situation  at  the  window  and  went 
down  close  to  the  gate  of  the  palace.  Presently  came  the  chief  con- 
sul and  half  a  score  generals.  The  people  made  room  through  fear 
of  the  horses,  which  indeed  were  fierce  enough,  being  covered  with 
blue  and  red  velvet,  one  half  of  which  was  hid  with  gold-lace.  In- 
stead of  going  with  the  crowd,  I  pushed  forward  and  got  by  the  side 
of  Bonaparte's  Mamelouk,  in  a  place  where  there  were  none  but  sol- 
diers. There  was  a  very  tall  fellow  just  before  me.  I  begged  him  to 
let  me  see  Bonaparte,  and  observed  that  probably  he  had  seen  him 
often  and  shared  his  victories.  The  youth  was  delighted.  Ah  !  le 
voila,  monsieur  !  said  he  ;  and  in  a  moment  there  was  nothing  be- 
tween me  and  this  terror  of  Europe  but  the  backs  of  two  horses, 
over  which  I  could  see  him  as  distinctly  as  I  see  this  paper." 

It  is  doubtful  if  he  saw  him  again,  though  he  always  believed  it 
was  the  fugitive  from  Waterloo  whom  he  met  at  Tours  thirteen  years 
later,  when  the  allied  armies  were  in  Paris ;  but  he  remembered  to 
the  close  of  his  life  that  first  sight  of  Napoleon  ;  and  his  description 
only  the  year  before  his  death,  in  conversation  with  an  American 
lady  in  Florence,  is  not  contradicted  by  his  letter  written  more  than 
sixty  years  before.  "  I  was  in  Paris,"  said  Landor  one  day,  "  at  the 
time  that  Bonaparte  made  his  entrance  as  first  consul.  I  was  stand- 
ing within  a  few  feet  of  him  when  he  passed,  and  had  a  capital  good 
look  at  him.  He  was  exceedingly  handsome  then,  with  a  rich  olive 
complexion  and  oval  face,  youthful  as  a  girl's.  Near  him  rode  Murat, 
mounted  upon  a  gold-clad  charger ;  and  very  handsome  he  was  too, 
but  coxcombical."  * 

*  Atlantic  Monthly  for  April,  1866.  "  I  looked  with  wonder  upon  a  person,"  says 
the  lady  who  describes  these  last  days  of  Landor,  "  who  remembered  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  as  a  slender  young  man,  and  listened  with  delight  to  a  voice  from  so 
dim  a  past." 


10G  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  j;^ 

Of  the  pictures  and  works  of  art  from  Italy  then  assembled  in 
Paris,  which  next  to  the  hero  of  Italy  interested  him  most,  he  also 
wrote  to  both  brother  and  sister.  During  the  whole  of  his  stay  he 
had  passed  in  general  three  or  four  hours  of  every  day  in  the  Louvre, 
and  had  convinced  himself  that  what  was  to  be  seen  there  could  not 
be  >irn  or  studied  properly  in  less  than  three  years.  Out  of  so  im- 
mense a  quantity  of  works  (not  less  than  a  thousand,  as  he  reckoned), 
scarcely  a  dozen  had  been  injured  in  their  transport  to  Paris,  and  not 
one  beyond  repair.  Not  that  more  than  a  fourth  or  fifth  were  to  he 
counted  fairly  as  the  spoils  of  Italy  ;  for  a  great  proportion  had  been 
brought  together  from  the  royal  palaces,  and  from  the  private  col- 
lections of  the  old  nobility  now  wandering  in  exile.  Terrible  as  the 
shock  of  the  Revolution  had  been,  he  wondered  to  see  around  him  so 
much  that  was  unshaken.  The  religious  houses  only  appeared  to 
him  to  have  suffered  irretrievably.  Versailles  is  his  perpetual  theme 
of  wonder  and  delight.  It  struck  him  to  be  five  times  as  large  as 
Warwick  Castle.  The  rooms  were  incrusted  with  marble,  the  gardens 
full  of  noblest  works  of  statuary,  everything  magnificent  beyond  de- 
scription. At  poor  Marie  Antoinette's  petit  trianon  he  had  passed 
two  days,  and  fills  half  a  letter  to  his  sister  with  an  account  of  its 
marvellous  beauty  and  most  affecting  associations,  then  fresh  with  all 
their  tragedy. 

But  he  had  also  less  dignified  and  agreeable  subjects  to  write  about, 
and  among  them  were  the  hotels  and  lodgings  of  Paris.  He  found 
them  three  times  as  dear  as  in  London.  He  paid  four  livres  a  night 
for  a  miserable  bedroom,  and  for  another  poor  brick-floor  apartment 
had  to  pay  a  Luis  a  week.  But  unless  you  had  servants  of  your  own, 
you  could  not  dine  at  your  lodgings  ;  and  when  he  changed  again  for 
another  hotel,  it  was  the  same.  Though  in  that  from  which  he 
wrote  there  were  sixty  bedrooms,  there  was  not  a  fire  in  the  house, 
and  lie  was  obliged  to  put  on  his  shirt  as  damp  as  a  newspaper  from 
the  press.  Coach  hire  was  another  grievance,  it  having  cost  him  on 
an  average  six  or  eight  shillings  a  day  ;  and  altogether  he  was  not 
sorry  to  find  his  face  turned  again  towards  home. 

On  his  way  hack  he  wrote  to  his  sister  of  the  carnage  and  cart- 
horses of  the  country,  and  a  few  lines  from  this  letter  are  worth  pre- 
serving. 

"  First  T  will  tell  you  of  those  that  are  used  in  carnages.  Their  sides 
;.it  thai  a  whole  horse  looks  like  half  a  one,  and  their  harness  is 
nothing  but  a  hundred  pieces  of  rope:  such  harness  is  easily  repaired.  On 
the  contrary,  the  cart-horses  are  decorated  mosl  magnificently.  There  is  a 
high  piece  of  wood  above  the  collar,  on  which  is  suspended  a  sheepskin, 
dyed  red  or  blue.  The  rest  of  the  body  is  covered  with  a  net,  the  meshes 
of  which  are  so  large  thai  it  serves  no  purpose  but  ornament.  There  is  not 
a  horse  in  France  thai  would  not  give  all  he  is  worth  to  be  rid  of  tl 
sheepskins,  at  least  in  summer;  bul  there  is  no  redress.  They  groan  most 
bitterly  under  the  heavy  imposition,  and  I  have  seen  one  or  two  of  them 
perform  a  counter-revolution.  Their  names  are  generally  Jacob, —  at  least 
I  heard  a  fellow  call  two  out  of  three  by  that  name." 


XT.   22-30.]       POETRY  BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  GEBIR.  107 

His  feeling  on  finding  himself  in  England*  again  was  upon  the 
whole  a  healthier  one  than  that  with  which  he  quitted  it.  The 
splendors  of  the  Republic  had  paled.  Too  many  close  resemblances 
had  presented  themselves  between  the  French  cart-horse  and  the  French 
citizen.  The  meshes  woven  by  the  conquests  of  Napoleon  were  no 
doubt  highly  ornamental,  but  otherwise  not  of  much  benefit ;  and  the 
fed  sheepskin  of  military  glory  was  not  worth  the  galling  pressure 
of  its  accompanying  "  high  piece  of  wood  above  the  collar."  One  of 
Landor's  first  acts  at  his  return  was  to  assist  in  the  publication  of  a 
new  edition  of  his  Gebir,  produced  at  Oxford  under  his  brothers 
direction ;  and  the  line  which  had  characterized  Bonaparte  as  "a 
mortal  man  above  all  mortal  praise,"  appeared  with  a  note  of  very 
large  qualification.  "  Bonaparte  might  have  been  so,"  he  now  said, 
"  and  in  the  beginning  of  his  career  it  was  augured  that  he  would  be. 
But  unhappily  he  thinks  that  to  produce  great  changes  is  to  perform 
great  actions.  To  annihilate  ancient  freedom  and  substitute  new  ;  to 
give  republics  a  monarchical  government,  and  the  provinces  of  mon- 
archy a  republican  one ;  in  short,  to  overthrow  by  violence  all  the 
institutions,  and  to  tear  from  the  heart  all  the  social  habits  of  man, 
has  been  the'  tenor  of  his  politics  to  the  present  hour."  Nor  did  he 
hesitate  in  another  note  to  declare,  while  confessing  the  hopes  he  had 
indulged  of  an  empire  of  justice  and  equality,  that  in  such  hopes 
raised  from  the  French  Revolution  every  good  man  had  been  disap- 
pointed. "  God  forbid,"  he  exclaimed,  "  that  we  should  ever  be  im- 
pelled to  use  their  means  of  amelioration,  or  that  our  arms  should  be 
attended  by  success  like  theirs,  —  internal  and  external  subjugation." 


VIII.    POETRY  BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  GEBIR. 

Other  literary  work  he  also  at  this  time  took  in  hand.  We  have 
seen  that  in  the  lecture-rooms  at  Oxford  he  had  made  acquaintance 
with  the  story  of  the  Phocseans,  the  invaders  of  Gaul  who  built 
Marseilles ;  and,  struck  with  its  political  as  well  as  poetical  capabili- 
ties, he  now  took  it  for  the  subject  of  an  epic.  But  he  wanted 
patience  for  such  a  design,  and  in  what  little  he  managed  to  complete 
the  politics  had  not  strengthened  the  poetry.  To  uphold  republics 
and  liberty  against  "  Circean  soul-dissolving  monarchy "  was  plain 
sailing  enough  :  but  commercial  enterprise  had  then  some  prominent 
features  that  made  not  so  easy  the  other  part  of  his  design,  which 
was  to  exhibit  the  superiority  of  commerce  over  the  greeds  of  war ; 

*  Here  is  the  characteristic  close  of  his  last  letter  to  his  sister  before  leaving  Paris. 
"  How  go  on  the  Lambes  ?  Is  Mr.  Lyttelton  well  ?  Has  Lord  Warwick  run  the  country  ? 
Are  the  Greatheads  at  Guy's  Cliff?  How  is  Doctor  Pan-?  I  wrote  to  him  by  Miss 
Ferrers,  but  he  has  not  answered  my  letter.  I  cannot  guess  the  day  of  the  "month 
within  a  fortnight;  so  I  pass  it,  and  remain,  &c."  In  the  letter  immediately  preceding 
he  had  complained  of  his  purse  waxing  feeble,  telling  her  how  impossible  it  was  to 
live  in  Paris  for  a  little.  "  They  know  an  Englishman  everywhere,  and  the  extrava- 
gance of  a  few  is  a  heavy  tax  on  the  rest." 


108  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  iw^aos! 

and  not  even  Bonaparte's  offences  against  freedom  were  blacker  in 
Landor'a  eves  than  the  traffic  and  traffickers  in  slaves. 

Of  the  exact  time  when  he  took  up  or  laid  aside  his  plan,  I  cannot 
speak  with  certainty  ;  but  between  the  first  notion  and  his  execution  of 
that  part  which  he  published  there  had  come  the  interval  and  influence 
of  Gebir.  Unfortunately  it  was  in  some  respects  more  adverse  than 
favorable.  With  the  consciousness  of  power  it  carried  also  the  sense 
of  failure,  for  as  yet  even  the  ten  admirers  he  challenged  had  not 
come  to  him.  There  is  a  touching  admission  to  this  effect  in  one  of 
his  letters  to  Southey  in  1809.  "  I  confess  to  you,  if  even  foolish  men 
had  read  Gebir,  I  should  have  continued  to  write  poetry.  There  is 
something  of  summer  in  the  hum  of  insects."  *  He  had  less  care  or 
spirit,  after  such  experience,  to  renew  the  effort  in  any  finished  or 
elaborate  form.  He  rushed  at  once  into  print  with  what  he  had 
written  ;  sent  it  out  uncorrected  in  another  sixpenny  pamphlet ;  and, 
pleading  the  example  of  the  painter  who  asked  people  only  to  tell 
him  his  faults,  protested  that  he  wished  to  ascertain  not  merely 
whether  his  poetry  was  good  but  whether  it  was  wanted. 

The  answer  now  may  be  given  succinctly  that  it  was  good  and  was 
not  wanted  ;  falling  dead-born,  yet  containing  what  the  world  should 
not  have  let  perish  so  indifferently.  I  will  quote  a  few  passages  to 
show  this,  the  more  willingly  for  having  found  that  I  had  counselled 
Landor  not  to  include  the  piece  in  his  works  when  collected  twenty 
years  ago.  Of  this  one  of  his  letters  reminds  me.  "  At  college,"  he 
writes  to  Mr.  Browning,  the  year  before  his  death  and  seventy  years 
after  the  time  he  recalls,  "  I  and  Stackhouse  were  examined  by  the 
college  tutor  in  Justin,  who  mentions  the  expulsion  of  the  Phocscans 
from  their  country.  In  my  childish  ambition  1  fancied  I  could  write 
an  epic  on  it.  Before  the  year's  end  I  did  what  you  see  "  (a  copy  of 
the  old  paper-backed  sixpenny  pamphlet,  printed  by  Sharp,  of  War- 
wick, accompanied  the  letter),  "and  corrected  it  the  year  follow- 
ing. Forster  very  judiciously  omitted  it  in  my  printed  large  volumes, 
but  I  am  persuaded  now  that  it  is  worth  preserving  as  a  curiosity  of 
the  kind." 

A  little  also  for  a  better  reason.  Undoubtedly  to  the  poem  as  a 
whole,  one  of  its  own  lines,  speaking  of  a  Sardian  vase  of  burnished 
gold, 

"  Dazzling  without,  but  dark  from  depth  within," 

is  only  too  applicable  ;  and  though  between  a  darkness  of  this  kind  and 
the  mud  that  thickens  shallow  streams  there  is  a  difference,  and  ob- 
scurity will  often  be  really  occasioned  by  depth,  a  poem  is  the  worst 

*  In  a  later  letter  (December,  1810)  he  repeats:  "  The  popidarU  nura,  though  we  are 
ashamed  or  unable  to  analyze  it,  i-  requisite  for  the  health  and  growth  of  genius.  Had 
Gebir  been  a  worse  poem,  but  with  more  admirers,  and  I  had  once  filled  my  -ails.  I 
should  have  made  many,  and  perhaps  M'me  prosperous  voyages.  There  i-  almost  as 
much  vanity  in  disdaining  the  opinion  of  the  world  as  in  pursuing  it.  In  the  one  case 
we  are  conscious  of  possessing  dignity :  in  the  other  we  basely  Berpentize  (sic)  to  obtain 
it.    This  is  indeed  a  difference,  and  one  worth  knowing  in  the  outset." 


JET.  22-30.]  POETRY    BY    THE   AUTHOR   OF    GEBIR.  109 

form  one  can  find  it  in.  On  its  surface,  nevertheless,  as  in  the  Sar- 
dian  vase,  there  will  be  beauties  telling  with  all  the  more  dazzling 
prominence  for  that  defect ;  and  though  without  the  wonderful  charm 
of  Gebir,  there  are  in  the  little  tract  that  contained  the  Phocwans 
things  more  masterly  than  in  any  other  poetical  writing  of  that  day. 
In  the  prayer  to  the  Gods  to  "  strengthen  with  new  stars  the  watery 
way";  in  the  invocation  to  the  Powers  "  whose  silent  orbs  control 
the  balanced  billows  of  the  boundless  sea  " ;  and  in  the  picture  of 
the  Destinies  intent  upon  their  loom,  unoccupied  "  with  aught 
beyond  its  moody  murmuring  soitnd  "  ;  single  lines  of  unusual  power 
and  expressiveness  occur,  and  I  may  instance  especially  those  two  in 
which  a  political  creed  held  by  the  young  poet  to  the  last  is  tersely 
stated  :  "  I  deem  it  first  of  human  miseries  To  be  a  tyrant ;  then,  to 
suffer  one."  The  same  condensed  meaning  is  in  the  preference 
avowed  for  a  country  struggling  hard  with  tyranny  over  one  where 
"  Power  o'er  slaves  was  freedom  and  was  '  rights,'  And  man  degraded 
could  but  man  degrade." 
These  will  be  admired  :  — 

"  But  when  the  God 
Himself,  resistless  Neptune,  struck  one  blow, 
Rent  were  the  rocks  asunder,  and  the  sky 
Was  darkened  with  their  fragments  ere  they  fell." 

And  here,  worthy  to  be  placed  beside  them,  is  the  first  fight  of  the 
island  invaders  :  — 

"  We  dash  from  every  pinnace,  and  present 
A  ridge  of  arms  above  a  ridge  of  waves. 
Now  push  we  forward;  now  the  fight,  like  fire, 
Closes  and  gapes  and  gathers  and  extends. 
Swords  clash,  shields  clang;  spears  whir  athwart  the  sky, 
And  distant  helmets  drop  like  falling  stars." 

Another  picture  may  accompany  this,  —  one  of  war's  attendant 

horrors  :  — 

"  From  wakened  nest,  and  pinion  silence-poised, 
The  huge  vulture  drops  rebounding:  first  he  fears; 
Looks  round;  draws  back;  half  lifts  his  cowering  wing; 
Stretches  his  ruffled  neck  and  rolling  eye, 
Tastes  the  warm  blood,  and  flickers  for  the  foe." 

Other  lines  will  show  the  frequent  reflective  beauty  that  sets  off 
this  vivid  picturesqueness  of  writing  :  — 

"  —  Those  who  living  filled  the  smallest  space 
In  death  have  often  left  the  greatest  void. 
When  from  his  dazzling  sphere  the  mighty  falls, 
Men,  proud  of  showing  interest  in  his  fate, 
Run  to  each  other,  and  with  oaths  protest 
How  wretched  and  how  desolate  they  are. 
The  good  departs,  and  silent  are  the  good." 

Again  :  from  the  smaller  pieces  in  the  same  tract  :  — 

"  In  his  own  image  the  Creator  made, 

His  own  pure  sunbeam  quickened  thee,  0  man! 
Thou  breathing  dial !     Since  thy  day  began 
The  present  hour  was  ever  markt  with  shade !  " 


110  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  ^": 

Whatever  else  may  lie  alleged  of  Landor's  style,  there  is  nothing 
weak  or  pompous  about  it  ;  flaccid  or  turgid  lines  —  the  certain  sign 
of  inferior  work  -  do  not  occur  ;  and  there  are  no  gaspings  for  breath. 
His  word  answers  always  to  his  thought  ;  and  the  movement  of  his 
verse,  sustained  at  the  level  of  his  fancy  and  language,  takes  its 
music  from  both.  Passages  quite  perfect  in  themselves  stand  out  in 
this  way  from  his  compositions,  even  when  otherwise  least  successful 
It  is  indeed  his  defect  too  often  to  treat  parti<  ular  things  with  an  ex- 
cess of  vividness,  by  which  the  general  level  of  his  work  is  placed  at 
disadvantage.  Impetuosity,  want  of  patience,  is  as  had  in  literature 
as  in  life  ;  and  it  was  his  very  power  of  putting  rapidly  and  visibly  on 
his  page  what  he  saw  himself  with  astonishing  vividness,  that,  for 
want  of  certain  links  of  connection,  dropped  in  his  eagerness  as  of  no 
account  hut  very  necessary  to  the  enjoyment  of  his  readers,  gave  oc- 
casional obscurity  to  a  style  in  itself  transparently  clear.  This  re- 
mark is  made  in  connection  with  the  poems  under  notice,  because,  in 
reviewing  them,  the  stanch  and  as  yet  almost  solitary  friend  of 
Gebir  justified  on  this  ground  a  little  wavering  from  the  allegiance  he 
so  generously  and  loyally  had  proffered  to  its  writer,  the  young  poet 
still  even  by  name  unknown  to  him. 

Southey's  article  appeared  in  what  was  called  the  AinmnI  Review* 
a  "history  of  literature "  just  set  up  by  Doctor  Aikin,  which  happily 
for  Southey  had  not  a  very  long  life  ;  the  wage  for  which  he  was 
laboring  at  it  being  so  low  that  he  must  have  struck  work  if  it  had 
not  by  starving  its  authors  starved  out  itself.  At  this  time  it  hap- 
pened that  William  Taylor,  of  Norwich,  had  great  influence  over 
Southey,  and  had  been  doing  his  best  to  laugh  him  out  of  his  idolatry 
of  Gebir.  Great  at  the  derivation  of  words,  he  declared  it  to  have 
been  aptly  so  named,  "  quasi  gibberish";  and  Southey,  though  by  no 
means  abandoning  his  own  opinion,  was  uneasy  at  the  adverse  opinion 
of  his  friend.  Reviewing  the  new  poem,  he  admits  that  the  story  of 
the  former  had  been  related  in  language  so  involved  and  difficult  that 
few  could  penetrate  its  meaning  ;  and  that  they  who  did  might  per- 
haps have  overrated  its  merits  in  proportion  to  the  difficulty  they  had 
overcome  in  discovering  them.  Still  he  protested  its  merits  to  he 
of  most  uncommon  excellence;  and  that  though  the  mine  was  dark 
and  the  ore  deep,  there  was  ore  of  priceless  value.  But  he  did  not 
find  the  second  effort  equal  to  the  first,  or  that  the  five  intervening 
years  had  matured  the  taste  of  the  author,  whoever  he  might  be. 
iebody,f  he  added,  had  said  of  Gebir  that  its  thoughts  were  con- 
nected by  flea-skips  of  association  ;  but  Gebir  was  lucid  compared  with 

*  Published  by  Longman  and  Rees,  1802:  see  Vol.  I.  p.  fi03. 

t  Ir  was  William  Taylor's  remark.     I  quote  from  a   letter  to  Southey  in  which  he 

Bpeaksof  Gt bir.    "There  are  exquisitely  fine  passages,  but  they  succ 1  eacb  other  by 

such  flea-skips  of  association  that  I  am  unable  to  track  the  path  of  the  author's  mind, 
and  verily  Buspect  him  of  insanity.  I'.ut  :i-  he  makes  his  appeal  to  a  jury  of  geniuses, 
I  am  sure  of  being  challenged,  and  my  opinion  can  be  of  no  consequence.  It  i-  not  the 
verdict  of  the  panel."  From  him  too  had  come  the  allusion  to  Valerius  Flaccus,  also 
used  by  Southey  at  the  close  of  his  notice.    See  ante,  p.  65. 


.ET.  22-30.]  POETRY    BY    THE   AUTHOR    OF    GEBIR.  Ill 

the  Phocceans.  At  the  same  time  Southey  defined  the  obscurity,  not 
quite  truly  but  not  unfairly,  as  arising  from  a  passion  for  compi-es- 
sion ;  pointing  out  that  this  might  be  carried  so  far  as  to  become  a 
mere  short-hand,  reminding  a  writer  of  his  own  conceptions  but  never 
explaining  them  to  others.  In  short,  with  much  complimentary  ad- 
mission as  to  the  few  passages  which  he  had  found  to  be  intelligible, 
Southey's  verdict  was  adverse  to  Poetry  by  the  Author  of  Gebir. 

Fortunately  Landor  never  knew  this,  or  that  his  earliest  critical 
friend  had  ever  momentarily  faltered  in  allegiance  to  him ;  but  the 
remarks  on  Gebir 's  obscurity,  supposed  to  have  been  Doctor  Aikin's, 
were  not  without  their  influence.  The  author  had  lately  taken  lodg- 
ings at  Oxford  to  be  near  his  brother  Robert,  who  was  in  residence  at 
Worcester  College  ;  and  the  fruit  of  their  deliberation  was  the  publi- 
cation, after  not  many  months,  of  an  edition  of  Gebir  now  rarely  to  be 
met  with,  accompanied  not  only  by  a  Latin  version  of  it,  the  Gebirus, 
but  by  prose  arguments  to  each  book  in  both  languages,  with  notes 
of  explanation  to  the  passages  supposed  to  be  most  obscure.  I  must 
add,  however,  that  even  this  concession  provoked  no  kindly  return ; 
that  in  his  handsome  coat  Gebir  fared  no  better  than  in  his  homely 
one ;  and  that  the  brothers,  impatient  of  the  refusal  of  the  critics  to 
take  further  notice  of  their  labors,  went  soon  after  into  the  critical 
line  on  their  own  account. 

Mr.  Robert  Landor's  letters  have  informed  me  pleasantly  as  to  these 
matters.  "  Even  the  first  edition  of  Gebir  was  followed  speedily  by 
little  unbound  publications  of  which  I  cannot  remember  correctly 
either  the  order  or  the  titles.  The  Phocceans,  the  commencement  of 
an  epic  poem,  various  Latin  verses,  and  English  verses,  filling  no  more 
than  a  few  pages,  a  little  volume  of  Icelandic  poems,  suggested  by 
Mr.  Herbert's  success,  but  nothing  in  prose  that  I  can  remember  be- 
fore the  first  two  volumes  of  his  Imaginary  Conversations,  except  a 
few  pages  on  Primitive  Sacrifices.  I  often  tried  to  dissuade  him  from 
such  diminutive  works,  or  rather  scraps,  as  betraying  too  nmch  im- 
patience, and  as  excusing  the  public  neglect.  They  were  read  by  a 
few  personal  friends  only,  and  only  one  of  them  was  noticed  in  a  Re- 
view. I  am  not  unwilling  that  you  should  smile  at  my  expense, 
knowing  how  tolerant  you  are.  When  there  were  no  magazines  ex- 
cepting the  Gentleman'1  s,  young  aspirants  to  literature  could  try  their 
pretensions  nowhere  else  so  safely  as  in  the  Reviews.  The  Edinburgh 
and  Quarterly,  a  little  later,  were  accessible  only  to  a  few  of  higher 
pretensions  and  qualities  better  ascertained.  For  the  rest  it  was  not 
at  all  necessary  that  they  should  have  any  knowledge  of  the  subjects 
about  which  they  wrote.  They  placed  themselves  as  doctors  learned 
in  literary  law.  They  took  their  seats  on  the  judge's  bench  before 
they  had  prepared  themselves  by  their  studies  for  the  bar.  It  was 
necessary  to  assume  great  dignity  and  authority ;  a  compassionate  or 
contemptuous  treatment  of  the  culprits  trembling  before  them  was 
necessary ;  but  learning,  wisdom,  and  experience  were  not  necessary. 


112  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  ^.^ 

Excepting  that  my  conscience  acquits  me  of  any  wish  to  give  pain,  or 
of  any  malignant  pleasure  in  tormenting  my  betters,  such  a  critic 
was  I!  —  a  professional  critic!  —  a  reviewer!  My  first  article  was 
on  Walter's  Iceland  tale  of  Gunlaug  and  Helga,  —  very  confident  in 
its  patronage  indeed  !  Walter  was  delighted  ;  and  both  of  ns  laughed 
at  the  imposture.  The  Oxford  Review  broke  down  after  the  first  three 
or  four  numbers ;  and  my  conscience  is  the  more  easy  as  I  had  con- 
tributed only  two  or  three  articles,  conceited  enough  but  not  malier- 
nant.  Up  to  this  time  there  had,  1  think,  been  no  notice  of  my 
brother's  publications  since  that  by  Southey  of  Gebir.  But  Walter's 
impatience  under  such  unmerited  neglect  was  betrayed  by  repeated 
and  very  contemptuous  challenges  offered  both  to  critics  and  authors, 
in  little  publications  which  were  never  read  by  either.  Then,  as  at  a 
later  age,  he  seemed  equally  enraged  by  the  public  neglect,  and  dis- 
dainful of  its  notice." 

The  best  of  those  little  "  Icelandic "  poems  being  accessible  still 
in  the  printed  works,  nothing  more  need  be  said  of  it  here,  except  that 
it  appears  to  have  been  suggested  to  Landor  by  a  letter  from  Birch, 
his  favorite  and  friend  at  Rugby. 

IX.     WALTER  BIRCH,    AND  SUCCESSION  TO  FAMILY  ESTATES. 

Several  of  Birch's  letters  had  been  kept  by  his  school-fellow,  and 
some  of  them  bear  date  shortly  before  the  latter,  by  Doctor  Landoi*'s 
death,  became  master  of  the  Staffordshire  estate  :  his  mother  continu- 
ing life-tenant  of  Ipsley  Court  and  Tachbrooke.  They  are  hardly  of 
a  kind  to  justify  publication,  but  they  show  with  what  anxiety  at 
that  particular  time  this  true  friend  was  looking  forward  to  the  future 
which  lay  before  the  companion  of  his  boyhood. 

None  of  the  figures  of  that  distant  past  seems  to  recur  with  kind- 
lier association  to  Mr.  Robert  Landor's  memory.  Before  the  latter 
went  up  to  Oxford,  Birch  had  a  fellowship  at  Magdalen,  and  he  had 
become  tired  of  Oxford  life  and  quitted  it  for  a  tutorship  before  Mr. 
Robert  Landor  had  obtained  his  own  fellowship.  But  during  the 
whole  of  his  undergraduate  career  he  had  the  advantage  of  companion- 
ship and  counsel  from  this  friend  of  his  brother's,  and  in  his  letters 
he  speaks  of  him  with  the  utmost  tenderness.  "  Walter  often  visited 
me,"  he  Bays,  "  when  travelling  between  Warwick,  London,  Bristol,  or 
South  Wales;  and  he  eagerly  renewed  his  intercourse  with  Birch, 
whom  1  had  not  seen  till  then.  Here  was  an  instance  of  friendship 
which  is  so  often  formed  between  men  as  unlike  each  other  as  possible 
in  every  other  particular  excepting  a  single  pursuit.  Birch  was  gentle, 
quiet,  unassuming,  very  tolerant,  of  other  men's  opinions  though  suf- 
ficiently consistent  in  the  maintenance  of  his  own,  an  earnest  Chris- 
tian, a  sincere  churchman,  and  —  O  Mr.  Forster  f  —  rather  too  much 
inclining  to  Toryism.  Walter  was  a  black  Jacobin.  I  very  soon 
acquired  the  title,  in  my  own  college,  of  Citizen  Landor,  —  and  even 


JET.  22-30.]  WALTER   BIRCH.  113 

the  Citizen,  as  being  the  only  republican  there.  But  Birch  loved 
Walter  and  smiled  at  me.  Walter  used  to  speak  of  his  friend's 
maiden  modesty,  which  extended  beyond  his  morals*  Perhaps  this 
wide  difference  between  them  kept  both  parties  silent  on  graver 
subjects  :  both  feeling  unwilling  to  quarrel,  and  knowing  how  ir- 
reconcilable were  their  opinions.  Yet  Birch  often  checked  Walter's 
extravagant  language  by  his  laughter ;  and  once  he  asked  me  how  it 
could  have  happened  that  my  brother  should  have  met  accidentally 
so  many  ladies,  in  an  evening's  walk  or  two  with  him  and  me,  every 
one  of  whom  was  incomparably  the  most  beautiful  creature  whom  he 
had  ever-seen  1  how  each  of  twenty  fools  coidd  be  by  much  the  great- 
est fool  upon  earth  ]  and,  above  all,  how  Mr.  Pitt  could  be  the  greatest 
rascal  living,  if  Mr.  Canning  surpassed  Mr.  Pitt,  and  Lord  Castlereagh 
surpassed  Mr.  Canning,  and  all  three  were  infinitely  exceeded  as  brutes 
and  fools  by  their  gracious  sovereign  King  George  the  Third  1 "  One 
may  discover  in  Birch's  few  remaining  letters  not  a  little  of  this  hu- 
morous sense  of  his  friend's  ludicrous  excesses  of  speech,  at  once 
suggested  and  in  its  expression  subdued  by  personal  regard  of  an  un- 
common kind,  and  in  no  way  abating  an  almost  passionate  admira- 
tion given  eagerly  to  Landor's  genius  and  scholarship. 

The  earliest  in  date  is  one  of  April,  1805,  which,  after  telling  him 
of  a  publication  by  Mr.  William  Herbert  of  translations  of  Icelandic 
sonnets  and  of  some  original  pieces  that  he  thinks  would  interest  him 
by  the  accurate  information  contained  in  the  notes  and  by  the  spirit 
of  the  poetry,  proceeds  to  say  in  the  next  sentence  :  "  Our  friend  Gary 
of  Christ  Church  published  about  a  month  ago  a  translation  of  the 
Inferno  of  Dante,  which  I  am  just  about  to  read.  I  anticipate  con- 
siderable pleasure  from  it.  I  hear  already  that  it  sells  well."  f  Ex- 
actly fifty-seven  years  had  passed  after  this  when  Landor,  writing  to 
Mr.  Lytton  I  of  Birch  himself  and  of  their  school-fellow  the  translator 
of  Dante,  adds  in  the  very  next  sentence  :  "  We  have  another  admi- 
rable translator  in  William  Herbert.  I  owe  my  Gunlaiig  to  his 
stories  from  the  Icelandic.  How  incomparably  better  this  northern 
poetry  than  that  of  the  Troubadours  !  The  Icelandic  seems  to  be  a 
softer  language  than  theirs,  which  is  highly  praised  by  people  who 
surely  never  read  it ;  for  it  is  excessively  harsh,  and  much  resembles 
the  Genoese.     The  Gauls  could  never  scale  the  heights  of  Parnassus 

*  "  At  school,"  Landor  writes  in  one  of  his  letters  to  me,  "  Birch  was  named  Sandy 
from  the  sobriety  of  his  manners,  —  how  different  from  mine!  " 

t  In  the  memoir  of  Cary  by  his  son  (1847)  will  be  found  letters  from  Birch  confirma- 
tory of  the  character  here  given,  and  showing  with  what  unbounded  affection  Cary 
regarded  him.  On  the  birth  of  that  son  (1797)  he  addressed  a  sonnet  to  Birch,  which 
closes  thus :  — 

"  For  if  some  fairy  bade  me  take  the  boon 
That  most  I  covet  for  my  darling  child, 
Though  all  my  wandering  wishes  I  might  send 
In  search  of  every  bliss  beneath  the  moon. 
Yet  should  I  most  desire  thy  wisdom  mild, 
Thy  pure  and  open  heart,  my  honored  friend."     I.  96. 
X  See  ante,  p.  14. 

8 


114  GEBIR  ;    AND    EARLIEST    FRIENDSHIPS.  I™-";  "' 

since  Apollo  drove  them  down  with  thunder  and  lightning."  A  word 
dropped  by  accident,  unconsciously  awakening  some  association  of  the 
past,  had  again  connected  the  names  in  the  old  man's  memory. 

Very  frequently  Birch  alludes  to  the  Gebirus.  His  friend  continu- 
ing to  press  him  for  any  remarks  it  might  have  suggested  in  the 
reading  to  so  fine  a  Latin  scholar,  Birch  retorts  that  he  is  only  a 
scholar  as  his  old  school-fellow  is  a  master  ;  that  his  objection  to  criti- 
cism in  such  a  case  is  the  presumption  of  it ;  and  that  he  has  but  to 
think  of  past  days  at  Rugby  and  Oxford  to  know  the  little  reason  he 
should  have,  by  comparison  with  his  friend,  "  for  confidence  in  his 
critical  sagacity  and  still  more  in  his  grammatical  accuracy."  In 
vain  does  his  friend  encourage  him  to  greater  confidence  by  sending 
him  a  list  of  faults  he  has  himself  already  discovered  :  Birch  thinks 
unobjectionable  several  of  the  passages  named,  and  says  (what  is 
quite  true  of  the  G&irus)  that  not  one  of  them  to  which  objection 
might  be  taken  on  strictly  classical  grounds  is  without  beauty  of 
another  kind  more  than  compensating.  In  fine,  says  Birch  :  "  1  have 
come  to  the  conclusion,  after  repeated  reading  of  the  Gebirus,  that  my 
knowledge  of  poetical  latinity  is  much  more  confined  than  yours,  ami 
that  a  more  extensive  and  habitual  study  of  the  Latin  poets  has 
made  you  even  more  accurate  than  I  can  pretend  to  be." 

Another  subject  of  discussion  in  their  lettei's  is  pastoral  poetry,  as 
to  which  some  of  Landor's  opinions,  though  far  from  exhaustive  in 
the  matter,  are  expressed  with  vigor  and  liveliness.  His  point  is 
that  in  pastoral  poetry*,  though  apparently  the  easiest  of  any,  none 
since  the  ancients  had  succeeded  ;  and  though  he  does  scant  justice 
to  Thomson,  a  man  not  more  lovable  for  his  character  than  for  his 
writings,  what  he  says  has  truth  at  the  bottom  of  it,  and  he  was 
always  proud  of  what  he  thought  he  had  himself  accomplished  in 
this  field  by  the  episode  of  Tamar. 

"  The  Germans  strain  themselves  into  agony.  Their  shepherds  toss 
about,  ami  toil  ami  sweat  like  drovers.  Yet  their  woods  are  more  roman- 
tic than  woods  in  theatric  scenery,  and  their  fields  more  gaudily  flowered 
than  "Wilton  carpets.  You  are  tired,  and  yon  would  turn;  but  turn  wher- 
ever yon  will,  ymi  are  caught  either  in  tears  or  in  flames.  In  our  own 
country  (I  omit  the  puerilities  of  Pope  and  Phillips)  there  is  Thomson. 
Hi-  characters  have  all  a  ridiculous  mixture  of  the  modern  and  the  antique. 
There  is  the  flaunting  dress  and  high-colored  bloom  that  the  spruce  appren- 
tice on  a  Sunday  evening  admires  in  a  Birmingham  housemaid.  Whenever 
he  nises,  he  rises  by  violent  efforts,  —  which  show  less  of  fervid  and  vigor-- 
ous  imagination  than  of  impatient  languor  and  sickly  restlessness.  He  was 
however  a  mosl  amiable  man.  and  there  are  many  great  beauties  in  his 
works;  though  he  never  was  at  all  successful  in  the  delineation  of  charac- 
ter.     His  verses  make  one  pant  in  reading  them:   which  is  owing  to  their 

structure,  not  to  what  they  i vey.     He  was  too  happy  to  know  anything 

of  the  passions.  Inline,  we  have  nothing  in  common  with  pastoral  life; 
while  even  the  highest  of  the  ancients  had  much.  Our  modes  of  address 
are  differenl  :  our  habits,  our  inclinations.  They  had  a  nerve-  more  than  we 
have.  Ours  is  polish;  theirs,  poetry.  We  succeed  in  proportion  as  we  re- 
move ourselves  from  home,  particularly  in  pastoral." 


MT.  22-30.]  WALTER   BIRCH.  115 

Of  the  kind  of  life  Landor  was  leading  at  this  time,  while  his 
father's  health  had  been  declining,  the  letters  give  various  indications. 
He  was  far  exceeding  the  income  put  aside  for  him.  Already  indeed 
Doctor  Landor  has  had  to  sell  some  property  in  discharge  of  debts  con- 
tracted by  him  ;  and  in  return  he  had  undertaken  to  present  his  brother 
Charles  to  the  family  living  of  Colton,  in  the  event  of  its  not  falling 
vacant  before  his  father's  death.  Though  supposed  to  be  mainly 
resident  in  Bath  or  Bristol,  or  in  Wales,  he  was  very  frequently  in 
London.  Birch  goes  at  his  particular  request  to  see  a  horse  he  has 
set  his  mind  upon  ;  *  congratulates  him  on  the  acquisition  of  a 
Titian ;  and  is  able,  by  lucky  purchase  of  his  own  at  a  broker's  near 
Cavendish  Square,  to  add  to  his  friend's  collection  a  "  grand  old 
head."f  In  one  of  his  letters  Birch  expatiates  on  the  pleasure  he 
has  had  in  Landor's  description  of  the  lofty  aims  he  is  cherishing,  and 
hi  the  next  but  one  sends  him  urgent  remonstrance  against  his 
unnecessarily  brooding  over  calamities.  You  discover  from  one  of 
the  letters  that  these  calamities  are  connected  with  money ;  and 
from  another  that  a  princely  gift  is  nevertheless  ready  for  "  the  col- 
lection made  lately  in  Christ  Church  to  the  amount  of  sixty  pounds  " 
in  aid  of  the  author  of  the  Pleasures  of  Hope.  There  are  questions 
in  politics  where  it  is  plain  enough  that  the  friends  are  in  imperfect 
sympathy  ;  but  even  Birch  could  hardly  have  refused  a  smile  to  one 
of  his  friend's  epigrams  upon  the  common  talk  then  spreading  itself 
abroad  as  to  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  his  doings. 

"  First  Carlton  House,  my  country  friend, 
And  then  the  playhouse  you  should  see; 
Here  comedies  in  marriage  end, 
There  marriages  in  tragedy."  | 

One  political  subject  there  was,  however,  on  which  Landor  found 
himself  now  in  agreement  with  his  Tory  friend,  as  with  most  English- 
men who  cared  much  for  England.     In  truth  a  powerful  independent 

*  "  The  hoi-se  is  not  very  handsome,  but  can  go  seventy  miles  in  a  day:  only  five 
years  old :  I  have  told  Charles  to  write  and  buy  it.  What  livery-stables  shall  it  be 
sent  to,  if  we  can  get  it  for  you?  " 

t  "  I  do  not  fully  assure  myself  you  will  like  it,  being  aware  that  in  matters  of  this 
sort  (nor  do  I  mean  to  limit  the  assertion  there)  your  taste  is  much  more  penetrating 
and  exact  than  my  own.  .  .  .  You  would  deserve  an  opprobrious  title,"  he  adds,  reply- 
ing to  a  remark  of  Landor's,  "if  you  dared  become  a  renegade  from  the  Muse  after 
having  enjoyed  so  large  a  portion  of  her  favor."  In  the  same  letter  he  speaks  very 
affectionately  of  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  and  with  great  respect  of  the  opinion  of  their 
brother  Henry. 

\  From  a  satirical  poem  of  earlier  date,  suppressed  at  the  entreaty  of  Birch,  I  take  a 
couple  of  stanzas  for  the  sake  of  some  personal  allusions  in  them.  "  It  purported  to  be 
an  address  to  the  fellows  of  his  old  college  in  Oxford  upon  their  preparations  against 
Bonaparte's  threatened  invasion:  — 

"  Still,  bred  in  your  college,  though  no  longer  in  it,  I 
Send  ye  health  and  fraternity,  fellows  of  Trinity ! 
Through  haste  to  salute  you,  the  feet  of  my  doggerel 
Like  a  drunken  or  down-hill  and  devil-drove  hog  reel. 
Take  me  for  your  leader:  you  have  not  forgot 
That  your  most  humble  servant  was  once  a  good  shot: 
Though  ye  dreaded,  but  dreaded  without  rhyme  or  reason, 
He  haply  might  turn  his  fine  talents  to  treason." 


116  gebir;  and  earliest  friendships.  Lw-I&si 

party  having  its  root  in  the  higher  middle  class,  indifferent  for  the 
must  part  to  the  home  quarrels  of  the  leading  statesmen,  and  caring 
as  little  for  the  combinations  of  Addington  and  Pitt,  or  Fox  and  the 
Grenvilles,  as  for  the  foolish  exclusiveness  of  the  king,  had  been 
lately  reanimating  and  strengthening  the  armed  resistance  to  France. 
The  previous  year,  which  brought  Pitt  back  into  office,  had  made  the 
first  consul  emperor  and  launched  against  England  the  fleets  of 
France  and  Spain.  But  Nelson  was  again  afloat,  and  the  hope  of  all 
that  was  best  in  England  turned  upon  him.  In  verses  that  have  not 
survived,  Landor  had  given  expression  to  this  confidence  in  the  hero  ; 
and  almost  simultaneously  with  the  news  of  Trafalgar  the  poem 
reached  his  friend,  whose  acknowledgment  of  it  in  a  letter  elated  the 
11th  November,  1805,  is  all  that  now  remains  to  indicate  what  it  was. 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  letter  and  animated  verses,  where  you  seem  to 
have  been  inspired  by  the  prophetic  spirit  ascribed  to  poets  of  old,  and  to 
have  anticipated  the  glorious  victory  of  Nelson,  the  news  of  which  had 
reached  me  just  before  I  received  them.  I  hope  and  trust  the  emotions 
which  that  unparalleled  achievement  must  have  excited  in  your  mind,  sig- 
nalized as  it  was  yet  more  by  the  fall  of  the  hero,  by  the  magnificent  close 
of  the  most  brilliant  naval  career  in  all  history,  will  not  be  suffered  to  sub- 
side till  they  have  assumed  a  shape  and  a  form  (as  I  well  know  they  may ! ) 
■which  it  would  be  injustice  to  yourself  and  the  public  to  withhold  from 
their  applause.  The  news  of  another  considerable  victory  has  arrived  this 
very  morning.  What  a  blow  to  the  projects  of  that  insatiable  ambition, 
that  restless  and  enterprising  spirit,  which,  avowedly  grasping  at  maritime 
as  well  as  continental  pre-eminence,  was  enlarging  its  views  to  universal 
empire  !  Already,  in  the  sanguine  anticipation  of  Frenchmen,  was  Bona- 
parte become  another  Jove,  and  the  affairs  of  our  little  planet  dependent 
on  his  nod !  Has  not  this  now  passed  forever  ?  The  meridian  is  reached, 
and  will  he  not  hasten  to  his  setting  ?     God  grant  it !  " 

He  closes  the  same  letter  by  telling  Landor  that  their  friend  Gary 
has  finished,  and  is  about  to  send  out,  in  small  octavo,  the  second 
volume  of  his  translation  of  Dante,  which,  he  adds,  "  considering  its 
very  close  adherence  to  the  original,  seems  to  me  more  elegant  than 
I  could  easily  have  conceived."  In  the  same  letter  he  notices  also 
the  publication  of  Scott's  Lay  and  Southey's  Madoc ;  saying  he  has 
read  both,  and  that  though  he  believes  it  does  not  agree  with  the 
general  sentiment  he  will  yet  venture  to  say  that  he  far  prefers 
Southey.  But  he  thinks  Southey's  fault  is  diffusion,  just  as  the 
friend  to  whom  he  is  writing  has  the  grander  defect  of  compression, 
the  excess  in  the  other  extreme,  —  an  excellent  remark,  in  which  lay 
much  of  the  secret,  never  perfectly  known  to  himself,  of  Southey's 
singular  passion  for  Lander's  poetry.  It  was  an  ideal  he  was  always 
aiming  at,  and  missing  ;  and  in  proportion  as  he  found  himself  still 
falling  short  of  it,  his  admiration  increased. 

During  the  period  of  these  letters  this  amiable  and  accomplished 
person  was  living  as  tutor  in  the  family  of  an  English  earl.  "  He 
seems,"  writes  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  "  to  have  grown  tired  of  a  college 


JET.  22-30.]  WALTER   BIRCH.  117 

life  since  the  departure  of  so  many  friends  from  Oxford  ;  and  he 
undertook  the  tuition  of  a  youth  in  one  of  our  most  wealthy  and 
noble  houses.  Walter  learnt  some  particulars  of  his  residence  there, 
certainly  not  from  himself.*  Birch  resigned  his  office  before  the 
education  of  his  pupil  had  been  completed,  greatly  to  their  regret. 
Some  attachment  had  arisen  between  himself  and  a  daughter  of  this 
family,  —  whether  it  was  mutual,  or  on  which  side  it  was  strongest,  is 
not  known.  But  Birch  was  much  too  honorable  and  conscientious 
for  its  encouragement,  and  therefore  retired  on  a  small  college  living. 
I  cannot  understand  how  any  disengaged  lady  could  live  in  daily  in- 
tercourse with  such  a  man  —  for  he  was  very  handsome  too  —  and 
remain  insensible  to  such  amiability.  Walter  even  believed  that  his 
friend's  own  heart  was  concerned,  and  had  heard  additions  to  the 
story  which  I  fancy  were  quite  apocryphal.  I  suspect  that  Walter 
may  here  have  confounded  the  history  of  Birch's  friend  Russell,  who 
left  us  only  two  sonnets,  dying  of  a  broken  heart,  with  some  such 
narrative,  heard  imperfectly  and  easily  believed,  of  his  own  friend." 
In  the  only  allusions  to  the  family  I  find  in  Birch's  letters,  unusually 
strong  regard  appears,  and  very  marked  expressions  of  respect  ;  nor 
does  it  seem  otherwise  probable  that  any  romantic  ending  to  the  little 
love-story  was  contributed  by  himself,  for  he  married  and  had  chil- 
dren, surviving  it  a  score  of  years ;  but  the  mention  of  it  can  now 
give  pain  to  no  one,  and  what  may  be  accepted  for  truth  in  it  is 
characteristic  and  worthy  of  Landor's  favorite  school-fellow. 

"  I  sincerely  sympathize  with  you,"  he  wrote  to  Landor  on  the 
Christmas  day  of  1805,  "  in  your  regret  for  the  loss  of  your  father, 
though  his  px'evious  state  certainly  rendered  it  desirable  to  himself, 
and  on  that  account  should  make  it  less  afflicting  to  his  family."  f 

*  Of  about  this  date  I  find  the  subjoined  hendecasyUabics,  true  in  every  point  to  the 
character  of  his  friend,  as  expressed  in  the  preceding  pages :  — 

"  Promisi  mihi,  Birche,  non  tacere 
Ut  florens  studiis  bonis  juventa 
Utque  sancta  virilis  esset  setas 
Praa  cunctis  tibi ;  sed  parum  Camenas 
Felices  habeo,  inchoans  honores 
Quos  tantis  meritis  parare  vellem: 
Nam  dolore  medullitus  peresus 
Sum  doloribus  optimi  sodalis. 
Possum  hoc  dicere,  verum,  at  indisertum 
Clarus  ingenio,  lepore,  cultu, 
Doctus,  nee  nisi  in  optimis  librorum, 
Es  quicquid  cuperet  quis  esse  natum, 
Desperans  sibi,  difTerensve  tantum 
Et  paulisper  in  otium  remittens 
Ut  nil  proposito  accidat  molestum. 
Es  talis  quia  vir  puerque,  Birche, 
Nullo  tempore  crastinus  fuisti." 

t  Doctor  Landor  died  at  the  close  of  1805,  but  had  been  ailing  all  that  year.  I  quote 
a  letter  of  Landor's  to  his  brother  Henry  dated  in  February,  which  mentions  his  fa- 
ther's anxiety  at  the  time  to  complete  the  settlement  of  his  property.  But  I  quote  it  also 
for  its  closing  allusions  to  Parr,  his  old  schoolmaster  James,  and  his  own  Latin  verses, 
in  which  the  evident  and  eager  interest  contrasts  amusingly  with  the  careless  tone  of 
request  about  the  property,  which  his  brother  is  to  explain  when  he  has  leisure.    "  My 


118  gebir;  axd  earliest  friendships.  ^°.^!; 

At  the  close  of  the  letter  there  is  a  mention  of  their  Rugby  days  in 
connection  with  a  youth  who  had  there  been  fag  to  Landor,  and  to 
botli  of  them  since  not  a  little  troublesome.  With  a  wise  thoughtful* 
ness  Birch  warns  his  friend  against  the  dangers,  in  the  new  position 
that  awaits  him,  of  indiscriminating  kindness. 

The  remark  warns  me  that  here  closes  the  period  of  Landor's  life 
over  which  any  kind  of  external  restraint  or  control  was  possible ; 
and  that  now  opens  "that  part  of  his  history,"  1  am  quoting  his 
brother's  language  to  me,  "  which  followed  our  fathei-'s  death  and  the 
sale  of  his  Staffordshire  property,  and  which  appears  like  an  exagger- 
ation of  the  improbabilities  of  a  dream."  But  before  finally  quit- 
ting the  period  which  these  two  opening  books  include,  I  will  let  him 
speak  another  word  for  himself  upon  his  Rugby  days.  Its  proper 
place  was  earlier  in  the  narrative  ;  but  before  I  found  the  letter  to 
me  containing  it,  that  portion  of  my  book  was  printed  off;  and,  as  it 
confirms  and  explains  what  formerly  was  said*  of  the  cause  of  his 
departure  from  Rugby,  gives  his  little  fag  a  pleasanter  word  than 
Birch  could  afford  him  in  the  letter  last  quoted,  and  supplies  another 

father  tells  me  that  '  he  supposes  you  have  informed  me  of  his  having  conveyed  to  me 
the  house  my  uncle  lives  in,  and  the  two  next,  Godwin's  and  .John  Holt's.'"  I  do  not 
comprehend  this,  nor  see  the  necessity  of  any  such  conveyance.  Explain  it  when  you 
have  leisure.  .My  poor  father  seems  to  take  it  for  granted  that  my  uncle  will  die  before 
him ;  for  he  says,  '  When  my  brother  dies,  I  would  recommend  to  you  to  sell  them,  and 
think  that  they  would  be  a  most  desirable  purchase  to  the  proprietors  of  tin  Forge,' 
&c.  I  have  often  thought  so  too;  but  I  am  inclined  also  to  think  that  these  people 
wmild  give  as  much  for  about  one  half  of  the  garden  with  the  paddock,  as  another  per- 
son would  for  the  whole  of  the  premises.  I  am  surprised  that  Sir  George  linker,  who 
writes  remarkably  good  and  graceful  Latin,  should  not  have  been  able  to  make  Inglis's 
stuff  show  better  than  it  does.  But  the  Latin  for  inscriptions  is  widely  different  from 
that  which  is  read  at  schools,  and  perhaps  Sir  George  B.  may  not  be  versed  in  it.  No 
man  upon  earth  knows  it  so  well  as  our  friend  at  Hatton.  It  was  a  great  disappoint- 
ment to  me  that  you  were  unable  to  decipher  my  verses.  I  took  uncommon  pains  in 
transcribing  them,  and  the  verses  are  above  mediocrity.  One  night  I  happened  to 
think  on  poor  James,  and  composed  before  I  went  to  sleep  the  following  Iambics.  I 
have  often  retouched  them  since.  Send  them  to  the  Doctor  [Parr].  I  mean  my  copy, 
as  I  have  taken  uncommon  pains  with  the  words  and  punctuation,"  &C  A  portion  of 
the  verses,  on  his  personal  relations  with  his, old  master,  will  perhaps,  after  what  has 
been  said  of  those  Kugby  days,  have  an  interest  for  the  reader:  — 

"  Vale.  0  magister!  0  .Tamese.  ave  et  vale! 
Tu  dum  vocabas  ssepius  flevi  puer, 
Versus,  minatum  uoi  maxima  est  periculum, 
Inefficaces,  algidus  metu,  manus; 
Nunc,  dum  voco  ipse  nee  refers  contra,  fleo. 
At  ho<tis  olim  tu  mihi  tibiqueogo  .   .   . 
Qui  meque  teque.jam  videntes  crederent? 
Ah  cur  reductis  abnuebas  naribus, 
Spectans  refrigeransque  leevo  lumine, 
Cui  primum  amicus  mgenuusque  omnis  puer 
Et  cui  secundum  ipse  eemulua  daret  locum? 
Sed  bane  hahebis,  luinc  habebo,  gratiam, 
Quum  carmine  istorum  excidas,  vives  meo. 
Nam  nee  severus  semper  aut  supercill 
Tristh.  nee  inficetus  nut  expers  --alis, 
Sed  COmis  indulgensque  vel  HOStrOJOCO 

Eras,  solutis  jam  schola?  compagibus." 
*  See  ante,  p.  18. 


^ET. 


.30.]  WALTER   BIRCH.  119 


varied  and  vivid  pattern  of  the  mingled  yarn  of  which  the  web  of 
every  part  of  his  own  life  was  made,  it  will  not  now  be  out  of  place. 
At  the  date  of  the  letter  we  had  been  corresponding  about  an  Eton 
boy's  cruelty  to  his  fag,  which  the  newspapers  had  got  hold  of  and 
were  sharply  reproving. 

"  When  I  wrote  about  the  cruelty  of  the  Eton  boy  I  had  not  for- 
gotten a  lighter  case  at  Rugby.  With  what  pleasure  and  even  pride 
do  1  recall  to  memory  that  I  was  the  first  of  that  school  who  paid  the 
lad  he  fagged.  Poor  little  B.  H.  had  three  or  four  bottles  to  fill  at 
the  pump  in  a  hard  frost,  and  was  crying  bitterly,  when  I  took  pity 
on  him  and  made  him  my  fag,  at  threepence  a  week,  I  think.  This 
exempted  him  from  obedience  to  others,  and  I  seldom  exercised  my 
vested  rights.  Perhaps  the  head  master,  James,  thought  it  an  innova- 
tion to  pay.  He  certainly  hated  me  for  my  squibs,  and  had  also 
threatened  to  expel  me  for  never  calling  Will  Hill  Mister ;  I  having 
told  him  I  never  woidd  call  Hill  or  any  other  Mister  unless  I  might 
call  the  rest  so.  At  last  he  wrote  to  my  father  that  I  was  rebellious 
and  incited  others  to  rebellion  ;  and  unless  he  took  me  away  he 
should  be  obliged  ('  much  to  his  sorrow ')  to  expel  me.  As  I  was 
within  five  of  the  head,  and  too  young  for  Oxford,  I  was  placed  under 
a  private  tutor  and  matriculated  at  seventeen.  Among  my  enor- 
mities was  writing  the  verses  I  now  send  you.  James  had  chosen 
some  of  my  worst  verses  to  x>lay  for,  as  we  called  it  :  that  is,  every* 
half  holiday  was  supposed  to  be  gained  for  the  lads  by  the  best  verses 
of  the  day.  Mine  were  always  the  best,  but,  out  of  malice  I  am 
afraid,  the  very  worst  of  them  were  chosen ;  and   this   was   my  re- 


enge." 


Of  the  extent  of  it,  far  exceeding  the  precisely  similar  instance  re- 
ferred to  in  a  former  page,*  the  reader  must  happily  be  left  igno- 
rant, the  accompanying  Alcaic  verses  not  admitting  of  translation. 
But  what  they  show  of  a  man's  intellect  in  youth  entirely  without 
guidance  or  control,  the  letter  recalling  them  not  less  strikingly 
shows  of  the  passions  and  impulses  of  youth  surviving  to  extreme 
old  age ;  and  it  will  be  well  to  take  this  double  consideration  with  us 
into  the  years  we  have  now  to  retrace. 

*  Ante,  p.  18. 


BOOK    THIRD. 

1805-1814.     ^Et.  30-39. 
AT  BATH  AND  CLIFTON,  IN  SPAIN,  AND  AT  LLANTHONY. 

I.  Life  at  Bath.  —  II.  Robert  Southey.  —  III.  First  Letters  to  Southey.  —  IV.  In 
Spain.  —  V.  Letters  to  Southey  on  Spain  and  Spaniards.  —  VI.  Letters  on 
Kehama  and  Roderick.  —  VII.  The  Tragedy  of  Count  Julian.  —  VIII.  In 
Possession  of  the  Abbey. — IX.  Marriage  and  Life  at  Llanthony.  —  X.  Pub- 
lic Affairs.  —  XI.  Private  Disputes.  —  XII.  Departure  from  England. 

I.     LIFE   AT   BATH. 

In  the  interval  that  immediately  followed  his  succession  to  the 
paternal  estate,  Landor  lived  chiefly  in  Clifton  or  at  Bath ;  and  at  the 
latter  place  his  younger  brother  found  him,  soon  after  their  father's 
death,  "  with  the  reputation  of  very  great  wealth,  and  the  certainty, 
at  his  mother's  death,  of  still  greater.  A  fine  carriage,  three  horses, 
two  men-servants,  books,  plate,  china,  pictures,  in  everything  a  pro- 
fuse and  wasteful  outlay,  all  confirmed  the  grandeur."  Upon  the 
whole  not  a  life,  for  such  a  man,  either  profitable  then  to  have  lived 
or  now  to  recall ;  and  very  little  here  shall  be  said  of  it.  Some  love- 
verses  connected  with  the  later  portion  of  it  can  also  afford  to  perish. 
Their  heroine,  lone,  who  translated  far  too  easily  into  Jones,  has  re- 
tained not  so  much  as  a  fragment  of  romance.  Even  of  his  Ianthe, 
to  whom  in  these  days  much  beautiful  and  tender  verse  was  dedi- 
cated, there  is  little  now  remaining  to  claim  a  place  in  my  story 
except  such  chance  allusion  as  hereafter  may  drop  from  himself. 

The  sort  of  life  thus  led  in  Bath,  however,  could  not  be  passed 
without  results  more  or  less  grave  ;  and  in  little  more  than  a  year 
they  showed  themselves  in  a  form  for  which  the  remedy  was  supposed 
to  have  been  found  in  a  project  for  selling  the  old  paternal  estate  in 
Staffordshire,  and  reinvesting  in  other  land  at  greater  profit.  Reserv- 
ing these  things  to  a  year  or  two  hence,  when  the  necessary  arrange- 
ments, meanwhile  set  on  foot,  became  practicable  and  were  completed, 
I  shall  dwell  upon  those  incidents  only  of  the  intervening  years  out 
of  which  matter  can  he  extracted  that  is  worth  remembering,  or  that 
throws  any  kind  of  light  upon  the  variable  career  and  character  of 
which,  with  all  its  good  and  evil  so  capriciously  intermixed,  its 
comedy  and  tragedy,  its  clouds  and  sunshine,  its  generous  emotions 
and  tempestuous  passions,  its  use  and  its  waste  of  prodigious  powers, 
it  is  my  object  in  these  pages  to  convey  at  the  least  no  false  impres- 
sion. 


JET.  3O-39.]  LIFE    AT    BATH.  121 

Remembering  allusions  formerly  made  *  to  the  wife  of  a  friend 
very  dear  to  him  in  early  Warwick  days,  it  will  be  proper  not  to  omit 
the  mention  of  her  death,  which  occurred  at  this  time.  It  should  be 
given  for  such  evidence  as  it  affords  that,  amid  his  present  daily  and 
nightly  round  of  "routs,  plays,  concerts,  and  balls,"  his  heart  was 
yet  easily  moved  as  ever,  and  keen  in  its  susceptibility  of  suffering. 
The  young  wife  of  the  physician  who  had  succeeded  to  his  father's 
practice  in  Warwick,  the  "  angel "  of  his  early  letters,  died  so  sudden- 
ly that  he  had  not  even  heard  of  her  illness,  and  now  first  read  of  it 
in  a  newspaper.  Her  infant  daughter  and  herself  had  died  together. 
"  Poor  Lambe,  poor  Lambe,"  he  writes  to  Parr,  at  whose  house  the 
friends  had  so  often  met  :  — 

"  Poor  little  Elizabeth  and  her  mother,  now  indeed  divine !  Yes,  death 
has  proved  the  fact,  and  not  the  contrary.  For  what  is  death  ?  A  change 
of  situation,  an  enlargement  of  liberty,  a  privilege,  a  blessing,  an  apotheosis. 
What  hours  have  we  passed  together,  hours  never  to  return,  or  to  produce 
their  likeness  in  this  world !  In  vain  have  I  tried  every  species  of  amuse- 
ment: routs,  plays,  concerts,  and  balls.  Her  image  rises  up  everywhere 
before  me.  I  sicken  at  the  sight  of  beauty.  Did  she  not  treat  me  as  a 
brother  ?  did  she  ever  call  me  by  more  than  one  name  ?  The  sound  of 
Walter  was  the  sweetest  of  sounds.  Pardon  me,  I  will  acknowledge  it, 
she  made  me  think  myself  a  virtuous  and  great  man.  Certainly  I  never 
left  her  company  but  I  was  more  happy  and  more  deserving  of  happiness." 

The  same  unmistakable  sorrow  is  expressed  to  his  sister  Elizabeth, 
one  of  his  letters  to  her  ending  thus  :  — 

"  It  was  a  shock  from  which  I  have  not  yet  recovered,  and  which  I  shall 
feel,  I  believe,  forever. 

"  0  Lambe,  my  early  guide,  my  guardian  friend, 
Do  thus  our  pleasures,  thus  our  prospects  end ! 
All  that  could  swell  thy  heart,  thy  soul  elate, 
Heaven  gave,  but  pondering  found  one  gift  too  great. 
What  now  avails  thee,  what  availed  thee  then, 
To  shine  in  science  o'er  the  sons  of  men; 
Each  varying  plant,  each  tortuous  root  to  know, 
What  latent  pests  from  lucid  waters  flow; 
All  the  deep  bosom  of  the  Air  contains, 
Fire's  parent  strength  and  Earth's  o'erflowing  veins? 
The  last  unwelcome  lesson  teaches  this, 
Frail  are  alike  our  knowledge  and  our  bliss. 
Against  the  storms  of  fate  and  throbs  of  pain 
Wisdom  is  impotent  and  virtue  vain."  t 

His  eldest  sister  was  his  constant  correspondent  at  this  time,  and 
would  have  saved  him  from  many  a  folly  if  cleverness  and  good  sense 
could  have  done  it.  But  he  was  no  sooner  out  of  one  scrape  than  he 
was  into  another.  "  The  battledore  you  talk  of,"  he  replies  from  Bath 
to  one  of  her  letters,  "  is  called  a  cornet,  and  I  play  at  it  better  than 
any  man  in  England.  I  was  taught  in  France.  A  little  girl  said  to 
me,  Jouez  done  aux  cornets,  monsieur  ?     My  reply  was,  A   la  bonne 

*  Ante,  pp.  88,  90,  &c. 

t  A  portion  of  these  verses  (without  the  last  two)  will  be  found  with  variations  in 
his  published  poems. 


122  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^stos-i"1' 

heure,  ma  petite.  Je  ne  me  suis  pas  marie  a  present.  I  played,  never- 
theless, and  have  played  the  same  game  since.  I  believe  I  am  more 
in  request  here  than  I  have  ever  been ;  not  for  myself, —  for  wc  are 
not,  like  wine,  improvable  by  age, —  but  for  Frolic  and  Favorite, 
and  what  is  whispered  of  Llanthony."  Frolic  and  Favorite  were  his 
carriage-horses.  He  ends  his  letter  with  a  parable  of  a  young  lady 
whom  a  spectre  was  reported  to  have  visited  at  night,  until  her  mother, 
b}^  taking  her  to  sleep  in  her  own  room,  exorcised  the  ghost,  to  which 
he  had  himself  thereupon  addressed  these  lines  :  — 

"  Thou,  since  she  sleeps  with  her  mamma, 
Lookst  like  a  fox  in  some  ha-ha, 
Who  views,  with  nostrils  opened  wide, 
A  pheasant  on  the  other  side, 
Pants,  grumbles,  whines  with  lank  desires, 
And  licks  his  whiskers,  and  retires'!  " 

Very  well  for  the  ghost  that  he  could  ;  but  some  enterprises  there 
were  out  of  which  retirement  was  less  easy,  and  they  largely  occupy 
his  sister  Elizabeth's  letters.  She  is  in  a  perpetual  agitation  of 
warning  against  any  ill-advised  marriage,  one  danger  of  this  kind 
succeeding  another  very  rapidly.  She  has  indeed  no  objection  to  a 
well-considered  proceeding  of  the  sort  ;  and  sketches  one  in  the  lan- 
guage of  an  old  servant  who  has  come  with  her  annual  gift  of  a 
basket  of  chickens  to  the  family  at  Warwick,  and  has  declared  her- 
self "  anackauntable  glad  Mr.  Walter  is  growing  jolly,  and  hopes  he 
will  marry  some  fine  lady  of  a  good  family  and  fortin,  as  he  ought,  to 
be  sure."  Not  that  to  the  sister  these  appear  indispensable,  if  their 
place  is  otherwise  filled.  "  Birth  and  fortune,"  she  tells  her  brother, 
"  are  not  requisites,  but  good  disposition  and  good  understanding  are  ; 
and  how  many  innocents,  only  for  being  pretty,  have  you  all  your 
life  been  thinking  sensible  !  "  That  was  a  home-thrust,  and  had  some 
effect,  the  lady  against  whom  in  particular  it  was  aimed  not  retaining 
her  influence ;  but  one  of  these  affairs  had  gone  very  far  before  any- 
thing of  it  was  known  to  her,  and  she  has  almost  to  resign  herself  to 
the  confession  that  it  must  be.  "  I  hope  to  God  your  choice  may  be 
a  fortunate  one,  for  I  never  was  and  never  shall  be  happy  when  you 
are  otherwise.  You  are  not  just  to  me.  I  do  wish  you  to  be  mar- 
ried ;  but  I  am  sure  the  common  sort  are  not  calculated  for  you." 

Happily  escape  came  again ;  and  in  this  case  from  the  lady  herself. 
Some  offence  had  been  taken  by  her,  not  clearly  to  be  made  out  from 
Landor's  letter,  which  dwells  far  less  on  the  incident  itself  than  upon 
the  ball  and  supper  where  it  happened,  with  its  winter  pines,  peas, 
strawberries,  and  "  Bparagus,"  besides  ice  enough  to  cover  the  Nieper 
and  beauty  enough  to  thaw  it  all.  To  which  his  sister  quietly  re- 
joins that  she  hears  with  delight  of  his  being  again  heart-free  ;  makes 
neat  allusion  to  the  lady's  predecessor  as  well  as  herself,  by  remark- 
ing that  their  friend  "  the  old  doctor"  had  declared  "neither  to  be 
worthy  of  him  "  ;  hopes  he  may  now  have  time,  as  her  mother  says, 
to  "  think  of  somebody  worth  something " ;  and  tells  him  that  the 


;ET.  3°  -39-] 


LIFE    AT    BATH.  123 


blaze  of  beauty  over  in  Bath  must  be  brighter  than  the  fire  by  which 
she  is  writing  if  it  succeeds  in  again  making  him  intemperately 
warm. 

But  the  heats  that  Landor  suffered  from  were  not  from  that  blaze 
only.  His  eager  interest  in  politics  had  not  meanwhile  slackened  ; 
and  unpalatable  as  many  of  his  opinions  were  to  the  particular  part 
of  society  which  his  present  mode  of  living  necessarily  threw  much 
in  his  way,  moderation  or  compromise  on  any  points,  even  in  the 
matter  of  speech,  was  a  virtue  still  unknown  to  him.  "  About  sixty 
years  ago,"  his  brother  writes  to  me,  "  an  old  friend  of  his  who  felt 
much  esteem  for  him,  a  Major  Tickell,  the  descendant  of  Addison's 
friend,  expressed  his  surprise  to  me  that  my  brother  should  have 
lived  so  long.  '  We  were  occasional  guests,'  said  he,  '  at  the  same 
public  table  in  Bath  two  winters,  where  there  were  other  military 
men ;  and  if  I  had  talked  as  he  talked,  there  would  have  been  half  a 
dozen  bullets  through  my  body  if  the  first  five  had  been  insufficient.' 
Such  dangers  were  in  truth  only  escaped  as  his  character  became 
known  for  extravagance,  and  sometimes  chiefly  through  the  interposi- 
tion of  such  friends  as  the  major."  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  there  were  estimable  men  in  the  major's  profession 
then,  to  whom  the  mere  praise  of  Mr.  Fox  would  be  a  horrible  Jaco- 
bin extravagance  ;  and  the  accession  of  that  statesman  and  his  friends 
to  power  on  Pitt's  death  in  the  early  part  of  the  year  had  given  un- 
usual bitterness  to  party  strifes  and  hatreds.  Landor's  intercourse 
with  Parr  it  naturally  drew  closer ;  and  it  brought  him  again  into 
correspondence  with  Adair,  from  one  of  whose  letters  we  may  gather 
something  of  the  turn  Landor's  outlook  in  politics  wTas  taking  at  the 
time.  More  eager  than  ever  against  Bonaparte,  and  resolute  for 
maintaining  the  efficiency  of  the  power  which  had  been  thus  far  the 
only  check  to  his  ambition,  he  had  written  to  Adair  about  the  navy. 
The  reply,  very  cordial  in  its  tone,  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the  troubles 
of  "  All  the  Talents  "  from  a  source  very  near  the  fountain-head  :  — 

"  I  concur  entirely  with  you  in  opinion  respecting  the  times,  and  the  na- 
ture of  the  difficulties  with  which  the  new  administration  has  to  contend  : 
I  think  also  with  you  that  'whatever  can  be  done  by  wisdom  and  hu- 
manity '  will  be  done  by  Mr.  Fox  :  but  I  confess  that  my  hopes  are  not  so 
great  as  my  fears  in  any  view  I  can  take  of  the  situation  of  our  affairs. 
Indeed  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  although,  for  reasons  which  appear  conclu- 
sive to  them,  they  think  it  more  prudent  to  abstain  from  laying  open  to  the 
country  the  true  state  of  those  affairs,  they  have  found  them  in  a  much 
worse  condition  than  they  could  have  themselves  believed  at  any  time 
during  their  opposition.  I  have  heard  many  plans  suggested  at  various 
times  for  the  manning  of  our  navy,  and  for  keeping  up  a  sufficient  number 
of  seamen  during  peace  to  enable  government  to  equip  their  fleets  on  a 
sudden  without  having  recourse  to  pressing  or  similar  methods ;  but  for 
some  reason  or  other,  naval  men  have  always  rejected  even  the  experi- 
ment, The  present  Board  of  Admiralty  would,  I  should  think,  give  a  fair 
hearing  at  least  to  any  new  hints  that  might  be  offered  them  on  so  impor- 


124  BATH,    SPAIN,    AXD    LLANTHONT.  ^-i"' 

tant  a  subject.  Indeed  I  think  that  if  you  would  give  yourself  the  trouble 
to  put  your  ideas  into  a  practicable  form,  much  real  good  might  result 
from  submitting  them  to  the  consideration  of  Lord  llowick." 

This  letter  was  written  at  the  close  of  April,  180G,  and  led  of  course 
to  nothing.  Before  a  year  was  over  Fox  had  followed  to  the  grave 
his  great  adversary;  the  rest  of  "the  talents"  were  nowhere;  and 
with  the  Portland  and  Perceval  combinations  the  career  of  Castle- 
reagh  and  Canning  had  begun. 

It  was  while  these  changes  were  in  progress  that  an  incident  oc- 
curred which  Landor  would  often  himself  tell  pleasantly  in  his  latter 
years.  On  some  occasion  unexpectedly  he  had  gone,  after  a  long 
interval,  to  visit  his  mother  at  Warwick  ;  when,  Parr  happening  to 
have  a  large  company  at  dinner  that  day,  one  of  the  guests  told 
their  entertainer  of  the  sudden  and  unlooked-for  arrival  at  Mrs.  Lan- 
dor' s.  "  Eat  your  dinner,  eat  your  dinner,"  said  Parr ;  but  hardly 
had  the  table-cloth  been  removed,  and  the  first  glass  of  wine  taken, 
when  the  old  doctor  laid  down  his  pipe.  "  Drink  your  wine,  my 
friends,  drink  your  wine ;  I  must  go  and  see  Walter  Landor."  And 
so  he  did.  At  Warwick  he  presented  himself,  as  unexpectedly  as 
Landor  had  done  very  shortly  before,  and  the  friends  had  an  hour 
together  ;  but  nothing  would  he  take,  not  even  the  cup  of  tea  that 
was  pressed  upon  him.  "  No,  no,  Walter,  I  must  go  back  to  my 
friends  ;  they  are  all  at  dinner."  And  Landor  would  finish  the  story 
in  a  pleasant  elated  way  by  declaring  himself  to  be  the  only  man  in 
the  world  that  could  have  made  Doctor  Parr  ride  half  a  dozen  miles 
with  his  dinner  in  his  mouth  and  his  pipe  out  of  it. 

II.  EOBERT   SOUTHEY. 

Soon  after  the  incident  last  related,  Landor  had  started  on  a  tour 
in  the  lake-country,  which  Parr  thus  announced  to  a  friend  who  com- 
plained afterwards  that  the  promised  visit  was  never  paid  him.  "  In 
the  course  of  the  summer  you  will  be  called  upon  by  Mr.  Walter 
Landor,  who  is  going  on  a  tour  to  the  lakes.  He  is  my  particular 
friend.  He  is  impetuous,  open-hearted,  magnanimous;  largely  fur- 
nished with  general  knowledge  ;  well  versed  in  the  best  classical 
writers  ;  a  man  of  original  genius,  as  appears  in  his  compositions 
both  in  prose  and  verse  ;  a  keen  hater  of  oppression  and  corruption ; 
and  a  steady  friend  to  civil  and  religious  liberty.  I  am  confident  you 
will  be  much  interested  by  his  conversation;  and  it  is  my  good  for- 
tune to  know  that  his  talents,  attainments,  and  virtues  amply  com- 
pensate for  all  his  singularities."  No  bad  picture  by  a  friendly 
hand. 

With  the  lakes  already  were  connected  the  chiefs  of  the  little  band 
of  writers  whose  fame  became  afterwards  identified  with  that  beau- 
tiful country.  Coleridge  had  been  living  at  Greta;  Wordsworth  at 
Grasmere,  not  many  miles  away  ;  and  Southey  was  now  permanently 


JET.  30-39.]  ROBERT    SOUTHET.  125 

fixed  at  Keswick,  the  richer  for  the  Fox  and  Grenville  ministry  by  a 
pension  of  two  hundred  a  year  which  one  of  its  members,  his  friend 
Wynne,  had  obtained  for  him.  Yet  far  less  for  this  did  the  name  of 
the  Whig  chief  continue  for  some  years  longer  a  grateful  sound  to 
Souther,  than  for  an  incident  of  one  of  the  last  social  readings  at  St. 
Anne's  Hill ;  when  Fox  and  his  company,  not  closing  at  eleven  as 
usual,  "  went  on  till  after  midnight  reading  Madoc"  *  This  was 
something  for  a  man  to  remember  to  whom  poetry  was  all  in  all,  and 
to  whom  the  half  of  seventy-nine  shillings  and  a  penny  had  just  pre- 
sented itself  as  his  share  of  Madoc's  profits  after  twelve  months'  sale. 
But  Landor  admired  Madoc  too  ;  its  writer's  name  had  become  known 
to  him  as  that  of  the  first  and  almost  only  friend  of  Gebir  ;  and  in  a 
letter  to  his  sister  in  the  summer  of  1807  he  deplores  his  ill  fortune 
in  having  missed  an  introduction  to  Southey.  He  had  very  nearly 
bought  an  estate  in  his  neighborhood,  adjoining  Lowes  water  Lake  ; 
but  he  had  not  seen  him. 

Once  afterwards  they  missed  again.  At  the  house  of  a  friendly 
physician  and  his  wife  at  Clifton,  from  whom  many  kindnesses  had 
been  received  by  Landor's  sisters  during  an  illness  consequent  on 
their  watching  at  the  sick-bed  of  their  father,  Southey  had  in  former 
years  been  a  frequent  visitor;  and  in  a  letter  at  the  close  of  1807, 
Mrs.  Carrick  writes  to  tell  Landor  that  Mr.  Southey,  who  had  not 
been  with  them  for  some  years,  had  called  with  his  friend  Mr.  Dan- 
vers,  very  anxious  to  get  an  introduction  to  the  author  of  Gebir. 
"  He  says  he  will  be  particularly  gratified  to  wait  on  you  if  you  will 
allow  him.  I  will  not  repeat  Mr.  Southey's  opinion  of  Gebir  ;  yet  one 
may  be  permitted  to  be  gratified  by  the  opinion  of  such  a  man.  He 
is  just  now  going  to  publish  his  History  of  the  Cid.  Did  I  wrong 
when  I  said  you  would  be  pleased  to  see  Mr.  Southey  1  Perhaps  I 
said  '  delighted.'  He  has  visited  and  admired  your  Llanthony  Abbey 
with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  poet.  I  will  endeavor  to  let  you  know  the 
precise  time  we  may  expect  again  to  see  him,  and  I  hope  you  will  not 
have  taken  your  flight  to  Bath."  Not  yet,  however,  was  the  meeting 
with  Southey  to  take  place,  nor  was  Landor  yet  absolutely  lord  of 
Llanthony  :  but  all  his  friends  knew  he  had  set  his  heart  on  the 
place,  for  that  on  hearing  of  it  after  the  failure  at  Loweswater,  with- 
out seeing  it  he  had  made  an  offer  for  it,  and  with  a  thumping  oath 
protested  he  would  have  it :  with  what  truth  as  well  as  vehemence 
will  shortly  be  seen.  Nevertheless  he  and  Southey  were  to  meet 
first,  after  all. 

At  Danvers's  lodgings  in  Bristol  this  memorable  friendship  began. 
"At  Bristol,"   wrote   Southey  to  Grosvenor  Bedford  at  the  end  of 

*  The  generous  and  genial  statesman  was  indeed  a  favorite  with  all  the  poets;  and 
but  a  very  few  years  before,  Wordsworth,  sending  him  the  Lvrical  Ballads,  had  thus 
written:  "In  common  with  the  whole  of  the  English  people,  1  have  observed  in  your 
public  character  a  constant  predominance  of  sensibility  of  heart.  .  .  .  This  cannot  but 
have  made  you  dear  to  poets;  and  I  am  sure  that  if,  since  your  first  entrance  into  pub- 
lic life,  there  has  been  a  single  true  poet  living  in  England,  he  must  have  loved  you." 
(See  Memoirs  by  his  nephew,  I.  167.) 


126  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  '"a*-"1" 

April,  1808,  "  I  met  the  man  of  all  others  whom  I  was  most  desirous 
of  meeting,  —  the  only  man  living  of  whose  praise  I  was  ambitious,  or 
whose  censure  would  have  troubled  me.  You  will  be  curious  to 
know  who  this  could  he.  Savage  Landor,  the  author  of  Gebir ;  a 
poem  which,  unless  you  have  heard  me  speak  of  it,  you  have  probably 
never  heard  of  at  all.  I  never  saw  any  one  more  unlike  myself  in 
every  prominent  part  of  human  character,  nor  any  one  who  so  cor- 
dially  and  instinctively  agreed  with  me  on  so  many  of  the  most  im- 
portant subjects.  I  have  often  said  before  we  met  that  I  would  walk 
forty  miles  to  see  him ;  and,  having  seen  him,  I  would  gladly  walk 
fourscore  to  see  him  again.  He  talked  of  Thalaba,  and  I  told  him  of 
the  series  of  mythological  poems  which  I  had  planned;  mentioned 
some  of  the  leading  incidents  on  which  they  were  to  have  been  formed, 
and  also  told  him  for  what  reason  they  were  laid  aside;  —  in  plain 
English,  that  I  could  not  afford  to  write  them.  Landor's  reply  was, 
Go  on  with  them,  and  I  will  pay  for  printing  them,  as  many  as  you  will 
write,  and  as  many  copies  as  you  please.  I  had  reconciled  myself  to 
my  abdication  (if  the  phrase  may  be  allowable),  and  am  not  sure  that 
this  princely  offer  has  not  done  me  mischief;  for  it  has  awakened  in 
me  old  dreams  and  hopes  which  had  been  laid  aside,  and  a  stinging 
desire  to  go  on,  for  the  sake  of  showing  him  poem  after  poem,  and 
saving,  I  need  not  accept  your  offer,  but  I  have  done  this  because  you 
'made  it.  It  is  something  to  be  praised  by  one's  peers;  ordinary 
praise  I  value  as  little  as  ordinary  abuse." 

Prepared  long  for  this  meeting  at  last,  as  well  in  likeness  as  in 
unlikcness  suited  for  friendly  intercourse,  finding  at  once  a  common 
ground  in  which  what  was  weakest  in  each  took  strength  from  what 
was  best  in  the  other,  the  friendship  so  begun  that  day  was  ended 
only  by  death.  Soon  there  fell  from  it  all  that  might  have  taken  the 
taint  of  patronage  in  Landor,  and  all  that  mere  literary  vanity  might 
have  suggested  to  Southey  ;  while  yet  enough  was  left  of  the  spirit 
of  the  compact  made  at  their  first  meeting,  not  to  weaken  in  either 
the  confidence  inspired  by  it. 

Regularly  at  successive  intervals  for  five  years  from  that  day 
.Southey  sent  by  post  to  Landor,  transcribed  clearly  in  Ids  wonderful 
autograph,  each  section  of  the  whole  of  his  poems  of  the  Curse  of 
Kehqfna  and  Roderick  (the  latter  under  the  name  of  "  Pelayo  "),  ex- 
actly as  each  had  been  first  composed  ;  and  duly  by  the  same  channel 
payment  as  regular  had  been  sent  back  by  his  friend,  in  admiration 
always,  often  in  shrewd  suggestion,  never  without  zealous  and  loud 
encouragement.  Payment  of  other  kind,  though  frequently  pressed, 
had  been  steadily  declined  ;  but  Landor  ultimately  forced  upon 
Southey,  through  his  publishers,  a  check  for  a  large  number  of 
co] lies  of  Kehama,  which  bad  been  dedicated  to  himself.  To  this 
statement  it  will  Vic  right  to  add  that  every  transcript  by  Southey, 
with  its  covering  letter,  was  kept  by  Landor;  and  that  all  of  them, 
with  the  rest  of  the  correspondence  stretching  uninterruptedly  over 


JET.  30-39.]  ROBERT    SOUTHEY.  127 

thirty  years,  were  given  by  Landor  to  myself  in  view  of  some  such 
undertaking  as  the  present.  Southey's  were  afterwards  lent  to  his 
son  and  his  son-in-law  for  the  selection  of  such  portions  as  they  might 
desire  to  publish ;  but  Landor's,  which  he  had  himself  reclaimed  from 
the  executors  of  his  friend,  were  at  his  own  request  wholly  reserved 
for  the  use  now  about  to  be  made  of  them.  And  with  them,  let  it  be 
clearly  said  once  for  all,  such  portions  only  of  Southey's  will  here  be 
given  as  have  not  before  been  printed  in  either  his  son's  Life  *  or  his 
son-in-law's  Letters,  f  Excluded  from  both  publications,  they  will  yet 
show  probably  better  than  anything  in  either  what  there  was  that 
formed  the  curious  likeness  in  unlikeness  between  these  remarkable 
men. 

The  time  at  which  they  met  was  when  Southey  had  abandoned  his 
earlier  without  finding  his  later  opinions,  when  he  was  out  of  Utopia 
but  not  yet  settled  in  Old  Sarum.  He  remained  still  an  ardent  re- 
former. But  a  few  months  back  he  had  been  deploring  that  Fox 
should  not  have  died  before  Pitt,  and  so  been  spared  the  disgrace  of 
pronouncing  a  panegyric  upon  such  an  insolent,  empty-headed,  lono-- 
winded  braggadocio  ;  and  not  a  twelvemonth  later,  when  the  Quarterly 
Review  suddenly  confronted  the  Edinburgh,  armed  to  the  teeth  against 
a  tyranny  which,  absolute  over  poetry  as  well  as  politics,  had  come  to 
be  intolerable  to  many,  +  he  warned  the  new-comer,  which  he  had 
helped  into  life,  that  he  should  withdraw  straightway  from  all  con- 
nection with  it  if  it  raised  against  reformers  any  cry  of  Jacobinism. § 
Expressly,  indeed,  he  declared  himself  then  to  be,  in  terms  which  Lan- 
dor might  himself  have  used,  for  no  peace  while  Bonaparte  lived,  and 
for  reform  as  the  only  fheans  to  prevent  revolution.  But  it  was  less  in 
the  opinions  they  thus  held  in  common,  than  in  their  mode  of  form- 
ing and  maintaining  opinions  even  widely  opposed,  that  they  were 
unconsciously  so  like  each  other.  To  both  belonged  the  sanguine 
temperament,  the  determined  self-assertion,  and  the  habit,  whether 
within  or  beyond  the  limits  where  opinion  was  safe,  of  free  unbridled 
thinking.  To  both  was  too  often  applicable  what  Southey  said  of 
another  friend,  that  the  pride  of  reason  in  him  left  no  room  or  acces- 
sibility for  any  kind  of  reasoning ;  and  the  weaknesses  in  both,  the 
inconsistencies,  the  extreme  opinions  professed  so  often  without  need, 
were  in  a  great  degree  referable  to  this.  In  the  years  that  followed 
shortly,  when  to  Southey  reform  and  revolution  had  come  to  mean 
the  same  thing,  not  admitting  the  change  in  himself,  he  attributed 
the  whole  of  it  to  others,  and  said  the  Jacobins  that  surrounded  him 
were   the   Anti- Jacobins  of  his   youth,  equally  unjust   and  as  fero- 

*  Six  volumes.     (Longmans,  1849,  1850.) 

t   Four  volumes.     (Longmans,  1856.) 

|  "  We  shall  hoist  the  bloody  flag  down  alongside  that  Scotch  ship,  and  engage  her 
yard-arm  and  yard-arm."     (Southey  to  his  brother.     Letters,  II.  114.) 

§  "  Things  are  come  to  this  dilemma,  Reform  or  Ruin  ;  and  on  one  of  these  horns  I 
pray  to  God  that  John  Bull  may  give  his  damned  drivers  a  deadly  toss.  A  constitu- 
tional reform  would  save  the  country,  and  nothing  short  of  that  will  be  of  anv  avail." 
(To  Grosvenor  Bedford,  21st  April,  1809.     Letters,  II.  145.) 


128  BATII,    SrAIN,    AND    LLAXTHOXY.  ^s^-,"1' 

cious.  Xor  was  this  without  truth  in  a  deeper  sense  than  he  intended, 
for  in  all  essential  respects  he  continued  what  he  had  formerly  been  ; 
and  what  now  most  attracted  him  to  Landor  was  less  the  agreement 
in  present  opinion  of  which  he  speaks,  than  the  resemhlance  in  habits 
of  mind  of  which  he  was  less  conscious,  and  which  in  their  younger 
days  had  made  both  of  them  rebels  to  authority.  Several  expressions 
to  be  found  in  the  letters  will  seem  less  startling  if  these  few  words 
are  remembered. 

There  is  yet  also  another  point  on  which  a  word  should  be  said.  It 
belonged  to  the  nobler  part  of  Souther's  character  that  he  should 
take  the  most  exalted  view  of  the  calling  to  which  he  had  devoted 
himself.  He  was  one  of  the  greatest,  and  pretty  nearly  the  last,  of 
the  genuine  men  of  letters  that  England  has  produced,  and  he  hon- 
estly believed  himself  also  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  of  her  poets.  He 
worked  hard  and  got  little  ;  but  while  his  bare  maintenance,  and 
hardly  that,  arose  from  his  work  for  the  day,  he  labored  also  without 
pay  at  other  work  for  which  he  knew  the  rewards  must  be  distant, 
but  appears  to  have  felt  they  would  be  absolutely  sure.  "  I  was  per- 
fectly aware,"  he  said  to  a  friend  who  had  been  contrasting  one  of 
his  epics  with  a  more  popular  poetical  romance,  "  that  I  was  planting 
acorns  while  my  contemporaries  were  setting  kidney -beans.  The  oak 
will  grow,  and  though  1  may  never  sit  under  its  shade,  my  children 
will."  Three  years  later  than  the  present  date  he  wrote  to  Grosvenor 
Bedford  :  "  I  wish  you  would  not  call  me  the  most  sublime  poet  of 
the  age,  because  in  this  point  both  Wordsworth  and  Landor  are  at 
least  my  equals.  You  will  not  suspect  me  of  any  mock-modesty  in 
this.  On  the  whole  I  shall  have  done  greater  things  than  either, 
but  not  because  I  possess  greater  powers."  Not  that  the  reader  now 
may  smile  at  them  are  these  things  quoted,  but  to  explain  still  fur- 
ther what  it  was  that  knit  so  close  the  friendship  of  which  I  am 
speaking,  and  made  it  so  enduring.  Southey's  already  avowed  ad- 
miration of  Landor's  poetry  made  inexpressibly  grateful  to  him  Lan- 
dor's  praise  of  his  own  ;  and  in  the  pleasure  each  continued  to 
derive  from  the  other  on  this  point,  or,  to  speak  plainly,  in  their  fre- 
quently excessive  self-laudations,  simplicity  was  more  prominent  than 
vanity.  In  a  critical  moment,  too,  the  offer  to  pay  for  printing  more 
epics  had  gone  straight  to  Southey's  heart,  almost  sinking  at  the 
time  fr<>m  want  of  all  encouragement.  Kehama,  just  sketched  out, 
had  been  flung  aside  ;  and  the  series  that  had  been  meant  but  to 
begin  with  Joan,  Thalaba,  and  Modoc,  was  in  danger  of  ending  with 
them  because  <>f  the  heaps  of  all  three  piled  up  in  the  publishers' 
cellars.  "It  is  more  than  probable,"  he  wrote  to  Wynne,  "  that  I 
should  never  have  written  verse  again  had  it  not  been  for  an  acci- 
dental meeting  with  Landor.  I  had  totally  disused  the  art  for  the 
last  three  years."  He  told  Walter  Scott  of  Landor's  princely  offer, 
that  it  had  stung  him  to  the  very  core  ;  and  as  the  bite  of  the  taran- 
tula had  no  cure  but  dancing,  so  for  this  there  woidd  be  none  but 


>ET.  30-39.]  KOBERT    SOUTHET.  129 

singing.  To  many  other  friends  he  wrote  the  same,  and  often  he  said 
afterwards  that  but  for  Landor  Kehama  would  not  have  been  finished 
and  Roderick  never  begun. 

Whether  the  world  could  not  have  borne  the  loss  is  another  ques- 
tion. In  this  matter  appearances  at  present  are  against  both  Southey 
and  Landor ;  but  as,  for  the  latter,  appeal  is  made  in  this  book 
against  them,  so  for  the  former  it  will  be  fair  to  say  that  besides 
many  minor  poems  which  will  live  with  the  language,  and  ballads 
which  are  masterpieces  of  fantastic  beauty,  the  greater  poems  would 
seem  to  have  fallen  into  unmerited  neglect.  I  am  not  sure  whether 
it  might  not  be  put  as  a  test  of  the  existence  or  otherwise  of  a  pure 
love  of  the  art  in  any  man  that  he  should  like  or  dislike  these 
achievements  of  Southey  ;  and  if  Ariosto  is  able  to  retain  his  read- 
ers, it  appears  hardly  creditable  to  the  public  taste  of  our  time  that 
Southey  should  entirely  lose  his.  It  is  at  least  certain  that  for 
many  subtle  and  pleasing  varieties  of  rhythm,  for  splendor  of  inven- 
tion, for  passion  and  incident  sustained  often  at  the  highest  level,  and 
for  all  that  raises  and  satisfies  wonder  and  fancy,  there  will  be  found 
in  Thalaba,  Kehama,  and  Roderick  passages  of  unrivalled  excellence 
("  perfect,"  even  Byron  thought)  ;  and  these  may  here  excuse,  if 
they  do  not  wholly  justify,  the  hopes  that  once  centred  in  them, 
and  to  which  exalted  expression  is  given  in  the  correspondence  of  the 
friends. 

Their  letters  will  extend,  as  I  have  said,  over  thirty  years  ;  and 
one  more  remark  will  fitly  close  this  prelude  to  them.  Whatever 
fitful  or  wayward  changes  were  incident  to  the  life  of  which  these 
pages  are  the  record,  and  over  which  already  have  passed  some  friend- 
ships formed  and  broken,  the  intercourse  with  Southey  was  to  feel  no 
retiring  ebb,  but  to  keep  always  on  at  the  full.  As  it  was  at  the 
first,  it  continued  to  the  end.  Through  all  that  estranged  Southey's 
opinions  more  and  more  from  those  with  whom  he  had  been  most  in 
sympathy,  Landor  was  stanch  to  him.  In  every  bitterness  of  the 
other  extreme  which  Landor  did  not  scruple  to  indulge,  Southey  had 
excuses  ready  for  him.  When  Byron  coupled  them  in  ridicule, 
Southey  seized  the  occasion  to  avow  that  no  greater  glory  could  befall 
his  name  than  that  of  companionship  with  Landor's,  to  have  obtained 
whose  approbation  as  a  poet,  and  possessed  his  friendship  as  a  man, 
would  be  remembered  among  the  honors  of  his  own  life  when  the 
petty  enmities  of  the  generation  were  forgotten  and  its  ephemeral  rep- 
utations had  passed  away.  And  when  that  life  was  nearing  to  its 
close,  almost  the  very  latest  words  that  Southey  was  permitted  to 
read  with  a  full  consciousness  of  their  meaning  were  these  from  the 
friend  whom  he  had  loved  so  well  :  "  If  any  man  living  is  ardent  in 
his  wishes  for  your  welfare,  I  am,  —  whose  few  and  almost  worthless 
merits  your  generous  heart  has  always  overvalued,  and  whose  infinite 
and  great  faults  it  has  been  too  ready  to  overlook." 

9 


130  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  "rtSSl? 


III.     FIRST  LETTERS  TO   SOUTHEY. 

Landor  began  his  first  letter*  to  Souther,  who  had  sent  him  all 
that  was  written  of  Kehama  f  by  telling  him  he  had  not  stoicism 
enough  in  his  nature  to  deserve  his  correspondent's  good  opinion  or 
his  own ;  yet  there  were  objects  of  which  he  never  lost  sight,  and  in 
the  pursuit  of  which  he  was  strenuous  and  persevering.  "  While  we 
were  together  I  could  not  press  the  offer  I  made,  both  because  1  was 
unwilling  to  have  it  considered  as  a  matter  of  importance  in  itself, 
and  because  I  felt  too  sensibly  how  little  right  I  had  to  the  distinc- 
tion. There  are  few,  I  confess,  from  whom  I  would  have  accepted 
the  proposal.  I  would  from  you,  if  I  could  afford  you  the  highest  of 
luxuries  at  an  inconsiderable  price."  He  then  speaks  of  Kehama, 
intermixing  with  exalted  eulogy  skilful  objection  to  its  metres, 
rhymed  and  unrhymed  ;  excluding  novelties  of  experiment  from 
poetry  as  not  within  its  lawful  province  ;  and  very  striking  in  what 
he  says  of  Pindar  and  his  metrical  difficulties. 

"  The  subject  you  have  chosen  is  magnificent.  There  is  more  genius  in  the" 
conception  of  this  design  than  in  the  execution  of  any  recent  poem,  however 
perfect.  Shall  I  avow  to  you  that  in  general  I  am  most  delighted  with 
those  passages  which  are  in  rhyme,  and  that  when  I  come  into  the  blank 
verse  again  my  ear  repines  f  Are  we  not  a  little  too  fond  of  novelty  and 
experiment,  and  is  it  not  reasonable  to  prefer  those  kinds  of  versification 
which  the  best  poets  have  adopted  and  the  best  judges  have  cherished  for 
the  longest  time?  In  Samson  Ayovisles  and  in  Thalaba  there  arc  many 
lines  which  I  could  not  describe.  There  are  some  in  Kehama.  Poetry  is 
intended  to  soothe  and  flatter  our  prepossessions,  not  to  wound  or  irritate 
or  contradict  them.  We  are  at  liberty  to  choose  the  best  modifications,  we 
are  not  at  liberty  to  change  or  subvert.  We  are  going  too  far  from  our 
great  luminaries.  There  must  be  a  period;  there  must  be  a  return  from 
this  aphelion. 

"You  have  begun  a  poem  which  will  be  coeval  with  our  language. 
March  on:  conciliate  first,  then  conquer.  The  ears  of  thousands  maybe 
captivated,  —  the  mind  and  imagination  of  but  few.  If  Gray  had  written 
his  Elegy  in  another  metre,  it  would  not  be  the  most  admired  poem  in 
existence.  Many  would  see  its  disproportions  and  defects;  though  propor- 
tion has  not  been  studied,  or  perhaps  known,  beyond  the  drama.  Kehama 
will  admit  more  diversity  than  iias  even  been  imagined  in  the  works  of 
Pindar. 

"I  never  could  perceive  that  wildness  for  which  Pindar  has  been  tradi- 
tionally remarked.  I  could  perceive  an  exquisite  taste  and  an  elevation  of 
B(  ul  such  as  never  were  united,  —  not  even  in  the  historical  works  of  the 
Jewish  writers,  not  in  the  Song  of  Deborah  nor  of  Moses.  Ch.  Burney  is 
of  opinion  that  we  have  losl  the  best  works  of  Pindar.  In  a  little  time,  how- 
ever, he  will  teach  people  to  read  the  remaining  Odes  in  such  a  manner  as 

*  Dated  "  Sunday  evening,  May  8"  [18081. 

+  "If  lie  likes  it.'-  he  wrote  to  Miss  Barker  (28th  April,  1*08),  "  in  pood  earnest,! 
■will  get  up  at  -ix  every  morning,  and  give  two  fresh  hours  of  morning  work  to  it  till  it 
i-  completed."  He  told  Wynne  several  months  Inter  that  he  was  still  borrowing  hours 
from  sleep  to  go  on  with  it,  that  Landor  mipht  not  be  disappointed.  And  so  he  perse- 
vered to  the  close.     (Letters,  II.  60-69,  &c.) 


yET.  30-39.]  FIRST   LETTERS    TO    SOUTHEY.  131 

to  —  distinguish  them  from  prose!  Is  it  not  humiliating  and  painful  to 
reflect  that  a  poet  who  held  the  second  place  in  the  ancient  world  should 
have  left  it  a  question  among  those  who  know  his  language  the  most  inti- 
mately whether  his  verses  have  any  intrinsic  melody,  or  owed  it  merely  to 
the  music  by  which  they  were  accompanied  ?  Meanwhile  every  one  satis- 
fied his  own  ear  with  the  despicable  trash  of  Lycophron  and  Tryphiodorus. 
The  opposition  of  iambic  and  trochaic,  in  antispastics,  may  have  been  suited 
to  opposite  choirs  and  instruments ;  but  I  hope  the  metre  and  language  of 
our  early  ballads,  which  we  have  no  reason  to  retain,  will  be  banished  for- 
ever by  men  of  genius  from  their  more  elevated  works. 

"  Southey,  we  have  had  too  much  of  the  lute  and  of  the  lyre.  "We  for- 
get that  there  are  louder,  graver,  more  impressive  tones.  These  indeed  are 
not  proper  for  every  day;  nor  is  it  every  day,  every  century,  or  every 
millennium,  that  we  shall  see  such  poems  as  Kehama.  I  beseech  you, 
Southey,  use  such  materials  as  have  already  stood  the  test.  Wildness  of 
conception,  energy,  passion,  character,  — magnificent  but  wild  profusion, — 
all  this  you  can  give  it ;  and  with  this  you  will  confer  on  it  neither  a  haz- 
ardous nor  a  painful  immortality." 

His  second  letter  was  of  twelve  days'  later  date  ;  Southey  having 
meanwhile  made  battle  for  his  own  forms  of  verse,  and  propounded  a 
private  belief  that  the  whole  system  of  classical  metres  had  been 
nothing  more  than  a  creating  of  difficulty  for  the  sake  of  overcoming 
it.  Old  intercourse  with  Parr  will  be  traced  in  portions  of  Landor's 
reply  about  Catullus,  though  he  has  partly  forgotten  the  Doctor's 
suggestion.  * 

"  I  am  delighted  at  the  manner  in  which  you  intend  to  execute  your 
work,  and  I  am  certain  you  will  exhibit  to  the  world  such  combinations  of 
harmony  as  poetry  never  yet  embraced.  You  will  not,  however,  bring  me 
over  to  your  opinion  that  the  ancients  raised  difficulties  in  their  metre  for 
the  sake  merely  of  combating  and  overcoming  them.  Nor  am  I  indeed  of 
opinion  that  even  the  most  complicated  are  so  hard  to  manage  as  the  Eng- 
lish blank  verse.  Eecollect  their  vast  resources,  their  multiform  transposi- 
tions, their  building  up  and  pulling  to  pieces  of  words,  their  particles,  their 
substitutions  of  one  foot  for  another,  and  their  infinity  of  synonymes.  By 
how  many  terms  and  periphrases  might  every  god,  every  hero,  every  coun- 
try, be  designated.  Of  all  the  verses  in  the  world,  the  Greek  anapasst  is  the 
easiest,  —  dare  I  avow  it,  to  me  it  appears  a  mark,  the  only  one  indeed,  of 
puerility  and  barbarism  in  the  literature  of  this  illustrious  people.  Our  ana- 
paest on  the  contrary  is  beautiful,  particularly  when  alternated  in  rhyme. 
The  Romans  were  not  unwise  in  restricting  themselves  to  few  metres.  The 
galliambic  has  been  used  but  once.  Catullus,  whose  taste  was  the  most 
exquisite  quot  sunt  quotque  fuere  aut  quotquot  aliis  erunt  in  annis,  was  forced 
into  it  by  his  subject.  Perhaps  he  translated  a  poem  he  found  in  Bithynia. 
The  caste  is  Greek,  the  style  is  not  Roman.  A  single  word  of  it  is  a  suffi- 
cient proof  to  me  that  he  was  merely  the  translator^:  — 

Tympanum  |  tubam  |  Cybe  |  les. 
A  Roman  would  not  make  an  anapaest  of  tympanum;  a  Grecian  would 
write  rv-rravov.  No  one  will  be  so  silly  as  to  imagine  he  wrote  a  trochaic; 
for  if  a  single  foot  is  so,  the  remainder  of  the  verse  is,  as  far  as  the  dimeter 
iambic  goes.  But  I  am  doing  in  this  letter  as  I  did,  I  believe,  in  my  last: 
I  am  writing  as  if  I  paid  no  attention  to  your  remarks." 

*  See  ante,  p.  98. 


132  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHOXY.  "^-i"1' 

Southey's  remarks,  put  strongly  in  both  letters,  had  been  to  urge 
him  to  write.  Write  in  English,  he  said,  because  it  is  a  better  lan- 
guage than  Latin  ;  "  but  if  you  will  not  write  English,  write  Latin ; 
and  in  God's  name  overcome  that  superstition  about  Robert  Smith. 
"When  I  consider  what  he  is,  it  puts  me  out  of  all  patience  to  think 
that  the  ghost  of  what  he  has  been  should  overlay  you  like  a  night- 
mare."* Other  remarks  also  he  had  made,  on  what  he  had  heard  of 
affairs  in  Bath.  He  wished  Landor  were  married ;  wished  he  were  as 
much  Quaker  as  himself;  wished  above  all  he  would  throw  aside 
Rousseau,  and  make  Epictetus  his  manual.  To  all  which  Landor 
replied,  bringing  Ianthe  herself  into  the  sober  presence  :  — 

"  The  reason  I  have  given  over  poetry  is  -this.  I  think  it  better  not  to 
have  cut  the  dragon's  teeth  than  to  have  sowed  them.  What  a  rabble  of 
enemies  are  raised  up  about  one  at  every  new  publication !  There  are 
thousands  who  may  vex  me,  there  are  few  who  can  delight  or  amuse  me ; 
added  to  which,  I  either  feel  or  fancy  that  I  am  as  fond  of  another's  good 
poetry  as  of  my  own.  But  alas !  I  do  want  stoicism  for  everything.  I 
once  resolved  to  attain  it.  What  was  the  result  ?  Your  slave,  your  Epic- 
tetus. was  pursued  and  punished. 

"  Shall  I  give  you  an  elegy  I  have  written  :  — 

Vita  brevi  fugitura!  prior  fugitura  venustas! 
Hoc  saltern  exiguo  tempore  duret  amor. 

These  opening  verses  pleased  me.     I  repeated  them  one  morning  in  the 
presence  of  Ianthe.    She  held  me  by  both  ears  till  I  gave  her  the  English :  — 

Soon,  0  Ianthe,  life  is  o'er, 

And  sooner  beauty's  playful  smile! 
Kiss  me,  and  grant  what  I  implore, 

Let  love  remain  that  little  while." 

I  will  spare  the  reader  the  rest  of  his  Latin  elegy,  not  one  of  the 
two-and-thirty  more  verses  of  which  did  he  spare  his  friend ;  winding 
up  the  close  of  his  letter  also  in  characteristic  fashion  :  — 

"  I  once  thought  of  publishing  a  collection  of  Latin  poems,  in  which  I 
had  written  remarks  on  those  of  R.  Smith,  Fox,  Frere,  Canning,  Addison, 
Milton,  May,  Buchanan,  Fitcairn,  Cowley,  and  half  a  dozen  more  of  our 
countrymen.  These  notices  in  general  wrere  not  much  longer  than  yours 
to  the  English  Poets.  Here  are  two  sjiecimens  :  '  Foxium,  creteroquin  prre 
rivalibus  suis  clarum,  poetam  parcius  laudaverim.  Erat  ei  mitis,  et  dum 
luderet,  sapientia;  castigati  sales;  verborum  perssepe,  nonnunquam  rerum 
penuria;  interdum  frigus  animi,  quod  lenem  spiritum  faventes  voeitaivnt.' 
*De  ('amnio  dicam  quod  sentio:  nemo  enim  mortalium  tanti  est  ut  me 
mendacem  faciat.  Bene  res  malas  scripsit,  nee  bona  male.  Dolendum  est 
obscuros  atque  infimos  nebulones  a  poetis  pessimis  insequendis  revocasse, 
in  viros  illustres  optimosque  incitasse,  nee  novisse  seipsum  esse  temnendum, 
quando  alios  ti'innere  pertinaciter,  magnoque  cum  suo  cruciatu  simulare.' 
We  really  do  want  some  Elegant  Extracts  of  the  modern  latinists.  Many 
fine  specimens  are  recoverable.  I  wonder  some  German  has  not  done  it. 
I  have  pointed  out  the  bad  poetry  and  the  false  metre  of  Sir  William  Jones 

*  Omitted  in  the  Life,  III.  144.  Another  omission  on  the  same  page  may  be  worth 
appending.  "Youtj£2,"  aayBSonthey,  "has  been  paid  to  the  subscription  for  the  Gras- 
mere  orphans.    Enough  has  been  raised  to  provide  for  their  well-being  and  well-doing." 


^T.  30-39.]  IN    SPAIN.  '133 

—  I  correct  myself:  you  cannot  point  out  the  bad  poetry  of  this  worthy 
man,  but  you  may  lay  your  hand  upon  it.  Yes,  both  your  hands.  G-yas 
might  lay  all  his  even,  if  each  of  them  were  as  large  as  the  whole  bodies  of 
his  brotherhood,  and  extended  novem  per  jugera." 

The  second  consignment  of  Kehama  manuscript  lies  before  me, 
scrawled  over  with  innumerable  addresses.  It  had  gone  to  the  Hot- 
wells,  Clifton.  It  had  followed  to  Pulteney  House,  Bath,  and  to  the 
South  Parade.  London  and  Brighton  had  been  tried  ;  and  it  had 
overtaken  Landor  at  last  in  Falmouth !  From  the  latter  place  he 
writes  to  acknowledge  it,  and  one  may  fancy  the  amazement  with 
which  Southey  read  these  words.  "Nothing  I  do,  whether  wise  or 
foolish,  will  create  much  surprise  in  those  who  know  my  character. 
I  am  going  to  Spain.  In  three  days  I  shall  have  sailed.  At  Brigh- 
ton, one  evening,  I  preached  a  crusade  to  two  auditors.  Inclination 
was  not  wanting,  and  in  a  few  minutes  everything  was  fixed.  I  am 
now  about  to  express  a  wish  at  which  your  gentler  and  more  benevo- 
lent soul  will  shudder.  May  every  Frenchman  out  of  France  perish  ! 
May  the  Spaniards  not  spare  one  !  No  calamities  can  chain  them 
down  from  their  cursed  monkey-tricks  ;  no  generosity  can  bring  back 
to  their  remembrance  that  a  little  while  since  they  mimicked,  till 
they  really  thought  themselves,  free  men.  Detestable  race,  profaners 
of  republicanism,  —  since  the  earth  will  not  open  to  swallow  them  all 
up,  may  even  kings  partake  in  the  glory  of  their  utter  extermination  ! 
I  am  learning,  night  and  morning,  the  Spanish  language.  I  ought 
not  to  give  my  opinion  of  it  at  present ;  but  I  confess  it  appears  to 
me  such  as  I  should  have  expected  to  hear  spoken  by  a  Roman 
slave,  sulky  from  the  bastinado.  I  hope  to  join  the  Spanish  army 
immediately  on  my  landing,  and  I  wish  only  to  fight  as  a  private 
soldier.  There  is  nothing  in  this  unless  it  could  be  known  what  I 
have  left  for  it,  and,  having  left,  have  lost."  * 

It  was  a  kind  of  loss  which  his  sister  more  wisely  would  have 
thought  his  gain ;  but  at  the  step  thus  suddenly  taken  his  family 
were  as  much  startled  as  his  friends.  He  had  mentioned  it  to  no 
one.  The  act  followed  close  upon  the  thought  of  it,  and  he  was  gone 
before  any  one  could  have  reasoned  with  him.  But  as  we  look  back 
upon  it  now,  and  recall  some  of  the  circumstances  that  immediately 
impelled  it,  we  may  possibly  find  in  it,  besides  the  quixotic  rashness, 
something  generous  and  noble. 


IV.    IN  SPAIN. 

Napoleon's  attempt  to  convert  Spain  and  Portugal  into  dependen- 
cies of  France  was  the  turning-point  of  his  fortunes.  When  he  con- 
ceived that  design  he  had  all  Europe,  excepting  England,  at  his  feet, 
and  nothing  seemed  easier  than  its  completion.      To  one  who  had 

*  The  letter  has  simply  the  date:  "Falmouth,  Wed.  Eve."  The  postmark  is  8th 
August,  1808. 


134:  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONT.  ^tos-ij."' 

struck  down  the  whole  of  Germany  and  made  a  satellite  of  Russia, 
what  danger  could  there  possibly  be  in  overturning  the  Peninsular 
thrones,  one  of  them  for  years  the  most  abject  of  his  vassals,  and  the 
other  the  most  despicable  of  his  adversaries'?  Yet  his  ruin  dates 
from  his  perfidy  against  them. 

The  plot  had  been  in  progress  some  time  before  its  real  drift  was 
suspected.  Both  countries  had  been  overrun  with  French  troops,  and 
the  miserable  Bourbon  princes  had  been  kidnapped,  before  the  pres- 
ence of  Joseph  Bonaparte  at  Madrid  told  the  whole  treacherous  story. 
A  kind  of  dumb  amazement  and  acquiescence  was  at  first  the  only  feeling 
awakened.  Resistance  by  that  time  seemed  dead  beyond  the  hope  or 
power  of  revival.  Spain  had  no  treasury  and  no  army.  Her  soldiers 
had  been  carried  otf  to  the  north  of  Europe,  a  hundred  thousand 
French  veterans  were  in  their  place,  and  French  troops  garrisoned  her 
strongest  fortresses.  Humanly  speaking,  all  help  and  hope  had  come  to 
an  end  when  the  world  was  unexpectedly  inthralled  by  such  a  sight 
as  even  that  century  had  not  witnessed. 

The  Spanish  people  themselves  arose  in  mass  against  their  invaders. 
All  over  the  country  there  sprang  suddenly  into  life  local  bodies 
called  Juntas,  by  whom  the  powers  of  government  were  seized  and 
exercised  with  a  success  proportioned  to  their  resolution  and  audacity. 
The  flame  that  had  at  first  risen  highest  in  Seville  overspread  the 
land  with  marvellous  rapidity.  French  fleets  were  seized  and  French 
garrisons  found  themselves  isolated  in  fortresses  supposed  to  be  im- 
pregnable. Armies  were  created  and  organized  ;  a  free  press  was 
established  ;  the  peasantry,  self-formed  into  guerilla  bands,  strength- 
ened everywhere  the  national  levies ;  and  in  the  very  girls  and 
women  of  Spain  the  French  soldiers  found  avenging  furies.  It 
seemed  as  if  at  last  the  conquering  career  of  Napoleon  had  been 
stayed  in  the  presence  of  a  power  grander  than  any  arrayed  against 
it  by  the  old  governments.  From  the  spirit  of  patriotism  and  liberty 
which  had  originally  been  the  strength  of  France  men  now  believed 
that  her  weakness  and  her  downfall  were  to  come. 

To  say  that  the  enthusiasm  created  by  these  events  in  most  parts 
of  England  was  frantic  is  to  employ  no  misplaced  term.  But  what 
was  done  thereon,  from  its  ignoble  beginnings  to  its  noble  end,  is 
matter  of  history,  and  excluded  from  these  pages.  History,  however, 
scarcely  tells  us  how  deeply  individuals  were  moved,  as,  in  broken 
and  exaggerated  fragments,  piece  by  piece,  the  glorious  news  came 
over.  The  shouts  of  towns  and  cities  far  oft",  says  Wordsworth,  found 
echo  in  the  vales  and  hills  around  him;  where  "the  hopes  and  fears 
of  suffering  Spoil)  "  had  been  equally  in  all  men's  hearts.  Every- 
where, too,  expectation  went  as  far  beyond  probability  or  reason  as 
the  exploits  that  had  aroused  it.  Castanos  and  Baylen,  Palafox  and 
Saragoza,  names  hardly  known  to  this  generation,  became  watch- 
words over  England  ;  and  when  King  Joseph  was  reported  to  have  fled 
from  Madrid,  it  was  as  if  Napoleon  himself  had  been  tumbled  from  his 


JET.  30-39.]  IN    SPAIN.  135 

throne.  Coleridge^  then  living  in  Grasmere  Vale,  has  related  how 
they  would,  he  and  Wordsworth  together,  often  and  often  walk  out  to 
the  Raise  Gap  as  late  as  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  meet  the  Kes- 
wick carrier  with  the  newspaper.  It  was  a  time  unparalleled  in  his- 
tory, exclaimed  Southey,  "  and  a  more  glorious  one  never  has  and 
never  can  be  exhibited  to  the  world."  And,  just  at  the  time  when 
he  was  saying  this,  the  excitement  had  fallen  upon  still  more  inflam- 
mable stuff  in  Landor's  breast,  with  the  result  that  we  have  seen.  He 
was  for  action,  not  talking.  He  resolved  to  go  out  as  a  volunteer. 
He  took  money  to  contribute  to  the  common  stock,  and  would  him- 
self lead  into  battle  the  troops  he  should  have  equipped  and  armed. 
Very  quixotic  ;  yet  at  the  heart  of  it  also  something  of  a  generous 
grandeur.  If  a  more  settled  earnestness  of  purpose  had  but  entered 
into  it ! 

Unfortunately  of  such  enterprises  in  general  it  is  to  be  said  that 
they  fail  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  fine-hearted  and  hair-brained 
make  an  ill  match ;  unprofitable  for  the  most  part,  and  ban-en  of 
issue.  There  can  be  no  sufficient  calculation  and  no  adequate  pro- 
vision. Something  there  was,  in  the  present  case,  of  glory  in  having 
been  the  first  English  volunteer  that  set  foot  in  Spain ;  but  this  was 
about  all  achieved  by  it  or  got  out  of  it.  At  Corunna  Charles  Stuart 
was  envoy  ;  attached  in  a  friendly  way  to  his  mission  was  Charles 
Robert  Vaughan  of  All  Souls,  Oxford,  who  had  been  at  Rugby  with 
Landor  ;  and  to  Corunna  Landor  first  went.  His  two  companions  to 
whom  he  refers  in  his  letter  to  Southey  were  both  Irishmen,  an 
O'Hara  and  a  Fitzgerald.  Upon  reaching  Corunna  he  sent  to  the 
governor  ten  thousand  reals  for  relief  of  the  town  of  Venturada, 
burnt  to  the  ground  by  the  French.  At  the  same  time,  in  a  letter 
accompanying  his  gift,  he  stated  his  intention  to  join  at  once  the 
army  of  Blake  ;  and  declared  that  whatever  volunteers  were  ready  to 
join  him,  though  to  the  number  of  a  thousand,  he  was  ready  to  pay 
their  expenses,  to  travel  with  them  on  foot,  and  to  fight  along  with 
them  ;  desiring  no  other  glory  than  to  serve  under  any  brave  Spaniard 
in  arms  for  defence  of  religion  and  liberty.  By  the  supreme  council 
of  Castile,  to  which  the  governor  straightway  sent  the  money  and  the 
letter,  both  were  gratefully  received ;  the  reals  were  deposited  in  the 
National  Bank,  and  the  governor  was  instructed  to  express  to  Mr. 
Landor  the  high  sense  which  the  council  entertained  of  his  gener- 
osity, his  valor,  and  his  honorable  enthusiasm.* 

*  The  subjoined  is  taken  from  Saunders's  Dublin  News  Letter  and  Daily  Advertiser 
of  Monday  the  3d  October,  1808,  which  now  lies  before  me. 

"  The  Governor  of  Corunna  has  addressed  the  following  letter  to  Don  Arias  Mon, 
Dean  of  the  Supreme  Council  of  Castile:  — 

"  Illustrious  Sir,  —  On  the  24th  an  English  gentleman,  accompanied  by  two  Irish 
gentlemen,  delivered  to  me  a  letter  to  this  effect:  — 

"  '  I  fake  the  liberty  to  present,  through  the  medium  of  your  respectable  authority, 
a  small  offering  of  ten  thousand  reals  for  the  unfortunate  town  of  Venturada,  destroyed 
on  account  of  its  loyalty  to  its  king  by  most  cruel  and  ferocious  enemies.     Two  Irish 


136  BATH,  SPAIN,  AND  LLANTHONY.  ^jSSs*™ 

In  the  interval  between  the  enrolment  of  his  troop,  which  was 
formed  at  once,  and  their  departure  for  head-quarters,  a  misunder- 
standing occurred  with  the  English  envoy.  Landor  applied  to  him- 
self an  expression  of  .Stuart's  overheard  by  him  at  one  of  the  meetings 
of  the  junta,  which  undoubtedly  was  meant  for  another  person.  The 
matter  might  easily  have  been  cleared  up,  but  he  did  not  even  make 
the  attempt.  On  the  way  with  his  volunteers  to  Blake's  army  he 
wrote  froni  Villa  Franca  an  intemperate  letter  to  Vaughan,  and 
printed  it  both  in  Spanish  and  English  before  any  reply  could  reach 
him.  In  or  near  Aguilar  he  remained  nearly  three  months,  engaged 
in  petty  skirmishing,  and  fretting  at  the  inaction  of  the  northern 
division  and  its  general.  Then,  what  the  alleged  affront  of  the  envoy 
had  begun,  the  affair  of  Cintra  and  its  disasters  completed  ;  his  troop 
dispersed  or  melted  away  ;  and  he  came  back  to  England  in  as  great 
a  hurry  as  he  had  left  it. 

At  his  return  he  told  Southey  that  he  wished  greatly  to  have  seen 
Madrid,  but  he  was  afraid  a  battle  might  be  fought  in  his  absence, 
and  the  mortification  of  not  being  present  at  it  would  have  killed  him. 
"  In  this  expectation  I  remained  nearly  three  months  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  Gallician  army,  sometimes  at  llcynosa,  sometimes  at 
Aguilar.  I  returned  to  Bilbao  after  the  French  had  entered.  I  had 
the  satisfaction  of  serving  three  launches  with  powder  and  muskets, 
and  of  carrying  on  my  shoulders  six  or  seven  miles  a  child  too  heavy 
for  its  exhausted  mother.  These  are  things  without  difficulty  and 
without  danger ;  yet  they  please,  independently  of  gratitude  or  ap- 
plause. I  was  near  being  taken  the  following  day.  This  would  have 
been  exceedingly  unpleasant,  as  I  had  already  sent  the  letter  to 
Vaughan  and  Stuart,  and  myself  and  the  envoy  must  meet."  He  de- 
scribed Aguilar  at  that  time  as  an  open  town  consisting  chiefly  and 
almost  entirely  of  one  broad  street ;  •  and  said,  in  proof  of  the  strange 
mistakes  as  well  as  fatal  inaction  of  Blake,  that  while  his  main  force 
was  at  the  town,  he  was  himself  a  mile  on  the  east,  and  had  so  sta- 
tioned his  cannon  on  the  west,  near  a  ford,  that  a  regiment  of  horse 
might  have  surprised  and  spiked  it. 

"Ah,"  said  Southey  afterwards,  when  he  was  writing  Roderick,  "it 
is  much  for  a  poet  to  have  traversed  the  scenes  in  Avhich  the  subject 

gentlemen  (Mr.  Fitzgerald  and  Mr.  O'Hara),  men  of  the  first  families  of  their  country, 
accompany  me,  and  are  desirous  of  proceeding  with  me  to  the  army  of  General  Blake. 
If  there  arc  any  volunteers  in  this  town,  or  in  the  kingdom,  who  may  wish  to  accom- 
pany me,  though  their  number  should  amount  to  one  thousand,  1  shall  with  much 
pleasure  pay  the  expenses  of  their  journey,  travel  with  them  on  foot,  and  fight  along 
with  them,  glorying  to  serve  under  the  command  of  any  brave  Spaniard  who  has  taken 
up  arms  in  defence  of  religion  and  liberty.  W.  Savage  Landor.' 

"  The  said  ten  thousand  reals  being  in  my  hands,  I  inform  you  thereof,  in  order  that 
publication  may  be  made  in  the  Court  Gazette,  and  the  money  appropriated  for  the 
Benefit  of  the  unfortunate  town  of  Venturada.  A.  Alceco. 

"  Corunna,  August  26." 

"The  Council  ordered  the  above  ten  thousand  reals  to  be  transmitted  to  the  Na- 
tional Bank  for  the  use  of  the  people  of  Venturada,  and  directed  the  Governor  of 
Corunna  to  express  to  Mr.  Landor  and  the  two  Irish  gentlemen  the  high  sense  which 
the  Council  entertains  of  their  generosity,  valor,  and  honorable  enthusiasm." 


JET.  30-39  ]  IN    SPAIN.  137 

of  his  poem  is  laid.     It  gave  you  an  advantage  in  Count  Julian."     It 

is  certainly  not  difficult  to  understand,  after  reading  what  has  just 

been  quoted,  the  double  meanings  in  Landor's  mind  in  some  of  the 

earlier  scenes   of  his  tragedy,  when  its  hero,  in   arms  against  his 

countrymen,  is  praising  their  simplicity  of  character  :  — 

"  If  strength  be  wanted  for  security, 

Mountains  the  guard,  forbidding  all  approach 

With  iron-pointed  and  uplifted  gates, 

Thou  wilt  be  welcome  too  in  Aguilar, 

Impenetrable,  marble-turreted, 

Surveying  from  aloft  the  limpid  ford, 

The  massive  fane,  the  sylvan  avenue ; 

Whose  hospitality  I  proved  myself, 

A  willing  leader  in  no  impious  war 

When  fame  and  freedom  urged  me ;  or  mayst  dwell 

In  Reynosa's  dry  and  thriftless  dale, 

Unharvested  beneath  October  moons, 

Among  those  frank  and  cordial  villagers." 

Such  was  Landor's  raid  into  Spain ;  as  to  which  I  will  now  only 
give  such  further  illustrations,  from  his  own  and  the  envoy's  letters,  as 
may  still  be  read  with  interest.  They  will  also  tell  what  the  Span- 
iards themselves  thought  of  the  service  rendered  them,  and  what  re- 
turn they  made  for  it. 

Here  is  his  own  description  of  his  voyage  to  Corunna  :  — 

"  The  commencement  of  my  journey  did  not  augur  a  prosperous  con- 
tinuance or  a  happy  termination.  I  arrived  at  Falmouth  when  the  packets 
had  sailed  two  hours,  and  was  detained  at  that  wretched  place  eight  days. 
At  last  I  went  on  board,  and  the  wind  was  favorable;  but  while  the 
sailors  were  filling  the  casks,  it  changed  again  suddenly,  and  we  were 
buffeted  or  becalmed  on  the  Atlantic  five  days  more.  The  water  had  been 
put  into  foul  casks,  and  it  could  not  be  more  putrid  if  it  had  been  carried 
round  the  world.  The  tea  seemed  originally  to  have  had  some  connection 
with  tobacco,  and  had  formed  a  fresh  family  compact  in  the  voyage. 
There  was  not  a  lemon  on  board ;  but  we  found  a  few  blighted  fisrs  and 
rotten  apples.  As  Ave  approached  Cape  Prior,  we  discovered  a  French 
privateer.  Apprehensive  that  she  might  capture  some  of  the  transports 
that  were  carrying  our  troops  to  Lisbon,  I  asked  Captain  Atkins  why  he 
did  not  engage.  She  was  then  only  at  the  distance  of  a  mile  from  our 
frigate.  The  captain  said  that  the  packets  had  positive  orders  to  the  con- 
trary ;  but  in  fact  the  ship  was  larger  and  the  guns  much  heavier  than 
ours.  We  continued  two  whole  days  within  sight  of  Corunna.  The  wind 
was  violent,  and  the  vessel  received  some  material  damage.  At  last  we 
entered  the  harbor,  and  were  greeted  with  all  the  alacrity  of  pleasure  by 
our  new  allies."  * 

Something  of  what  happened  in  his  march  between  Corunna  and 
Villa  Franca  I  find  in  other  letters,  which  contain  also  delightful 
glimpses  of  the  country  and  characteristics  of  that  part  of  Gallicia. 

*  A  letter  from  Captain  Atkins  dated  the  13th  November,  1808,  acknowledges  grate- 
fully a  gift  of  a  compass  which  Landor  had  sent  him;  says  it  will  remind  him  always 
"  of  the  many  pleasant  and  instructive  hours  passed  with  the  giver,  notwithstanding 
the  prevalence  of  many  adverse  gales  in  a  very  leaky  ship  " ;  andi  describing  the  defects 
in  the  latter  as  having  been  "found  considerably  alarming,"  adds  that  he  is  neverthe- 
less under  immediate  orders  to  join  the  commander-in-chief,  Lord  Gambier.  In  one 
of  the  very  next  engagements  he  lost  his  life. 


138  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^.^i"1' 

"  At  Lugo  we  took  up  our  abode  at  a  posada  just  beyond  the  walls. 
Near  it  was  a  magazine  of  brandy,  wine,  and  corn.     About  midnight  we 
were  awakened  by  a  blaze  brighter  than  the  day.     Our  first  idea  was  that 
a  paiiy  of  French  horse  had  surprised  the  city.     We  threw  on  our  clothes, 
seized  our  swords  and  pistols,  and  discovered  immediately  under  ,our  win- 
dow  vast  torrents  of  llame.     We  hastened  to  the  spot,  and  in  a  few  min- 
utes the   guard  had  assembled   with   the   governor    and  his  officers.     He 
thanked  us  very  cordially  for  our  co-operation   in    extinguishing  the  fire. 
There  was  no  engine  in  the  town,  and   I   had-  recommended   to  throw  as 
much  dust  as  could  be  collected  wherever  the  conflagration  was  extending. 
This   method   perfectly  succeeded.      The   principal  church  here  is  partly 
ancient,  partly  modern.     The   walls   are   of  very   remote   antiquity.     The 
surrounding   scenery,    particularly   towards    Astorga,    is    grand,    although 
enclosed  and  cultivated.     Near  the  city   the   fences  are  of  stone ;  farther 
on,  they  are  live  and  wild;   but  I  remarked  that  the  rose  and  honeysuckle 
were  not  to  be  found  amongst  them   so  frequently  as  in  England.     The 
birds,  too,  were  silent.     We   heard,  instead  of  them,  loud   and  wearisome 
hymns,  the  tune  eternally  the  same,  and  one  incessant  noise  of  cart-wheels 
creaking  on  wooden  axles.     About  a  quarter  of  a  mile  beyond  the  bridge 
the  road  is  supported  by  a  wall,  and  from  this  place  the  river  Minho'  on 
the  right  presents  the  appearance  of  a  lake,  in  the  midst  of  lofty  chestnuts. 
We  rested  at  another  posada    three   leagues   and  a  half  from  Lugo.     The 
window,  or  rather   the  small    aperture   which  had  escaped   the  shutters, 
showed  us  a  narrow  dell  bounded  by  romantic  hills,  on  one  of  which  was 
a  single  spot  of  the  most  vivid  verdure,  and  on  another  a  small  intrench- 
ment.     In  this  country  some  hone)'  is  produced,  but  here  is  little  corn, 
little  cattle,  and  no  wine.     The  bread,  which  they  informed  me  was  white 
as  the  bread  of  Lugo,  was   indebted  for  its  whiteness  to  the  sand  with 
which  it  was  mixed.     We   proceeded  to  the  house  of  Don  Josef  Manuel 
Gomez,  at  Basside.      It  was  hardly  a  league  farther.     Here  we  slept.     The 
land  is  fertile  and  well  wooded,  but  on  the  1st  of  September  I  saw  some 
barley  only  six  or  seven  inches  high.     Some  standard  peaches  in   the  gar- 
den were  also  laden  with  unripe  fruit.     In  fact  this  part  of  Gallieia  is  cer- 
tainly later  than  many  in  England,  though  the  fruit  more  rarely  fails  and 
grows  in  more  abundance.      Throughout  a  distance  of  ninety  miles  I   have 
not  seen  an  elm  or  an  ash.     This,  though  incomparably  the  most  valuable 
of  trees,  is  perhaps  the  most   neglected  in  the   whole  of  Europe,  and  its 
nature  the  worst  understood.      Its  timber  is  of  a   firmer   texture    when  it 
grows  in  an  elevated  situation,  for  which   it  is  peculiarly   adapted    by  the 
toughness  and  flexibility  of  its   branches.      It  could  resist  the  wind  and 
snow  where  any  other  tree  would   split,  and  where  very  few  would   vege- 
tate.     We  reached  Nocera,  a  lovely  little  village;  then  la  posada  de  Castro, 
and  el  eastel  de  los  Moros  on  the  left,  twenty-seven  leagues  from   Corunna. 
About  half  a  league  farther  is  the  sweetest  vale  divided  into  enclosures  of 
irregular  forms,  hardly  one  of  them  a  quarter  of  an  acre.     A  brook  runs 
amongst  them,  whose  innumerable  mazes  it  is  impossible  to  trace:    the 
fields,  the  trees,  and  the  water-;  seem  all  in  infancy  and  all  at  play.     Before 
us  lay  a  wide  extent  of  ploughed  upland  with  interspersed  clumps   of 
chestnuts.       Here   was    no    species   of  herbage,  but    it    was    covered    with 
sheep.     This  is  the  only  instance  in  which   I  observed  them  on  the  fal- 
lows.    Such  bold  and  diversified  scenery  would  have  been  admired  in  an 
English  park.     It  wanted  but  verdure  and  deer,  accompaniments  (but  not 
essentials)  to  the  picturesque.     About  a  league  farther  we  reached  Villa 
Franca." 


JET.  30-39.] 


IN   SPAIN.  139 


From  Villa  Franca  was  written  his  ill-advised  letter  to  Vanghan ; 
and  of  the  impetuous  mistake  that  suggested  it  something  must  be 
said.  Shortly  after  his  arrival  he  was  received  at  the  palace  of  the 
junta  daring  one  of  their  sittings,  when  Stuart  had  attended  hastily 
not  only  to  introduce  his  countryman,  but  also  to  obtain  liberation 
for  a  Spanish  official  on  his  way  to  Monte  Video,  whom  the  junta, 
upon  false  information,  had  placed  under  arrest,  and  of  whom,  among 
other  things,  Stuart  told  them  that  the  poor  man  was  distracted,  and 
had  no  money  to  support  him  at  Corunna.  He  had  been  talking  just 
before  to  the  junta  of  the  services  proposed  to  be  rendered  by  Lan- 
dor ;  and  in  the  confusion  that  prevailed,  the  latter,  believing  himself 
still  to  be  referred  to,  overheard  the  words  unquestionably  meant  for 
the  other,  il  est  fou,  il  rHa  pas  V argent,  which  he  straightway  applied 
to  himself,  and  made  the  text  of  his  letter  to  Vaughan. 

"  They  were  spoken  in  that  half-formed  and  that  half-stifled  voice  which 
deep  malignity  is  apt  to  utter,  but  has  not  the  power  to  modulate  or  man- 
age. He  would  not  dare  to  use  such  language  openly  ;  and  on  his  return 
to  England,  whenever  he  gives  me  the  opportunity,  I  will  teach  him  that 
if  any  one  speaks  of  me,  his  tone  must  be  lower,  or  his  remarks  must  be 
more  true.  You,  who  remember  me  in  my  earliest  years,  remember  that 
I  was  distinguished  —  was  it  either  as  a  liar  or  a  fool?  Inform  him  if  ever 
I  broke  my  word,  or  ever  endured  an  insult.  I  made  no  reply  at  the  time 
to  his  calumnies  and  his  insolence.  I  thanked  him  for  his  offers  of  service. 
Though  I  consider  him  as  merely  a  petty  envoy  to  a  province,  yet  I  con- 
sider also  what  is  due  both  to  the  Spanish  and  the  English  nation.  No 
action  is  recorded  more  heroic  than  that  of  Louis  XIV.  towards  the  Due 
de  Lausun.  When  the  king  received  a  gross  and  grievous  insult  from  his 
subject,  he  rose,  threw  his  cane  out  of  the  window,  and  made  this  calm 
reply:  'I  should  be  sorry  to  have  caned  a  duke  and  peer  of  France.' 
Vaughan,  I  should  be  sorry  to  have  done  what  I  may  not  be  sorry  to  do. 
I  have  been  able  to  restrain  my  impetuosity,  but  I  will  not  conceal  my 
disdain.  I  entertain  the  highest  and  most  inviolable  respect  for  whatever 
is  in  office  under  the  king  and  constitution  of  my  country.  The  forbear- 
ance I  have  shown,  and  even  the  letter  I  am  writing,  will  controvert  the 
charge  of  imbecility,  as  surely  as  the  same  charge  would  be  proved  by 
whatever  is  intemperate  or  coarse.  The  ten  thousand  reals  (why  am  I 
forced  to  mention  them  ?)  which  I  paid  into  the  hands  of  the  governor  at 
Corunna,  and  a  daily  allowance  of  full  pay  to  every  soldier  I  am  leading  to 
the  armies,  together  with  some  occasional  gratuities  to  keep  up  their  spirits 
on  the  march,  are  presumptive  proof  that  the  calculations  of  Mr.  S.  are 
groundless,  frivolous,  and  false." 

A  man  who  could  have  reasoned  however  slightly  with  his  anger 
might  at  once  have  detected,  in  the  very  language  employed  by  him- 
self, much  stronger  presumptive  proof  against  his  own  calculations. 
"  I  made  no  reply  at  the  time  to  his  calumnies  and  insolence.  I 
thanked  him  for  his  offers  of  service."  Any  one  indeed  must  have 
been  himself  a  fool,  as  Stuart  afterwards  said,  to  whom  the  occasion 
of  offering  thanks  for  service  should  have  presented  itself  also  as  a 
fitting  one  for  insolence  to  the  person  rendering  it.     The   extracts 


140  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  '"a^i  i'"' 

that  follow  not  only  exonerate  Stuart,  but  show  him  in  a  very  pleas- 
ing light ;  and  the  mention  of  what  else  was  in  Landor's  offensive 
letter  may  be  limited  to  what  further  it  tells  of  what  occurred  to  him 
in  Spain.  He  declares  himself  grateful  for  the  marks  of  distinction 
conferred  on  him  by  the  venerable  Bishop  of  Orense,  and  for  the  re- 
spect freely  paid  him  by  every  Spaniard  of  rank  or  consequence  with 
whom  he  had  conversed.  He  tells  the  junta  of  Corunna  that  he  can 
yearly,  without  inconvenience,  save  sufficient  for  the  accomplishment 
of  every  offer  he  has  made,  and  cannot  apply  it  with  more  lasting 
pleasure  to  any  other  purpose  than  the  advancement  of  their  cause. 
And  he  expresses  his  fixed  intention  to  reach  the  camp,  and  to  con- 
duct to  head-quarters  the  men  intrusted  to  his  care,  in  time  for  the 
battle  then  immediately  expected. 

STUART    TO    VAUGHAN  :    MADRID,    18TH    OCTOBER,    1808. 

"  Don  Benito  de  Novoa  will  certify  that  Mr.  Landor  must  have  misunder- 
stood me,  and  that  the  language  he  alludes  to  could  not  have  been  directed 
against  him.  On  the  contrary,  I  one  day  cited  Mr.  Landor's  handsome 
offer  to  the  junta  as  a  proof  of  the  good-will  and  enthusiasm  towards 
Spain  which  animates  Englishmen;  and  knowing  from  you  the  talents,  for- 
tune, and  character  of  thai  gentleman,  I  should  have  been  mad  or  a  fool 
myself  had  I  been  base  enough  to  depreciate  his  exertions  in  so  good  a 
cause,  wdio  have  myself  descended  from  my  own  rank  in  the  service  to 
engage  heartily  in  favor  of  Spanish  liberty  on  Spanish  ground.  You 
were  the  bearer  of  a  message  to  Mr.  Landor  expressing  my  regret  for 
our  departure  at  the  moment  of  his  arrival  in  Corunna ;  and  afterwards 
the  same  circumstance  in  Lugo  would  not  permit  me  to  show  him  the 
civilities  I  desired.  I  would  willingly  have  furnished  him  with  such 
recommendations  to  the  army  as  I  could  give  him  ;  and  I  actually  re- 
quested General  Broderick,  when  he  passed  through  Lugo,  to  forward  his 
efforts  in  the  cause  of  Spain  by  every  facility  which  his  situation  at  head- 
quarters could  command."* 

VAUGHAN  TO  LANDOR  \     SANGUESA,  1ST  NOVEMBER,  1808. 

"The  kind  inclination  T  know  to  have  been  professed  towards  you  by 
Mr.  Stuart,  and  what  he  had  learned  from  me  of  your  fortune  and  talent-, 
convince  me  that  whenever  he  made  use  of  those  expressions  in  your  hear- 
ing it  must  have  been  with  respect  to  some  other  person.  So  highly  did  he 
think  of  your  conduct  that  I  know  it  was  his  intention  to  communicate  to 
the  Central  Junta  what  you  had  done  and  offered  to  do  in  their  favor,  sug- 
gesting at  the  same  time  that  they  should  give  you  some  mark  of  their 
approbation  or  thanks.  I  ought  to  regret  that  under  my  name  unpleasant 
■  should  have  been  conveyed  to  a  gentleman  for  whom  I  have  the 
most  affectionate  regard,  and  for  whose  talents  I  have  the  highest  respect; 
but  I  rejoice  in  an  occasion  of  relieving  from  a  painful  impression  the  feel- 
ings of  an  old  school-fellow." 

*  This  is  confirmed  by  several  allusions  to  this  general,  and  his  friendly  co-operation, 
in  Landor's  letters.  When  criticising  Southey's  history  in  one  of  his  letters  or  March, 
1821,  he  writes:  "The  capture  of  Blake  at  Seville  with  all  his  anny  explains  tome 
what  I  Buspected.  General  Broderick  t<>M  me  he  could  obtain  no  confidence  from  him. 
I  replied,  '  Then  have  none  in  him.1  Romans  would  have  acted  differently.  1  Bhould 
be  glad  to  Bee  your  reasons  fur  the  strange  inaction  of  the  Gallician  army,  when  the 
ich  had  tied  across  the  Ebro." 


^r.  3° '39-1 


IN    SPAIN.  141 


STUART   TO   LANDOR:   ARANJUEZ,    14TH   NOVEMBER,    1808. 

*'I  learn  with  much  regret  that  I  had  the  misfortune  unintentionally  to 
offend  you  at  Corunna,  and  I  hasten  to  clear  up  a  mistake  which  appears 
to  have  given  rise  to  sentiments  in  your  mind  very  different  from  those  I 
have  always  entertained  respecting  yourself,  since  I  witnessed  your  conduct 
in  this  country. 

"  I  can  assure  you  I  do  not  recollect  the  conversation  you  state  to  have 
passed  between  myself  and  Don  B.  de  Novoa  the  evening  I  saw  you  in  the 
junta  •  and  I  solemnly  declare  upon  my  honor  that  if  such  expressions  fell 
from  my  lips,  they  neither  applied  to  you  nor  to  any  friend  of  yours.  I 
could  not  oppose  or  calumniate  an  undertaking  which  every  motive  of 
interest  and  zeal  called  on  me  to  support;  nor  is  it  compatible  with  my 
character  to  hold  language  to  the  personal  prejudice  of  any  Englishman, 
knowing  it  to  be  false.  I  could  not  be  ignorant  of  your  talents,  which  are 
manifested  in  writings  well  received  by  the  world  and  were  evident  from 
your  conversation ;  our  mutual  friend  Mr.  Vaughan  bore  testimony  to  your 
fortune  and  rank  in  life ;  and  your  character  was  fully  proved  by  your  ex- 
ertions in  favor  of  Spain.  I  was  myself  embarked  in  the  same  cause ;  and 
having  been  commissioned  by  government  to  ascertain  the  wants  of  the 
Spaniards,  and  to  transmit  them  particulars  of  every  description  until  an 
envoy  should  be  appointed,  is  it  likely  that  I  should  counteract  the  zeal  of 
others  laboring  to  the  same  purpose  ? 

"  Though  I  never  made  a  merit  of  language  in  your  favor  at  the  time,  I 
feel  now  compelled  to  tell  you  that  I  repeatedly  desired  the  junta  of 
Corunna  to  hold  up  your  conduct  as  an  example  to  other  individuals  equally 
well  disposed.  The  distance  of  G-allicia  will  not  allow  me  to  send  you  the 
assurance  of  Novoa  that  such  is  the  case ;  but  I  transmit  the  copy  of  a 
letter  from  the  president  of  that  junta  who  was  present  on  the  day  you 
allude  to,  which  (notwithstanding  his  mistakes)  will  prove  the  truth  of  my 
assertions.  I  have  also  written  to  Vaughan  at  Laregovia,  who  I  doubt  not 
will  do  the  same.  If,  however,  their  letters  are  not  sufficient  to  show  that 
I  am  incapable  of  animosity  to  a  person  engaged  in  such  a  cause,  I  presume 
you  will  be  convinced  by  the  enclosed  answer  from  the  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs  to  a  note  I  transmitted  to  the  Central  Junta  detailing  the  services 
you  have  rendered  to  Spain.  Honorary  rank  in  their  army  can  be  no 
object  to  one  in  your  situation ;  and  though  it  is  the  only  mode  of  distinc- 
tion hitherto  conferred  on  any  Englishman  by  the  central  government,  I 
should  have  declined  their  offer,  had  not  the  consideration  that  you  may 
like  a  character  giving  you  a  right  to  repair  to  the  head-quarters  of  their 
armies  when  you  please  induced  me  rather  to  wait  for  your  own  determi- 
nation. 

"  When  Mr.  Vaughan  returns  to  Madrid  on  his  way  home,  I  shall  request 
him  to  deliver  to  you  the  original  letters  which  have  passed  on  the  subject ; 
and  if  they  are  satisfactory,  I  hope  I  may  look  forward  to  shake  hands 
with  you  as  a  well-wisher  of  that  country  wherever  we  meet. 

The  letter  of  the  president  of  the  junta  of  Corunna,  the  Count 
Gimondi,  proved  the  circumstances  as  I  have  stated  them,  and  was  a 
triumphant  exculpation  of  Stuart ;  the  letter  of  the  Spanish  minister 
(Cevallos)  conveyed  to  Landor,  with  handsome  expressions  of  esteem, 
the  honorary  rank  of  colonel  in  the  service  of  King  Ferdinand  ;  and  in 
the  Madrid  Gazette  of  a  few  days'  later  date  were  published  the 


142  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTHOXT.  fB,to5K-"1' 

thanks  of  the  Supreme  Junta  "  to  Mr.  Landor,"  not  alone  for  gallant 
personal  service,  but  for  his  gifts  of  twice  ten  thousand  reals  in  aid  of 
Spanish  independence  and  freedom. 

Not  a  great  many  years  later,  when  the  restored  Ferdinand  had 
restored  the  Jesuits,  Landor  sent  back  his  commission  in  a  letter  to 
that  same  Don  Pedro  Cevallos,  telling  him  that  he  had  done  his  best 
for  Spanish  liberty  against  Napoleon,  and  could  not  continue  even 
nominally  in  the  service  of  a  worse  perjurer  and  traitor. 

V.    LETTERS   TO   SOUTHEY   ON   SPAIN  AND   SPANIARDS. 

The  time  when  Landor  again  set  foot  in  England  was  that  of  the 
arrival  from  Portugal  of  the  news  of  the  convention  of  Cintra,  by 
which  the  entire  French  army,  at  the  expense  of  the  English  govern- 
ment, had  been  safely  conducted  back  to  France.  Sir  Hew  Dalrymple 
and  Sir  Harry  Burrard  were  its  authors ;  and  Sir  Arthur  Wcllesley 
had  not  resisted  it,  though  he  had  never  given  it  his  approval.  On 
all  sides  there  were  shouts  of  reproach.  "  But  in  spite  of  their 
allies,"  wrote  Landor  at  his  arrival  to  his  friend,  "  the  Spaniards  will 
be  victorious.  Can  we  never  be  disgraced  but  the  only  good  people 
in  the  universe  must  witness  it  1  Under  the  influence  of  what  demon 
is  it  that  we  are  forced  to  periodical  wrecks  of  honor  on  the  Spanish 
coast  1  Lord  Douglas  sees  me  fall  !  If  nothing  personal  had  driven 
me  home,  still  I  could  not  have  endured  the  questions  of  brave  and 
generous  Spaniards,  —  why  we  permitted  the  French  to  retain  their 
plunder,  why  we  placed  them  again  in  array  against  Spain,  why 
we  snatched  them  from  the  fury  of  the  Portuguese,  why  we  in- 
dulged  them  with  more  precious  fruits  than  they  could  have  gath- 
ered from  the  completest  victory  1 "  To  which,  after  expressing  his 
gladness  at  his  friend's  return,  and  referring  to  Stuart  as  its  sup- 
posed principal  cause  in  terms  more  offensive  than  Landors  own, 
Southey  thus  breaks  out :  "  I  am  sure  that  for  the  first  week  after  the 
news  arrived,  had  Sir  Hew  Dalrymple  appeared  in  any  part  of  Eng- 
land, he  would  have  been  torn  in  pieces.  My  cry  was,  Break  the  terms 
and  deliver  vp  the  wretch,  who  signed  them  to  the  French,  with  a  rope 
round  his  n<ck  !  This  is  what  Oliver  Cromwell  would  have  done. 
0  Christ! — this  England,  this  noble  country,  —  that  hands  so 
mighty  and  a  heart  so  sound  should  have  a  face  all  leprosy,  and  a 
head  lit  for  nothing  but  the  vermin  that  burrow  in  it ! "  That  was 
pretty  well,  but  was  not  all.  He  went  on  to  say  that  he  and  Words- 
worth had  been  trying  to  get  up  a  county  petition  against  the 
"  damned  convention  "  ;  but  "  Lord  Lonsdale  had  received  mum  as  the 
word  of  command  from  those  who  move  his  strings,  and  he  moves  the 
puppets  of  two  counties."  A  court  of  inquiry  to  be  sure  was  talked 
of.  he  says  with  scorn  ;  but  the  only  court  to  do  any  good  would  be 
one  that  should  send  "  the  hand  of  Sir  Hew  Dalrymple  to  be  nailed 
upon  the  pillory  at  Lisbon,  and  that  of  Sir  Arthur  Wellesley  for   a 


>ET.  30-  39.]  LETTERS    TO    SOUTHEY    ON    SPAIN".  143 

like  exposition  at  Madrid  "  (!)  And  then,  after  sketching  what  Eng- 
land with  better  advisers  might  have  done,  he  uses  expressions  that 
will  perhaps  help  to  make  more  lenient  some  judgments  of  Landor's 
modes  of  speech  to  be  considered  hereafter.  "  But  nothing  can  or 
will  go  on  well  in  this  country  till  the  besom  of  destruction  has  swept 
the  land  clean.  When  Joseph  gets  back  to  Madrid,  it  would  not  sur- 
prise me  if  Spain  were  to  produce  a  tyrannicide.  He  who  should  do 
the  deed  should  stand  next  to  Brutus  in  my  kalendar."  * 

Other  confidences  had  passed  between  the  friends  at  this  first  inter- 
change of  letters  on  Landor's  return,  which  it  will  be  only  just  to 
him  also  to  quote,  for  such  qualification  or  correction  of  remarks 
already  made  as  they  may  fairly  suggest.  They  are  themselves  a 
curious  comment  on  his  recent  flight  into  Spain.  "  I  believe,"  he 
said,  at  the  close  of  his  letter,  which  bears  the  postmark  of  Novem- 
ber, 1808,  "  I  should  have  been  a  good  and  happy  man  if  I  had  mar- 
ried. My  heart  is  tender.  I  am  fond  of  children  and  of  talking 
childishly.  I  hate  to  travel  even  two  stages.  Never  without  a  pang 
do  I  leave  the  house  where  I  was  born.  Even  a  short  stay  attaches 
me  to  any  place.  But,  Southey,  1  love  a  woman  who  will  never  love 
me,  and  am  beloved  by  one  who  never  ought.  I  do  not  say  I  shall 
never  be  happy.  I  shall  be  often  so,  if  I  live ;  but  I  shall  never  be  at 
rest.  My  evil  genius  drags  me  through  existence  against  the  current 
of  my  best  inclinations.  I  have  practised  self-denial,  because  it  gives 
me  a  momentary  and  false  idea  that  I  am  firm ;  and  I  have  done 
some  other  things  not  amiss,  in  compliance  with  my  heart ;  but  my 
most  virtuous  hopes  and  sentiments  have  uniformly  led  to  miserj^ 
and  I  never  have  been  happy  but  in  consequence  of  some  weakness  or 
some  vice."  To  which  Southey,  at  once  laying  bare  the  source  of 
these  self-accusings  and  self-exaltings,  wisely  as  well  as  neatly  replied 
that  what  he  learnt  from  Rousseau,  before  he  laid  Epictetus  to  his 
heart,  was  that  Julia  was  happy  with  a  husband  whom  she  had  not 
loved,  and  that  Wolmar  was  more  to  be  admired  than  St.  Preux.  He 
bade  no  man  beware  of  being  poor  as  he  grows  old,  but  he  would  have 
all  men  beware  of  solitariness  in  old  age.  His  advice  to  his  friend  there- 
fore was  that  he  should  find  out  a  woman  he  could  esteem,  and  love 
would  grow  more  surely  out  of  esteem  than  esteem  would  out  of  love. 

*  The  various  passages  and  expressions  here  quoted  are  omitted  from  the  letter  as 
printed  (Life,  III.  195  - 198).  Other  omissions  there  are  also,  of  which  one  having  a  per- 
sonal bearing  may  be  subjoined :  "  How  has  your  health  held  out?  Even  ordinary  trav- 
elling in  Spain  requires  a  patient  body  to  bear  up  against  broken  rest  and  heating  food. 
I  am  glad  this  beastly  blockhead  has  been  of  so  much  use  in  the  system  of  things  as  to 
force  you  home;  your  life  would  else  in  all  likelihood  have  been  sacrificed  inade- 
quately. It  was  likely  you  might  die  a  martyr;  but  there  would  be  such  an  unfitness 
in  your  falling  by  the  hand  of  a  fool  that  I  have  no  apprehensions  upon  that  score." 
By  the  date  of  his  next  letter  (January,  1809),  Landor  had  received  Stuart's  explana- 
tions. "  Mr.  Stuart  has  declared  that  he  never  could  apply  those  expressions  to  me 
which  I  resented,  and  offers  peace.  I  always  accept  this  offer."  It  was  a  pity  he  did 
not  regret  at  the  same  time  the  wrong  he  had  plainly  done.  "  The  Central  Junta,"  he 
adds,  "  has  given  me  an  honorary  commission  which  confers  the  privilege  of  being 
always  at  head-quarters.     I  had  taken  leave  of  the  generals  and  the  government." 


144  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^fc^-i"' 

Exjterto  crede  Roberto.     It  was  the  advice  of  one  who  by  such  means 
had  quieted  a  nature  little  less  tempestuous  than  his  own. 

But  by  the  time  this  discreet  advice  was  in  his  friend's  hands,  the 
self-blaming,  Belf-pjjying  mood  had  passed  away.  To  the  outburst  of 
grief  and  reproach  that  followed  Moore's  retreat  and  death  at  Corunna 
there  had  now  succeeded  bitter  storms  of  attack,  recrimination,  and 
controversy  ;  and  Landor  was  plunged  in  the  thick  of  them.  He 
replied  to  Southey  by  sending  in  a  printed  pamphlet  three  dashing 
letters  which  he  had  written  to  one  of  the  generals  (Riguelme),* 
whose  acquaintance  he  had  made  in  Spain.  The}-  were  not  such  as 
to  satisfy  his  friend,  who  remonstrated  with  him  for  not  speaking 
kindly  of  the  Portuguese,  and  thought  him  hard  upon  even  some  of 
the  English  agents  in  the  war.  Nay,  retorted  Landor,  the  occasion 
is  lost,  and  perhaps  never  will  return.  The  time  when  few  men 
would  have  done  what  many  will  not  do  now  was  passed  away,  as  he 
feared  irrecoverably.  Southey  did  not  essentially  differ  from  him,  but 
was  hampered  by  his  new  connections  in  the  Quarterly ;  and  not 
small  was  Lander's  surprise  to  hear  that  he  had  consented  to  defend 
Frere  in  the  next  review  against  the  friends  of  Sir  John  Moore. 
Frere,  Ellis,  and  Canning  had  been  Southey's  keenest  assailants  in  the 
Anti-Jacobin ;  but  their  alliance  against  the  Edinburgh  had  been 
swift  in  wiping  out  animosities,  as  any  one  might  have  foreseen, 
though  Southey  was  still  far  from  conscious  of  the  extent  of  the 
change  in  himself.  With  some  pain,  but  with  more  surprise,  he 
received  Landor' s  next  letter.     It  was  dated  July,  1809. 

"  T  am  curious  to  see  your  defence  of  Mr.  Frere.  It  will  require  the 
exertion  of  all  your  ingenuity.  He,  I  understand,  was  among  the  people 
who  wrote  against  you  in  the  Anti-Jacobin.  This  alone  could  render  the 
undertaking  pleasant  and  triumphant  But  alas !  his  defence  must  neces- 
sarily be  some  disparagement  to  one  of  the  best  among  soldiers  and  among 
men.  Had  he  addressed  to  me  the  insolent  and  presumptuous  language  he 
addressed  to  General  Moore,  I  would  have  taken  him  by  the  hand  on  his 
return,  and  have  granted  him  three  hours  for  business  and  devotion.  The 
messages  and  notes  he  sent  are  not  to  be  considered  as  from  an  ambas- 
sador: the  language  is  personal  and  beyond  his  office.  In  punishing  his 
offence,  therefore,  I  should  remember  an  ancient  custom, —  they  scourged 
before  they  executed;  although  I  might  here  be  sorry  for  so  much 
severity,  as  he  wrote  some  good  pentameters,  either  at  school  or  after." 

This  bitterness  was  hardly  in  excess  of  the  occasion  ;  and  there  are 
few  that  will  not  think  it  honorable  to  Landor,  who  look  back  to  the 
letters  of  Frere  used  then  to  discredit  Moore's  memory.  The  fame 
of  this  great  soldier  has  since  had  ample  vindication,  but  was  at  that 
time  in  imminent  peril  ;  and  the  instinct  which  brought  loyally  to  his 
aid  so  eager  a  friend  to  the  Spaniards  as  Landor  had  shown  himself 
was  :\  noble  and  true  one.     I  subjoin  the  rest  of  his  letter. 

•  "I  wish  for  rrmny  ron«nii=."  wrote  Lamlor  to  Southev,  in  May,  1S10,  "  that  General 
Riguelme  were  living,  among  the  rest,  because  after  a  few  days  acquaintance  he  frit 
a  sincere  friendship  for  me,  and  because  he  promised  to  give  me  such  information  as 
would  have  been  useful  to  your  history." 


^T-  30-39J  LETTERS   TO   SOUTHEY   ON   SPAIN.  145 

"  In  his  [Frere's]  correspondence  with  the  excellent  Moore,  he  runs  on 
with  a  total  assumption  and  utter  ignorance  of  facts,  —  with  all  the  tartness, 
petulance,  impudence,  and  self-sufficiency  of  an  only  son  among  his 
country  neighbors  in  his  first  vacation  from  the  university.  The  only  let- 
ters, official  or  private,  containing  any  correct  information  of  importance 
to  the  general,  was  addressed  to  him  by  the  Duque  del  Infantado.  It  was 
dated  December  13th.  Mr.  Frere  did  not  forward  it  until  December  22d. 
The  packet,  we  now  know,  was  unsealed  by  Sir  John  Moore's  executors. 
The  French  entered  Madrid  on  the  4th.  Yet  in  a  letter  of  the  14th  he 
says,  '  All  the  reports  from  Madrid  represent  the  force  of  the  French  as 
much  reduced.  No  official  report  has  yet  been  received  of  the  capitula- 
tion of  Madrid,  nor  is  it  by  any  means  certain  that  any  formal  stipulation 
existed.'  This  is  the  language  of  a  man  who  attempts  to  conceal  from  a 
wiser  than  himself  a  truth  which  he  ought  to  have  sounded  and  trans- 
mitted. By  what  means  could  he  imagine  was  the  force  of  the  French 
reduced  ?  Among  the  reports  from  Madrid,  was  not  a  single  one  of  them 
less  favorable  ?  Were  the  gates  open  to  falsehood  only  ?  Did  not  a 
breath  transpire  which  might  either  have  proceeded  from  or  have  tended 
towards  truth  ?  So,  an  English  ambassador  does  not  know  what  has 
happened  in  the  capital  of  a  country  to  which  he  was  delegated,  —  does  not 
know  even  an  event  so  striking  as  the  reduction  of  that  capital  itself  five 
days  before  the  intelligence  was  published  through  every  other  capital  in 
Europe,  ten  days  after  the  fact.  Such  vanity  and  incapacity  have  often 
existed  in  statesmen  and  ambassadors,  but  such  proofs  have  never  been  so 
palpable  nor  crowded  into  so  confined  a  space.  If  the  untimely  death  of 
a  character  so  illustrious  and  so  nearly  perfect  as  Moore  would  allow  us  to 
laugh  at  anything  that  reminds  us  of  him,  it  would  be  laughable  enough  to 
look  at  those  subscriptions  at  the  bottom  of  Mr.  Frere's  letters.  The  for- 
mularies of  diplomacy  neither  force  nor  authorize  an  ambassador  to  say, 
'  I  am  with  great  truth  and  respect,  sir,  your  most  obedient  humble  ser- 
vant.' But  when  a  fellow  has  written  not  only  without  truth  but  with 
absolute  rudeness, —  when  he  has  told  another  he  would  disgrace  the 
British  arms  and  bring  ruin  on  the  country  he  was  sent  to  succor  and  sup- 
port, —  how  can  he  pretend  to  assert  his  truth  in  offering  his  respect  ?  If 
the  ludicrous  is  founded  on  the  inconsistent,  here  surely  is  its  very  pin- 
nacle. It  reminds  me  in  some  novel  I  have  r^ad  —  I  believe  in  Hugh 
Trevor  —  of  a  curious  flourish  at  the  end  of  .every  letter  from  a  knavish 
old  steward  to  a  foolish  old  master.  I  thought,  in  reading  the  book,  it  was 
a  singular  stroke  of  character  and  a  happy  one." 

Southey  still  had  a  word  to  say  for  Frere,  thinking  the  ambassador 
might  have  shown  more  spirit  than  the  general ;  but  he  left  the 
writing  of  the  defence  to  Ellis.  The  tone  of  his  letter  was  also  such 
as  to  propitiate  Landor,  to  whom  he  announced  his  intention  of 
writing  such  a  history  of  1808  as  would  give  him  real  pleasure.  It 
was  a  task  in  which  Scott  had  engaged  him  for  an  Edinburgh  Annual 
Register,  to  be  started  by  the  Ballantynes.  Landor  would  like  the 
bitterness  and  "  undisscmbled  contempt  "  which  he  should  there  find 
bestowed  upon  all  parties  alike.  For  indeed  he  found  himself  in 
agreement  with  his  friend  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  war  had  been 
mismanaged  ;  and  in  despising  the  "  miserable  ins  and  outs  "  among 
the  same  sets  of  feeble  politicians,  who  had  all  been  tried  and  found 

10 


146  BATH,  SPAIN,  AND  LLANTHONT.  **?£*- 1"' 

wanting.  Had  ever  a  game  been  played  so  wretchedly  that  might  so 
easily  have  been  won  ?  Had  he  seen  Wordsworth's  pamphlet  on  the 
Cintra  convention  1  In  spite  of  a  difficult  style,  he  would  admire  its 
true  eloquence  and  true  philosophy.  Landor's  reply  is  highly  char- 
acteristic.    It  is  dated  August,  1809. 

''  This  work  of  "Wordsworth  is  vigorous  and  just.  My  opinion  of  the 
Spaniards  is  corrected  by  the  experience  of  Moore.  I  believe  no  breed  of 
people  to  be  so  good ;  but  they  have  nothing  to  fight  for,  and  nobody  to 
lead  them  if  they  had.  The  heads  of  nations  must  often  be  stirred,  and 
occasionally  be  removed.  The  water  that  one  year  is  covered  with  lilies 
and  lotuses,  in  another  may  contract  a  film,  and  in  a  few  after  may  have 
nothing  but  weeds  above  and  mud  below.  I  like  idle  people,  —  they  are 
not  rapacious.  It  is  from  rapacity  most  evils  originate.  At  all  events  it 
is  not  from  working  in  the  field  of  battle  that  the  Spaniard  is  to  procure 
more  comforts ;  and  I  cannot  blame  him  if  he  sees  on  his  farm  a  swarm  of 
bees  with  more  pleasure  than  a  legion  of  locusts.  All  old  governments 
are  bad,  and  my  breech  shall  never  go  to  the  ground  by  resting  on  one. 
We  are  a  great  people,  because  our  constitution  by  eternal  changes  is 
exempt  from  any  violent.  It  has  always  been  pervious  both  to  light  and 
winds.  Else,  like  those  of  France  and  Germany,  it  would  have  been  up- 
rooted at  the  first  tempest.     Adieu.     Vive  valeque." 

From  Clifton,  in  the  November  of  the  same  year,  he  wrote  still  in 
much  the  same  tone,  with  a  shrewd  perception  of  all  the  weakness  of 
the  Spaniards  which  his  friend  never  reached,  and  with  a  resolute  ap- 
preciation of  the  utter  worthlessness  of  their  leaders  which  it  took 
many  more  years  to  make  apparent  to  everybody. 

"  May  the  spirit  of  prophecy  never  forsake  you,  and  never  be  less  propi- 
tious to  the  cause  of  freedom!  The  Spaniards,  it  appears,  have  gained 
another  victory ;  but  as  they  have  no  prospect  of  a  better  government,  I 
grieve  perhaps  more  at  their  successes  than  I  should  at  their  defeat.  That 
such  exertions  should  be  vain  and  fruitless,  that  the  patriotic  should  pour 
out  their  blood  for  the  traitorous,  that  a  Bonaparte  or  a  Bourbon,  it  matters 
not  which,  should  erect  his  throne  over  the  great  charnel-house  of  Spain, 
is  most  lamentable  and  most  sure.  Two  events  leave  me  without  the 
power  of  doubting  that  the  prevailing  party  in  the  Junta  is  devoted  to  the 
French.  First,  their  hesitation  and  slowness  to  convoke  the  Cortes;  and 
secondly,  the  extreme  absurdity  which  they  combined  with  it  of  inviting 
all  Spaniards  to  deliver  their  sentiments  on  what  alterations  and  improve- 
ments it  would  be  requisite  to  make  in  the  government  and  constitution, 
To  agitate  the  minds  both  of  the  wise  and  of  the  ignorant,  to  make  every 
man's  vanity  turn  out  against  his  neighbor's,  to  bid  people  choose  their  rep- 
resentatives  yet  exercise  their  judgment  by  giving  their  votes  individually, 
could  not  enter  any  sound  head  for  any  good  purpose.  The  scheme  was 
formed  in  the  Tuileries,  and  is  worthy  of  its  author.  See  what  a  parcel  of 
rascals  and  boobies  have  been  appointed  by  the  Junta  to  conduct  their 
armies.  Masaredo,  a  most  excellent  man  and  a  most  experienced  officer, 
joined  the  French  through  the  love  of  freedom  and  from  the  desire  of 
forming  for  his  country  an  efficient  and  linn  government.  Weakness  and 
abuse  he  knew  are  often  long-lived,  though  they  come  to  a  violent  end; 
and  he  thought  it  less  disgraceful,  as  perhaps  some  others  do,  to  writhe  for 
n  moment  under  superior  strength  than  to  slumber  out  all  his  days  in  a  sty 
of  his  own  littering." 


-ST.  30-39.]  LETTERS    TO    SOUTHEY    ON    SPAIN.  147 

Nor  less  remarkable  is  the  remainder  of  the  letter,  where  Landor's 
discontent  with  the  government  at  home  which  his  friend  was  still 
outwardly  condescending  to  support  finds  animated  expression.  He 
had  become  in  June  of  this  year,  at  Southey's  request,  a  subscriber 
to  Coleridge's  Friend,  in  the  twelfth  number  of  which,  published  in 
the  month  when  his  letter  was  written,  appeared  a  paper  on  vulgar 
errors  respecting,  taxes  and  taxation,  wherein  Coleridge  contended 
that  though  taxes  might  often  be  injurious  to  a  country,  it  could 
never  be  from  their  amount  merely,  but  only  from  the  time  or  mode 
in  which  they  were  raised  ;  and,  objecting  to  the  analogy  set  up  be- 
tween a  nation  indebted  to  itself  and  a  tradesman  under  obligation  to 
his  creditors,  had  said  a  much  fairer  instance  would  be  that  of  a  hus- 
band and  wife  playing  cards  at  the  same  table  against  each  other, 
where  what  the  one  lost  the  other  gained.  Landor  did  not  find  this 
illustration  quite  satisfactory. 

"  Woe  betide  those  governors  whose  paralyzed  hand  holds  out  unwit- 
tingly this  problem  to  their  countrymen,  —  whether  it  is  better  to  sink 
under  the  ascendancy  of  exalted  genius  from  without,  however  malignant 
be  its  influence,  or  to  be  so  supine  and  idle  as  never  to  lift  up  their  heads 
and  use  their  arms  against  the  scorpions  that  sting  them  or  tke  spiders  and 
cockroaches  that  consume  them  from  their  own  window-shutters !  For 
my  own  part  I  would  buy  a  monkey,  I  would  even  bring  one  over,  to 
devour  these  mischievous  vile  household  insects.  When  rulers  are  so  feeble 
or  corrupt  as  to  make  men  indifferent  to  their  country,  which  never  was 
done  to  so  blind  and  precipitous  a  height  as  now,  it  is  idle  to  talk  of  taxa- 
tion. But  I  cannot  yet  consider  it  so  tranquilly  as  your  friend  Cole- 
ridge. If  my  wife  wins  my  money  at  cards,  and  she  is  really  a  prudent 
wife,  I  sustain  no  detriment.  But  if  she  squanders  it  among  unworthy 
favorites,  and  bribes  her  servants  with  it  to  pull  her  neighbor's  cap,  I  will 
take  care  in  future  to  play  less  often  and  for  a  smaller  stake.  If  taxes  are 
at  no  time  injuries  '  from  their  amount  merely,'  it  is  because,  when  they  are 
exorbitant,  the  mode  of  raising  them  must  be  inquisitorial  or  violent.  May 
we  not  complain  of  a  thing  oppressive  in  itself,  because  there  is  also  another 
thing  which  adds  to  the  oppression  ?  Certainly  no  lady  with  £  150  jointure 
and  six  or  eight  children,  who  pays  such  taxes  as  she  must  at  present  do, 
could  by  any  human  ingenuity  in  imposing  or  collecting  them  be  made 
insensible  of  their  pressure.  I  remember  the  logical  swindling  of  your 
neighbor,  Bishop  Watson,  and  the  hot  but  honest  reply  of  poor  Gilbert 
Wakefield.  I  remember  too  the  crucem  and  the  diadema.  I  never  liked 
either  of  these  writers.  The  one  would  never  have  made  me  a  critic,  nor 
the  other  a  Christian,  nor  have  induced  me  to  think  him  so.  As  I  never 
drink  wine,  I  am  forced  every  now  and  then  to  write  half  a  dozen  verses, 
that  I  may  forget  what  is  passing  round  about." 

But  he  continued  to  write  on  the  things  also  he  most  wanted  to 
forget ;  and  these  notices  of  his  letters  about  Spain  should  not  close 
without  mention  of  his  "  Hints  to  a  Junta,"  which,  as  he  told 
South ey  in  March,  1810,  he  had  written  fiercely  but  improvidently. 
"  Many  of  the  things  were  useful  at  the  moment.  It  is  gone  by  :  in- 
deed I  question  if  any  bookseller  woidd  print  the  thing  if  I  gave  it 


148  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^isSf- 1"' 

him  ;  and  I  never  will  ask  for  anything  except  for  heaven  and  a  wife." 
Southey's  next  letter  was  very  decisive  of  the  influence  of  Landor 
over  him.  The  conclusion  had  been  forced  upon  him,  he  said,  that 
Bourbon  was  as  bad  as  Bonaparte  ;  "  Hints  to  a  Junta  "  had  not  been 
thrown  away  on  him ;  and  now  more  than  ever  he  wished  that,  at  the 
outset  of  the  French  invasion,  Spaniards  and  Portuguese  had  sung 
Te  Deum  for  the  loss  of  their  respective  dynasties  and  united  in  a 
federal  republic.  It  was  the  form  of  government  peculiarly  adapted  to 
the  Peninsula,  because  of  the  different  fueros  of  the  different  king- 
doms ;  and  other  good  must  have  come  of  it.  "  It  might,  perhaps, 
have  prevented  this  country  from  assisting  them,  but  they  would  have 
been  better  without  its  assistance  ;  and  it  would  not  impossibly  have 
occasioned  a  resurrection  of  the  Jacobins  in  France,"  —  in  other 
words,  have  destroyed  Napoleon.  That  was  the  temper  in  which,  so 
late  as  1810,  Southey  was  preparing  his  second  batch  of  history  for 
the  Edinburgh  Register ;  and  Landor  should  see  that  it  woidd  be 
composed  "with  a  spirit  that  will  surprise  most  people  in  these  base 
times." 

And  then  a  misgiving  crosses  him  as  he  writes  these  words  whether 
the  eagerness  with  which  he  was  now  turning  to  that  kind  of  com- 
position might  not  imply  that  histoiy,  not  poetry,  was  his  real  func- 
tion after  all,  at  any  rate  for  the  days  that  remained  to  him  ;  only 
(he  adds  with  a  pleasant  touch  of  character)  a  proof-sheet  of  Kehama 
is  apt  to  disperse  the  cloud.  With  this  letter  there  went  to  Landor 
the  commencement  of  his  History  of  Brazil. 

His  friend  replied  and  reassured  him.  No  poet  worth  the  name 
but  must  at  times  give  way  to  thinking  that  there  are  poets  enough 
in  the  world  without  him  ;  but  let  him  be  satisfied  that  a  greater 
confidence  would  not  imply  greater  power.  For  himself  he  lamented 
every  hour  that  Southey  deducted  from  poetry.  Those  who  might 
read  Kehama  would  judge  whether  its  writer's  present  love  for  histoiy 
could  arise  from  anything  like  "  incipient  decay  "  in  the  powers  of 
imagination.  He  knew  not  what  poem  was  so  vivid  and  so  varied. 
"Whereas  he  could  not  but  doubt  whether  the  world  in  general  cared 
about  historical  facts  in  the  past  affairs  of  Brazil ;  nay,  whether  even 
such  facts  of  the  day  passing  before  them  excited  any  interest  what- 
ever.    Very  characteristically  he  proceeds  :  — 

"  It  is,  I  begin  to  think,  for  the  good  of  mankind  that  for  ten  or  twenty 
years  it  should  first  sink,  and  afterwards  smart,  under  a  severe  and  oppres- 
sive tyranny.  The  instrument  wants  a  good  deal  of  playing  upon.  This 
will  prove  either  that  it  is  good  for  nothing  or  that  it  will  come  into  tune 
by  degrees.  If  I  had  five  thousand  pounds  to  employ  people  to  collect 
papers,  1  would  also  write  a  history  of  the  present  reign.  An  insuperable 
idleness,  and  a  disgust  and  satiety  of  everything,  will,  I  am  afraid,  over- 
come all  my  faculties." 

Nevertheless,  in  the  same  letter  of  April,  1810,  he  tells  his  friend  that 
he  has  just  been  writing  a  letter  to  the  popular  hero  Burdett,  a  brave 


yET.  30-39.]       *    ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK.  149 

and  good  one ;  five  long  hours'  work,  all  of  which  he  shall  have  to 
recopy.  "  Ah  me  !  this  reminds  me  that  you  could  not  make  out 
my  Latin  verses  !  I  wonder  whether  I  shall  be  able  myself  to  read 
my  letter  to  Burdett  when  I  see  it  to-morrow  morning."  Perhaps  he 
was  not,  for  all  trace  of  that  production  has  vanished.  But  the 
mention  of  the  Latin  verses  may  take  us  to  other  parts  of  the  cor- 
respondence of  the  friends,  in  which  only  matters  of  literature  were 
discussed  between  them. 

VI.    ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK. 

The  portions  of  letters  contained  in  this  section  will  relate  chiefly 
to  the  poems  which,  resumed  at  Landor's  instigation,  Southey  carried 
on  to  their  completion  steadily  amid  his  other  labors  ;  and  they  shall 
be  such  as  I  hope  may  still  be  interesting,  or  in  some  way  character- 
istic of  either  friend.  There  will  at  least  be  no  repetition,  in  any  of 
the  extracts  given,  of  what  has  before  appeared  in  print. 

FROM    BATH,    llTH   JANUARY,    1809. 

"  Since  my  return  from  Spain  I  have  hardly  read  anything  else  than  the 
Cid  and  Kehama.  It  will  be  long  before  we  have  such  warriors  as  the  one, 
and  such  poems  as  the  other.  I  never  felt  the  same  anxiety  to  see  the 
whole  of  any  work  as  of  this. 

'  Twice  hast  thou  set  thy  footstep : 
Where  shall  the  third  be  planted  ?  ' 

If  the  next  parcel  is  equal  to  the  two  former,  the  riches  of  the  East 
will  vanish  from  the  grasp  of  future  poets.  I  am  not  destined  to  be  a 
great  reader.  Many  hours  have  I  passed,  at  different  times,  over  these 
hues : — 

'  There  Kailyal  stands 

And  sees  the  billows  rise  above  his  head. 

She  at  the  startling  sight  forgot  the  power 
The  Curse  had  given  him,  and  held  forth  her  hands 

Imploringly,  —  her  voice  was  on  the  wind, 

And  the  deaf  ocean  o'er  Ladurlad  closed.' 

"  There  are  some  things  in  our  language  which  want  fixing  by  some 
convention  among  the  higher  powers.  Shakespeare  and  Milton  write  to- 
ward^ and  toward.  But  improperly :  for  we  say  invariably  backward, 
forward,  and  we  ought  also  to  say  toward.  I  have  in  general  given  more 
attention  to  language  than  to  anything  else ;  but  I  shall  always  think  my- 
self wrong  in  '  Bent  towards  them,'  &c,  at  the  end  of  a  book  in  Gebir. 
We  possess  a  high  advantage  in  the  double  termination  of  the  third  per- 
son.singular,  — es  and  eth.  The  former  should  never  precede  an  s,  nor  the 
latter  a  th.  To  this  rule  I  would  adhere  both  in  poetry  and  prose.  I  hear 
no  more  of  Mr.  Coleridge's  new  project."  [The  Friend:  of  which  the 
first  number  did  not  appear  till  June.]  "  Indeed  I  converse  with  no  liter- 
ary men  here,  nor  do  I  know  for  certain  whether  here  are  any." 

AN    OBJECTION,    FEBRUARY,   1809. 

"When  I  can  read  what  you  send  of  Kehama  more  calmly  and  dispas- 
sionately, which  I  would  hardly  wish  to  do,  I  will  search  it  through  and 


150  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  '"fe^-.1"' 

through  to  discover  the  slightest  of  its  imperfections.  None  of  your 
enemies  shall  be  more  zealous  in  the  labor.  One  hue  not  only  displeased 
but  disturbed  me, 

4  Eye  hath  not  seen  nor  painter's  hand  portrayed.' 

I  have  an  insuperable  hatred  to  such  words  as  '  painter  '  and  ■  portray  '  in 
grave  heroic  poetry  :  add  to  which,  if  '  eye  hath  not  seen,'  it  is  superfluous 
to  say  the  rest.  The  first  words  are  serious  and  solemn,  —  the  last  put  one 
in  mind  of  the  Exhibition  and  the  French.  Take  care  how  you  '  o'erlay 
this  poem  with  ornament ! '  It  is  now  suis  pollens  opibus,  as  Lucretius 
says  of  the  Gods.  I  know  not  whether  we  shall  find  any  one  in  any 
language  so  full  of  originality  an*  fancy.  You  will  find  fewer  things  to 
embellish  than  to  correct,  and  very  few  of  these.  Remember  that  I  am  to 
have  something  to  console  me  for  not  being  able  to  write  it.  I  am  to  be 
the  typographer." 

■southey's  reply. 

"  Your  draft  was  put  in  circulation.  Kehama  would  never  have  been 
resumed  had  it  not  been  for  you.  It  had  lain  untouched  for  five  years, 
and  so  it  would  have  remained.  You  stung  me  to  the  resolution  of  going 
on ;  and  I  am  not  sure  whether  the  main  pleasure  which  1  have  felt  in 
proceeding  has  not  been  the  anticipation  of  addressing  it  to  you  and  say- 
ing so.  It  is  announced  through  the  customary  channel  of  magazines  as  in 
considerable  forwardness.  I  am  going  to  Edinburgh  in  May,  and  for  a 
week  or  ten  days  shall  be  "Walter  Scott's  guest.  Kehama  will  then  (God 
willing)  be  completed:  and  I  think  Scott  will  enable  me  to  ascertain  in 
what  manner  it  may  most  advantageously  be  published.  ...  It  has  however 
cost  me  no  expense  of  time.  I  have  fairly  won  it,  as  Lincolnshire  specu- 
lators win  estates  from  the  sea ;  —  my  daily  work  has  been  done  just  as  if 
no  such  composition  was  in  my  thoughts,  without  the  slightest  interrup- 
tion. If  therefore  nothing  be  got  by  its  sale,  it  has  not  made  me  the 
poorer.  I  am  so  much  the  happier  for  having  written  it,  so  much  the 
richer  as  a  poet,  and  in  fact  have  received  from  you  half  as  much  as  the 
profits  of  an  edition  would  be  when  shared  by  a  publisher.  Its  success  (I 
speak  solely  of  its  market  success)  will  only  thus  far  influence  me,  that  a 
good  sale  would  make  me  afford  more  time  for  other  such  poems,  which  I 
should  then  publish  as  fast  as  they  were  written.  Its  still-birth  (which  I 
entirely  expect)  will  merely  make  me  write  others  as  this  is  written,  in 
the  early  morning  hours ;  which  I  shall  continue  to  do  as  long  as  the  un- 
abated power  is  in  me,  and  leave  them  behind  as  post-obits  to  my  children, 
in  perfect  confidence  that  such  manuscripts  will  prove  good  and  secure 
property  hereafter.  At  Edinburgh  I  shall  feel  my  way  about  the  publica- 
tion. When  the  obnoxious  line  was  written,  I  thought  of  better  painters 
than  the  exhibitioners,  —  of  those  whose  creative  powers  entitle  them  to 
be  mentioned  anywhere.  It  is  however  an  ugly  word,  because  it  always 
reminds  one  of  the  house-painter.  I  set  a  black  mark  upon  the  line. 
Your  remarks  shall  he  well  weighed,  and  every  passage  which  I  cannot 
entirely  justify  shall  lie  altered.  Do  not  however  be  at  the  trouble  of 
criticising  the  first  portion  which  you  received,  for  that  has  been  greatly 
altered  since  by  rhyming  most  of  those  parts  which  were  rhymeless,  —  a 
task  which  is  yet  to  be  completed." 

Landor's  former  objection  to  the  rhymeless  metres  had  led  to  this 
concession  from  his  friend  ;  and  speaking  of  it  in  his  next  letter  he 


JET.  30-39.]  ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK.  151 

says  that,  apart  from  his  admiration  of  the  higher  beauties  of  the 
poem,  the  facility  displayed  in  the  new  rhymes  had  taken  him  greatly 
by  surprise.  "  It  never  was  equalled.  New  rhymes  in  general  seem 
strange  ;  and  nine  people  out  of  ten,  scholars  I  mean  and  literatists, 
imagine  them  forced,  not  chosen.  No  weakness  or  absurdity  is  half 
so  much  scoffed  and  scouted  as  a  new  or  unusual  rhyme."  From  the 
same  letter  we  learn  that  he  had  been  lately 

READING    EURIPIDES. 

"  I  believe  I  shall  remain  at  Bath  a  good  while  longer.  I  am  reading 
what  I  had  not  read  before  of  Euripides.  Between  ourselves,  in  most  of 
his  tragedies  there  is  more  preachment  than  poetry.  I  was  surprised  and 
mortified  to  find  it  so.  How,  in  the  name  of  Heaven,  could  the  Athenians 
endure  on  the  stage,  so  deplorably  mutilated  and  metamorphosed,  those 
heroes  whom  they  had  followed  in  the  vigor  of  unsophisticated  life  through 
the  wide  and  ever-varying  regions  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssea  f  A  hero, 
penned  up  and  purgatorized  in  this  middle  state,  is  fitted  to  become  a 
Monseigneur  bien  poudre  among  the  mesdames  and  waiting-maids,  and 
patch-boxes  of  Racine.  I  have  been  reading  also  Twining's  translation, 
notes,  &c.  of  Aristotle's  Poetics.  I  attempted  the  original  once.  It  ap- 
peared to  me,  what  I  suppose  it  is  not,  tautological  though  concise.  I 
found  it  too  hard  for  me.  At  that  time  my  teeth  were  better,  though  my 
digestion  not  so  good.  I  could  reach  the  construction,  but  I  could  not 
analyze  the  parts." 

Very  characteristic  was  Southey's  next  letter,  in  which  he  described 
Kehama  as  approaching  completion  so  rapidly  that  already  his  thoughts 
were  busy  with  what  its  successor  should  be.  Two  more  sections 
only,  he  said,  would  finish  what  he  had  in  hand ;  and  he  was  eager 
for  Landor's  advice  as  to  the  metre  most  advisable  for  his  next  poem, 
which  should  certainly  be  on  the  founder  of  the  Spanish  monarchy, 
Pelayo.  He  could  not  but  feel  the  force  of  views  formerly  expressed 
to  him  by  Landor,  that  what  in  itself  was  excellent  would  be  best  in 
blank  verse,  but  that  everything  below  excellence  would  borrow  some- 
thing from  rhyme.  As  to  the  publication  of  Kehama,  Scott  had  failed 
as  yet  to  make  the  hoped-for  arrangement. 

"  His  bookseller,  Ballantyne,  was  here  lately,  and  his  advice  to  me  was 
to  sell  the  copyright  of  whatever  I  wrote,  because,  he  said,  booksellers  re- 
paid themselves  by  selling  off  shares  of  the  copyright.  More  persons  were 
thus  interested  in  the  success  of  the  book,  and  consequently  greater  efforts 
were  made  to  sell  it.  This  may  be  true,  but  it  is  a  truth  which  is  not  appli- 
cable to  my  case  ;  for  it  is  utterly  impossible  that  this  poem  should  become 
popular  now.  The  copyright,  therefore,  is  worth  little  or  nothing  at  pres- 
ent ;  and  yet  if  it  be  as  good  as  I  believe  it  to  be,  there  will  come  a  time 
when  it  will  have  its  reward.  The  better  way,  I  think,  will  be  to  print  it 
as  a  pocket  volume,  and  let  it  take  its  chance.  Two  hundred  pages  will 
hold  the  poem,  and  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  more  the  notes." 

A  little  delay  is  still  interposed ;  improvements  have  to  be  made 
in  the  metre,  and  lines  to  be  altered  or  added  here  and  there ;  but  at 


152  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTIIONT.  ^s™'"' 

last,  on  the  2Gth  November,  1809,  he  is  able  to  announce  to  Landor 
that  on  the  preceding  day  he  had  finished  Kehama.  He  did  not 
expect  that  it  would  meet  with  more  admirers  than  Gebir,  but  should 
be  thoroughly  satisfied  if  they  whom  it  did  meet  with  admired  it  as 
much.  His  work  being  done,  he  is  full  of  fears  for  it.  There  was 
too  little  beauty,  he  doubted,  and  too  little  human  interest  ;  and 
perhaps  all  the  feeling  it  could  be  expected  to  awaken  would  be  won- 
der at  the  strangeness  of  the  tale  and  the  monstrosity  of  the  fiction. 
He  can  only  comfort  himself  by  looking  forward,  and  resolving  that 
Pelayo  shall  be  begun  as  soon  as  his  plan  is  sufficiently  matured. 
Four  days  later  Landor  thus  replied  :  — 

u  Hardly  could  I  assure  myself  that  I  was  speaking  with  sincerity  if  I 
congratulated  you  on  the  completion  of  Kehama,  on  abandoning  those 
scenes  and  images  which  must  have  given  such  exquisite  and  enchanting 
pleasure  as  they  were  rising  and  passing  in  your  mind.  You  are  right  in 
beginning  another  poem  while  the  heart  is  warm  with  poetry.  Pelayo  and 
Richard  the  First  are  the  two  finest  subjects  in  the  world.  I  thought  of 
Sertorius  once;  but,  I  know  not  how,  it  appears  to  me  that  nothing 
romantic  or  poetical  can  coexist  with  what  is  Roman.  These  two  unfort- 
unate words  stand  up,  backing  one  another  against  me  and  accusing  me 
of  a  quibble.  I  meant  simply  to  say  that  the  Romans  were  a  blunt  flat 
people,  and  that  even  a  Roman  name  breaks  the  spell  of  poetry  on  plain 
historical  ground.  Spain  is  even  yet  a  sort  of  faeryland,  and  we  are  yet 
not  too  familiar  with  the  faces  of  Goths  and  Moors.  You  possess  here 
peculiar  advantages.  No  other  man  in  Europe  has  had  so  minute  an 
insight  of  their  history  and  character. 

"  I  perceive  in  many  of  the  verses  in  Kehama  a  particular  ring  of  rhyme, 
—  a  recurrence  not  marking,  nor  waiting  for,  the  termination :  such  as  we 
find  in  Italian :  — 

'  Ma  sento  che  adesso 
V  istesso  nou  6.' 

Nor  indeed  is  it  always  in  the  same  place.  In  some  instances  it  has  not 
gratified  my  ear,  coming  upon  it  when  it  was  unprepared.  If  the  poem 
could  be  translated  into  any  Oriental  language,  what  a  happy  effect  it  might 
produce  !  It  would  show  them  that  puny  conceits  and  weak  extravagance 
are  no  requisites  in  poetry,  and  that  wildness  of  imagery  is  not  inconsis- 
tent with  truth  and  simplicity  of  expression.  I  have  read  everything  Ori- 
ental I  could  lay  my  hands  on,  and  everything  good  may  be  comprised  in 
thirty  or  forty  lines.  There  is  a  prodigious  deal  of  puckering  and  flouncing 
ami  spangles,  but  nothing  fresh,  nothing  graceful,  nothing  standing  straight 
upwards  or  moving  straight  forwards  on  its  feet.  I  would  rather  have 
Written  the  worsl  pap.  in  the  0<I//ssea  than  all  the  stuff  Sir  William  Jones 
makes  such  a  pother  and  palaver  on;  yet  what  volumes  would  it  fill!  what 
libraries  would  it  suffocate!  God  forbid  that  I  should  ever  be  drowned  in 
any  of  these  butts  of  malmsey!  It  is  better  to  describe  a  girl  getting  a 
tumble  over  a  skipping-rope  made  of  a  wreath  of  flowers." 

The  rest  of  the  letter,  dated  30th  November,  1809,  was  filled  with 
a  Latin  idyl.  Like  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  Landor  had  been  reading 
at  the  end  of  a  dictionary,  not  like  him  an  account  of  Hector,  but  the 
story  of  Callirhoe,  who  spurned  the  love  of  Coresus,  priest  of  Bacchus, 


.ffiT.  30-39.]  ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK.  L53 

whereupon  he  swore  and  prayed  to  his  god,  who  visited  her  people 
with  pestilence.  In  their  affliction  they  betook  themselves  to  Do- 
dona,  when  Jupiter  announced  that  only  the  death  of  Callirhoe  or 
some  one  in  her  stead  could  remove  the  curse,  and  Coresus  was 
appointed  to  fulfil  the  command  of  Jove.  But  when  Callirhoe  stood 
before  him  at  the  altar,  his  revenge  paled  before  his  love  and  pity, 
and  he  drove  the  knife  into  his  own  bosom.  Landor  had  written  this 
pretty  and  pathetic  story  in  excellent  Latin  hexameters,*  close  and 
dramatic,  and  now  sent  the  first  sixty-eight  to  his  friend,  sending  the 
remaining  sixty-two  in  a  second  letter  after  some  weeks'  interval, 
during  which  Southey  had  been  silent. 

"  I  have  been  happy  in  the  idea  that  you  are  employed  in  something  in- 
teresting to  yourself  and  the  age  and  other  selves  and  other  ages,  else  I 
should  have  complained  a  little  that  I  have  not  heard  from  you  so  very 
long  a  time.  I  remember  that  I  transcribed  some  Latin  verses  in  my  last, 
but  cannot  find  where  I  left  off  I  Whether  these  are  good  or  bad  or  indif- 
ferent, they  are  better  than  anything  I  can  write  on  the  spur  of  the  occa- 
sion, for  these  are  spurs  that  always  catch  my  great-coat  in  getting  on. 
When  I  have  done  writing  I  shall  find  a  thousand  tilings  I  ought  to  have 
written  about." 

Southey,  alas  !  had  a  good  reason  for  not  acknowledging  the  Latin 
idyl :  he  had  not  been  able  to  decipher  it,  and  very  frankly  doth  con- 
fess so  much.  He  had  also  been  hoping  to  send  Landor  the  first 
sections  of  Pelai/o.     His  letter  is  dated  March,  1810. 

"  It  is  very  long  since  you  have  heard  from  me,  and  for  a  twofold  rea- 
son :  first,  because  your  verses  tantalized  me  as  a  barrel  of  oysters  would 
have  done  if  set  before  me  without  a  knife.  I  could  not  read  them.  There 
is  little  difficulty  in  understanding  the  worst  possible  handwriting  in  our 
own  every-day  language ;  though  I  once  saw  two  parcels  which  had  trav- 
elled all  over  England,  and  at  last  found  their  way  by  the  lucky  guess  of 
some  post-office  clerk,  who  wrote  on  them  '  Try  Durham ' :  they  had  tried 
Dublin  previously.  But  when  a  foresight  of  the  meaning  is  necessary  to 
make  out  the  words,  anything  not  easy  in  itself  becomes  very  difficult.  If 
I  could  have  read  these  verses,  I  should  have  understood  them ;  because  I 
did  not  understand,  I  could  not  read  them.  The  case,  however,  is  not  des- 
perate :  in  some  season  of  leisure  I  purpose  transcribing  them,  and  shall 
thus  make  them  out  step  by  step. 

"  The  other  reason  was  that  I  might  send  you  the  first  section  of  Pelayo, 
and  this  I  have  been  prevented  from  completing  because  my  hours  for 
poetry  have  been  partly  employed  in  correcting  Kehama,  partly  diverted  to 
the  pressing  business  of  the  Edinburgh  Register.  Kehama  is  half  printed, 
and  the  remaining  half  still  requires  correction.  I  want  to  get  rid  of  the 
snake  in  the  water-chambers,  which  is  neither  well  conceived  nor  well 
written ;  and  something  is  wanting  at  the  conclusion.  It  will  probably  be 
published  in  June.  I  have  made  my  usual  bargain  with  the  booksellers,  — 
that  is  to  say,  no  bargain  at  all :  they  print,  and  I  share  the  profits.  Scott 
recommended  strongly  the  quarto  form,  and  quarto  accordingly  it  is ;  my 
own  opinion  being  that  in  whatever  form  it  appeared  a  sale  to  clear  the 
expense  was  certain,  and  anything  beyond  that  exceedingly  improbable." 

*  It  is  the  seventh  of  the  IcLvlla  Heroica  in  Poemata  et  Inscriptiones  (1847),  and  a 
translation  by  himself  is  in  the  Hdknics  (1859),  pp.  57  -  63. 


154  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  '^"ii"1' 

Pelai/o,  which  took  afterwards  the  name  of  Roderick,  in  whom  its 
interest  finally  centred  as  the  hero,  went  to  Landor  regularly  as  its 
predecessor,  section  by  section,  when  once  he  had  despatched  the  first. 
But  still  this  was  delayed,  and  with  it  the  appearance  of  Kehama, 
Southey's  doubts  and  misgivings  suspending  some  of  the  sheets  at 
press.  In  July,  1810,  however,  he  promises  the  published  poem  in 
six  weeks,  saying  that  he  thought  it  in  structure,  now  he  surveyed  it 
as  a  whole,  far  superior  to  Thalaba ;  and  though  in  most  other  re- 
spects he  was  afraid  he  did  not  himself  like  it  quite  so  well,  he  held 
it  to  be  a  work  sui  generis.  Like  Gebir,  it  would  find  its  own  admir- 
ers, and  Landor's  preface  on  that  point  he  had  always  sincerely  echoed. 
Then  in  September  he  announced  that  the  last  proof  had  been  cor- 
rected, that  there  will  be  yet  a  further  delay  of  another  six  weeks, 
and  that  it  was  dedicated  to  his  friend,  but  for  whom  it  would  never 
have  been*  finished.  To  this  (writing  from  Bath  in  October)  Landor 
says  he  cannot  hope  from  Kehama  more  pleasure  than  he  has  already 
derived  from  it,  whatever  new  ornaments  his  friend  may  have  added, 
and  howrever  exalted  his  own  head  may  be  by  the  chaplets  and  roses 
placed  upon  it.  Nevertheless,  as  late  as  November  he  has  again  to 
ask  :  "  Where  is  Kehama  7  "  To  which  Southey  replies  :  "  Heaven 
knows  what  has  become  of  Kehama.  I  look,  and  have  for  weeks  and 
months  daily  been  looking,  for  the  advertisement.  Longman  has 
your  Pulteney  Street  direction  to  send  it  by  whenever  it  does  appear, 
and  I  hope  it  will  reach  you  before  this."  He  adds  that  he  thought 
to  have  accompanied  it  with  an  epistle  to  Landor  in  blank  verse ;  but 
that  this  remained  still  on  the  anvil.  Indeed,  it  was  never  finished, 
a  simple  prose  dedication  taking  its  place. 

In  the  same  letter  (17th  December,  1810)  he  asks  Landor  for  his 
Latin  Alcaics,  his  friend  having  told  him  that  he  had  written  some  to 
the  ex-king  of  Sweden,  the  deposed  Gustavus,  and  ordered  a  very 
few  to  lie  printed.  He  is  also  to  send  him  his  Simonidea,  if  he  can 
by  any  influence  command  a  copy,  having  himself  in  vain  endeavored 
to  obtain  one  from  London.  That  was  another  of  Landor's  hasty, 
impetuous,  private  publications,  containing  some  charming  Latin  verse 
and  several  English  pieces  to  lone  and  lanthe.* 

*  Landor's  reply  described  it.  "  There  are  many  things  of  which  I  am  ashamed  in 
the  Simonidva.  I  printed  whatever  was  marked  with  a  pencil  by  a  woman  who  loved 
me.  ami  I  consulted  all  her  caprices.  There  is  a  sneer,  of  which  I  am  heartily  ashamed, 
at  Mr.  Grant,  Mr.  Heber,  and  Lord  Strangford.  But  is  it  not  a  cursed  u = 1 1 1  i ■  i u"  thing  to 
hear  a  woman  (who  i-  soul  and  senses  to  one)  tell  me  to  write  like  these?  She  had 
real  no  better  and  few  nttier  poets.  I  added  some  Latin  poetry  of  my  own,  more  mire 
in  its  Latinity  than  in  its  sentiment.  But  the  Pudoris  Am  is  incomparably  the  best 
poetry  I  have  been  able  to  write.  Adieu;  and  when  you  read  the  Slmoni'lea,  pity  and 
forgive   me."      Whether   Southey  received    it    dues   not   clearly  appear.      He   make-   no 

mention  of  it.  Hut  it  most  probably  reached  him,  as  he  acknowledges  the  Ode  to  Gus- 
tavui  which  had  been  sent  alone;  with  it  from  the  printing-press  of  Valpv,  asking  him 
what  wa-  the  meaning  of  the  monogram  in  its  title-page,  and  saying  he  i  ever  read  his 
Latin  without  wishing  it  were  English,  and  regretting  that  he  was  ever  taught  a  lan- 
guage -o  much  inferior  to  his  own.  To  this  Landor  replied  in  his  following  letter  (  Feb- 
ruary 6,  L811):  '•  You  impure  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  monogram.  I  looked  at  it. 
Surely  it  is  a  digamma;  a  puerile  sort  of  practical  puu,  invented  by  Vulpy  no  doubt. 


^T.  30-39.]  ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK.  155 

"  Thanks,  a  thousand  and  a  thousand,"  replying  to  that  December 
letter  Landor  sends  him  for  Kehama,  which  had  arrived  at  last. 
"  How  am  I  delighted  that  the  man,  whom  above  all  others  I  would 
wish  to  know  me  thoroughly,  sees  through  me !  The  inscription  is 
most  suitable  to  my  taste ;  and  if  I  may  think  of  myself  somewhat 
magnificently,  which  I  was  never  disinclined  to  do,  most  honorable  to 
yours."  In  the  following  month,  writing  still  from  Bath,  he  says  Ch. 
Burney  had  borrowed  the  book  of  him,  and  admired  it  not  less  en- 
thusiastically than  himself.  He  describes  himself  at  the  time,  how- 
ever, as  out  of  humor  with  everything  but  Southey  and  his  poem, 
and  proceeds  to  show  it  by  a  remark  on  the  notes  :  — 

"One  thing  I  confess  to  you  fills  me  with  astonishment:  how  you  can 
write  such  poetry  and  admire,  when  to  endure  would  be  immeasurably  too 
much,  the  flimsy  and  fantastic  Spenser.  Milton  did  too ;  but  our  lan- 
guage in  his  time  had  little  good  in  it,  except  a  few  contracted  passages, 
beside  the  works  of  Shakespeare.  Chaucer  is  much  better  than  any  of 
the  rest,  —  a  passably  good  novelist,  but  hardly  to  be  called  a  poet." 

These  heresies  he  abated  greatly  afterwards,  but  never  quite  got 
rid  of.  His  ill-humor  at  the  politics  of  the  day  and  the  kind  of 
government  England  then  had,  vented  in  the  same  letter,  underwent 
little  subsequent  abatement  or  change  :  — 

"  If  Bonaparte  were  not  the  worst  and  most  execrable  of  human  beings, 
sure  people  would  hardly  lift  a  hand  up  to  save  these  rascals  who  are 
dividing  our  property.  It  is  better  to  yield  to  force  only  than  to  have 
one's  ribs  bent  together  between  force  and  fraud." 

Upon  these  various  points  Southey  has  in  turn,  of  course,  some- 
thing to  say.  As  to  Kehama,  which  Scott  is  going  to  review  for  next 
Quarterly,  he  is  glad  of  Burney's  good  opinion,  as  one  which  has 
weight  in  the  world.  Him  he  had  met  only  once  ;  but  he  had  a  fa- 
miliar acquaintance  with  his  brother  the  captain,  meeting  him  at  Rick- 
man's,  where  they  and  their  host  and  Charles  Lamb  would  make  bad 
puns  the  whole  night  through.  Notwithstanding  Pelayo,  another 
poem  is  already  working  in  his  brain,  with  a  son  of  Goffe  the  regi- 
cide for  its  hero  ;  and  he  has  been  writing  for  the  coming  Quarterly 
on  Captain  Pasley's  book,  which  he  would  fain  make  "  our  political 
bible."*  Landor's  heresy  about  Spenser,  however,  he  cannot  over- 
It  serves  as  an  initial  instead  of  v.  Grammarians  tell  us  that  it  -was  pronounced  so.  I 
fancy  they  lie.  Certain  it  is  the  Romans  substituted  the  v  when  they  assumed  some 
words  to  which  the  digamma  was  affixed  or  inherent,  —  vinum,  sylv'a,  &c.  The  Greeks, 
I  imagine,  pronounced  it  as  a  double  u.  B  seems  in  many  countries  to  serve  occasionally 
as  v,  —  Viscaia,  &c.  The  modern  Greeks  read  TroAu^Xotcrvoio  for  jroAuc/>Aotcrj3o<.o,  giving 
the  diphthongs  as  faint  a  sound  almost  as  the  French  do." 

*  A  letter  from  Walter  Birch  was  received  just  at  this  time,  which,  for  its  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  Latin  Odes  by  Landor  (to  Gustavus  of  Sweden,  &c),  now  sent  forth 
anonymously,  for  other  points  it  touches  on,  and  for  its  agreement  with  Southey  as  to 
Pasley's  book,  may  be  read  with  interest.  "  Dear  Landor,  thank  you  for  your  ele- 
gant Latin  Odes,  of  which  I  did  not  know  you  to  be  the  author  till  this  morning.  I 
send  you  in  return  some  verses  which  I  wrote  for  the  Examiner  at  Oxford,  which 
will  show  how  far  I  agree  with  you.     Their  tone  was  not  quite  coincident  with  the 


156  BATH,    SPAIX,    AXD    LLAXTIIOXY.  ^xs^i ," '" 

look.  Inferior  he  admits  him  to  be  to  Chaucer,  who  for  variety  of 
power  had  no  competitor  but  Shakespeare ;  but  of  English  versifica- 
tion lie  is  incomparably  the  greatest  master  in  the  lgpguage.  As  for 
our  having  had  little  poetry  before  Milton,  Southey  thinks  rather 
that  there  had  been  little  since.  What  there  was  in  the  earlier  time, 
at  any  rate,  was  sterling  sense  in  sterling  English,  with  thought  and 
feeling  in  it  ;  whereas  now  the  surest  way  to  become  popular  was  to 
have  as  little  of  either  ingredient  as  possible.  "  Campbell's  success 
is  a  notable  example."* 

Landor  shows  some  kind  of  fight  for  his  heresies,  notwithstanding. 
But  first  he  declares  his  amazement  at  the  new  poem  his  friend  is 
planning  ("  the  War  of  the  New-Englanders,  the  principal  character 
a  Quaker"!)  as  what  no  other  man  alive  would  be  bold  enough  to 
undertake.  And  how  in  any  case  will  he  ever  manage  to  write  two 
poems  at  one  and  the  same  time  1 

"To  dictate  to  half  a  dozen  secretaries,  in  as  many  languages,  is  a  trick; 
but  to  do  it  at  once  is  a  dillicult  one.  How  you  can  write  two  poems  at 
a  time  I  cannot  conceive.  I  could  write  history  and  poetry,  but  I  could 
not  divide  my  passions  and  affections.  When  I  write  a  poem  my  heart 
and  all  my  feelings  are  upon  it.  I  never  commit  adultery  with  another; 
and  high  poems  will  not  admit  flirtation. 

"  I  should  like  to  talk  about  Spenser  with  you,  and  to  have  the  Faery 
Queen  before  us.  Passion  can  alone  give  the  higher  beauties  of  versifica- 
tion. Shakespeare,  who  excels  all  mortals  in  poetry,  excels  them  all  in 
verse  frequently ;  but  I  am  convinced  he  formed  erroneous  opinions  on 
the  subject,  and  that  he  preferred  a  stiff  and  strutting  step  systematically, 
and  was  great  only  when  he  was  carried  off  his  legs  in  spite  of  himself. 
In  my  opinion  there  is  more  transcendent  poetry  in  Shakespeare  than  in 
all  the  other  poets  that  have  existed  since  the  creation  of  the  world,  and 
more  passages  filled  with  harmony  from  its  inspiration.  Immeasurably  as 
I  prefer  Chaucer  to  Spenser,  I  cannot  as  a  poet,  —  a  great  one  is  here 
understood,  —  because  he  never  comes  up  to  the  ideal  so  well  exprest  by 
Horace:  'meum  qui  pectus  inaniter  angit,'  &c.  The  language  of  Chaucer  is 
the  language  of  his  time  ;  but  Spenser's  is  a  jargon.  No,  I  do  not  think 
we  had  little  t_r<>od  poetry  before  Milton.  Some  truly  pure  grains  of  gold 
were  carried  down  by  the  streamlets  in  rude  old  times,  ill  exchanged  for  the 
tinsel  which  we  are  just  removing  from  ours.  The  English  nation  was  in  all 
respects  at  its  highest  pitch  of  glory  in  the  times  of  Shakespeare  and 
Hooker.  Chivalry  had  forgotten  all  the  follies  of  its  youth  :  it  retained  its 
spirit,  and  had  lost  only  its  austerity.     The  Tudors,  those  blackguard  and 


desponding  spirit  attributed  to  some  of  Lord  Grenville's  party,  or  I  did  not  mean  that 
it  should  be  so.  I  have  lately  been  reading  with  high  interest  a  publication  entitled 
An  Essay  on  the  Military  Policy  and  Institutions  of  the  British  Empire,  by  Captain 


Pasley,  IJ.  K.  It  appears  to  me  to  be  a  noble  work,  and  calculated  to  be  more  useful 
than  any  political  publication  I  have  seen  since  the  days  of  Burke.  I  have  also  been 
much  interested  in  Sir  R.  Wilson's  book,  notwithstanding  some  little  ambition  of  style 
and  other  defects  of  no  great  consequence ;  but  for  which  the  Edinburgh  ReviewwiM, 
I  have  no  doubt,  give  him  a  trimming.  By  the  by,  did  you  read  Coplestone's  second 
reply  to  the  Edinburgh  Reviewers?  I  really  never  saw  a  more  decisive  and  triumph- 
ant piece  of  controversy.  I  have  not  yet  Been  Sonthey's  poem,  but  hope  to  do  so  be- 
fore long.  Believe  me,  dear  Landor,  yours  verv  affectionately,  W.  Birch." 
*  Omitted  iu  the  imperfect  copy  printed  in  the  Life,  III.  295. 


JET.  30-39.]  ON  KEHAMA  AXD  RODERICK.  157 

beastly  Welsh,  had  never  infected  the  mass  of  English  mind.  People 
read ;  and  to  our  national  manliness  a  little  was  now  added  of  Eoman 
dignity.     I  am  going  on  as  if  I  had  nothing  else  to  do  or  say." 

Leaving  unnoticed  the  close  of  this  letter,  Southey  replied  upon 
its  opening  remark,  that  his  ability  to  think  of  two  poems  at  once 
proceeded  from  weakness,  not  from  strength.  The  continuous  ex- 
citement Landor  had  lately  gone  through  in  the  composition  of  a 
tragedy,  he  could  not  stand  :  in  him  it  would  not  work  itself  off,  as 
with  Landor,  in  tears  ;  the  tears  would  flow  while  in  the  act  of  com- 
position, and  they  would  leave  behind  a  throbbing  head  and  a  whole 
system  in  the  highest  state  of  nervous  excitability,  which  would  soon 
induce  the  most  fearful  form  of  disease.  This  was  a  dream  that 
always  haunted  Southey.  Not,  alas,  wholly  without  reason,  as  after- 
wards appeared. 

The  tragedy  referred  to  had  been  written  in  the  interval  covered 
by  these  letters,  and  will  be  the  subject  of  the  next  section.  To  this 
will  now  only  be  added  such  fresh  allusions  to  Pelayo  in  its  progress 
as  may  be  read  independently,  and  other  matters  incidentally  arising 
that  have  in  them  some  personal  interest. 

One  of  Southey's  letters  in  1810  told  Landor  a  melancholy  story 
of  a  young  Bristol  poet  who  had  died  at  nineteen,  cherishing  to  the 
last  a  hope  that  his  poems,  printed  after  his  death,  might  save  a  sister 
from  destitution.     They  had  been  sent  to  Southey. 

"  Thirty  years  ago  they  would  have  been  thought  wonderful,  —  neither 
you  nor  I  wrote  better  at  nineteen,  perhaps  not  so  well,  —  but  what  can 
be  produced  at  nineteen  except  promises  of  after-excellence,  which  serve 
only  to  give  one  the  heart-ache  when  the  blossom  has  been  cut  off?  I  do 
not  know  the  family ;  but  I  am  exerting  myself  earnestly  to  make  this 
poor  bequest  productive." 

To  which  Landor  answered  :  — 

"  I  grieved  at  your  account  of  poor  William  Roberts ;  and  the  more  as 
among  all  my  friends  I  hardly  know  one  on  whom  I  can  reckon  as  a  sub- 
scriber for  his  poems.  Plenty  of  people  will  say  poor  fellow  !  and  moralize 
and  sentimentalize.  It  is  better  to  go  to  the  devil  than  hear  or  hazard 
their  hypocrisy.  Pray  write  again,  and  tell  me  how  I  can  forward  two 
or  three  guineas  to  his  friends  without  wounding  their  tenderness  or  their 
pride.  It  may  be  long  before  the  work  is  printed ;  and,  if  they  wait  for 
twelve  hundred  subscribers,  never.  I  went  to  Bristol  the  morning  I  re- 
.  ceived  your  letter,  and  am  ashamed  to  say  did  nothing.  I  want  dexterity, 
and  never  did  anything  right  except  in  moments  of  great  danger.  Then 
instinct  prevails." 

In  one  of  the  letters  immediately  following  he  is  still  talking  of 
the  poem  of  which  Southey  has  sent  him  the  dedication  :  — 

"My  feelings  are  hardly  more  gratified  by  the  marks  of  kindness  and 
distinction  you  confer  on  me  than  by  the  exalted  pleasure  I  receive  from 
the  perfection  of  the  work.  ...  I  like  to  talk  of  myself  to  you,  though 
no  earthly  being  is  so  universally  silent  as  I  am  on  his  hopes  and  fears  and 


158  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTHOXY.  Ji"1- 

speculations.  T  confess  to  you,  if  even  foolish  men  had  road  Gebir,  I  should 
have  continued  to  write  poetry ;  —  there  is  something  of  summer  in  the 
hum  of  insects.  I  like  either  to  win  or  to  extort  an  acknowledgment  of 
my  superiority  from  all  who  owe  it.  No  others  owe  this  so  sincerely  and 
indisputably  as  those  who  write  against  me.  I  am  informed  two  or  three 
people  have  done  it.  Of  these  I  have  only  seen  one,  and  he  calls  me  by 
names  which  Mr.  Pitt  would  have  said,  or  might  have  said,  are  quite  irrele- 
vant. I  forget  whether  cuckold  or  pirate,  but  something  I  am  sure  as  little 
concerned  with  poetry." 

Southey  promptly  replied  with  genuine  sympathy  and  wise  advice. 
He  spoke  of  what  had  prevented  Gebir  from  being  read  by  the  fool- 
ish. No  doubt  it  was  too  good  for  them,  but  it  was  also  too  hard. 
Of  course  they  could  not  understand  it,  but  they  did  not  find  mean- 
ing enough  upon  its  surface  to  make  them  even  fancy  they  under- 
stood it.  Why  should  he  not  display  the  same  powers  upon  a 
happier  subject,  and  write  a  poem  as  good  and  more  intelligible  ? 
Yet  very  certain  was  it  after  all  that  Gebir  had  really  excited  more 
attention  than  its  author  seemed  to  be  aware  of.  For  instance,  two 
manifest  imitations  had  appeared,  —  Rough's  play,  and  the  first  part 
of  Sotheby's  Saul.  To  which  Southey  added  all  about  his  own 
review  of  it  in  the  Critical,  and  what  a  laugh  he  had  had  in  connec- 
tion with  it  at  Gifford,  the  editor  of  the  new  Review  of  which  the 
first  numbers  were  lately  out ,:  — 

"  When  Gifford  published  his  Juvenal,  one  of  the  most  base  attacks  that 
ever  disgraced  a  literary  journal  was  made  upon  it  in  the  Critical  Revit «, 
by  some  one  of  the  heroes  of  his  Baviad.  Gifford,  who  gives  way  to  all  sorts 
of  violence  in  his  writings.*  wrote  a  desperate  reply,  in  which  he  brought 
forward  all  the  offences  of  the  Review  for  many  years  back,  and  one  of 
those  offences  was  its  praise  of  Gebir!" 

At  last,  in  July,  1810,  Southey  sent  to  Landor,  in  six  closely  writ- 
ten folio  columns,  the  first  section  of  Roderick,  or  as  he  continues  for 
some  time  to  call  it,  Pelat/o.  The  subject  at  the  outset  inthralls  him, 
and  he  has  a  second  sight  of  what  its  course  and  treatment  is  to  be, 
with  which  he  is  more  than  satisfied.  The  received  legend  of  Rod- 
erick's escape  from  the  battle-field  and  dying  in  penitence  at  Visen 
is  that  which  he  means  to  follow ;  discarding  his  alleged  abode  at 
Nazareth,  and  other  stories  out  of  the  miracle-shops;  and  what  effect 
he  means  at  the  last  to  produce  by  bringing  together  him  and  Florinda 
and  Count  Julian,  his  friend  shall  see.  Nor  shall  this  be  his  only 
achievement.  Landor  has  laughed  him  a  little  out  of  his  Quaker 
hero  ;  but  his  brain  seethes  and  teems  with  other  subjects.  He  has 
visions  of  a  poem  built  on  the  Zcnda vesta,  wherein  the  evil  powers 
should  be  leagued  against  a  son  of  the  great  king,  and,  by  every  new 

*  In  the  imperfect  copy  of  this  letter  in  the  Life  (III.  228-231)  these  words  and  the 
"  desperate  "  reply  are  altogether  omitted.  One  of  the  ether  omissions  at  the  close  of 
the  letter  is  touching,  and  worthy  u>  !><■  kept:  "God  know-;  I  do  not  begin  to  he 
aweary  of  the  sun,  and  yet  the  wish  which  I  most  frequently  express  is:  that  the 

century  were  over,  and  that  I  and  mine  had  all  reached  our  huveu  of  eternal  rest." 


JET.  30-39.]  ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK.  159 

calamity  inflicted  upon  him,  should  evolve  in  him  some  virtue  which 
his  rank  had  stifled,  till  it  would  end  in  his  abandoning  Persia  in 
company  with  a  Greek  slave,  the  philosopher  of  the  story,  and  be- 
coming a  citizen  of  Athens.  And  something  of  this  and  other  pro- 
jects* he  now  tells  his  friend  that  he  may  wind  up  with  an  adjura- 
tion to  him,  with  his  full  leisure  and  abundant  power,  to  do  likewise, 
and  thus  leave  behind  him  what  distant  generations  would  take 
delight  in,  —  other  Gebirs  with  happier  fables. 

Landor's  reply  took  Southey  somewhat  by  surprise,  for  it  announced 
that  he  had  at  intervals  been  writing  other  things  beside  Latin  Idyls 
and  Alcaics,  Hints  to  Juntas,  Simonideas,  and  Letters  to  Burdett, 
and  that  among  them  was  a  tragedy  with  Count  Julian  for  its  hero  ! 
What  other  feeling  also  arose  to  Southey  as  portions  of  the  tragedy 
were  sent  to  him,  we  shall  shortly  see  ;  but  when,  after  a  few  months, 
all  was  completed  and  before  him,  he  could  not  but  survey  with  some 
despondency  his  own  Pelayo.  He  talked  of  compressing  some  parts 
of  it,  and  said  it  was  well  that  their  conceptions  of  all  the  historical 
personages  were  so  entirely  unlike,  as  he  should  inevitably  have  been 
deterred  from  proceeding.  With  eager  and  frank  reassurance  Landor 
rejuied.  In  the  portions  just  sent  to  him  he  perceived  the  same  strain 
of  high  impassioned  sentiment,  proper  and  peculiar  to  the  character 
on  which  it  was  to  act.  The  poem  would  be  different  from  Southey's 
former  efforts  in  a  greater  degree  than  any  two  epic  poems  known  to 
him,  however  remote  their  ages. 

"  I  do  not  see  what  you  can  compress  in  this  part  of  Pelayo.  If  you 
take  away  too  many  leaves  you  starve  the  blossoms.  There  is  a  light 
luxuriant  arborescence,  which  shows  the  vigor  of  the  roots  and  stem,  and 
answers  for  the  richness  of  the  fruit.  As  I  live,  I  have  written  three 
verses!  made  so  by  a  stroke  of  the  pen."f 

Nor  was  this  a  loftier  strain  of  eulogy  than  the  subject  of  it  fairly 
challenged.  Some  of  the  noblest  parts  of  Roderick  are  remarked  on 
here  :  — 

"  I  have  read,  and  I  know  not  when  I  shall  cease  reading,  the  incompar- 
able description  of  Roderick's  wanderings  and  agony.  What  are  those  of 
iEneas  or  Ulysses  in  comparison  ?  The  story  of  Adosinda  is  heart-rending. 
When  I  have  looked  long  enough  at  the  figures  of  great  painters,  I  dwell 
on  the  landscape.  It  is  only  the  great  ones  who  make  it  strikingly  pecu- 
liar and  appropriate.     We  wish  for  more,  yet  are  conscious  that  we  ought 

*  One  of  these  I  extract  in  greater  detail  from  another  of  Southey's  unpublished 
letters.  It  was  a  poem  that  he  felt  would  be  more  difficult  of  execution  than  Kehama, 
if  he  should  ever  feel  at  leisure  to  execute  it.  It  was  to  paint  such  a  future  state  as 
should  be  consistent  with  the  reason  and  hopes  of  the  wisest  and  best  men.  "  An 
earthly  story  must  be  chosen,  in  order  to  have  the  interest  of  earthly  passions;  but  the 
point  of  view  should  be  from  the  next  stage  of  existence.  Perhaps  this  is  not  very 
intelligible.  Such  as  it  is,  however,  it  is  the  seed  from  which  I  am  confident  a  fine 
tree  might  arise." 

t  "  There  is  a  light  luxuriant  arborescence 

Which  shows  the  vigor  of  the  roots  and  stem, 

And  answers  for  the  richness  of  the  fruit." 


1(30  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONT.  ^iso^-".1' 

not  to  wish  it.  In  the  beginning  of  the  sheet,  the  scene  of  the  pine  forest 
is  a  perfect  example  of  what  I  mean.  I  hope  you  will  meet  with  no  moro 
interruptions.*  I  am  fortunate  ;  for  I  never  compose  a  single  verse  within 
doors,  except  in  bed  sometimes.  I  do  not  know  what  the  satirists  would 
say  if  they  knew  that  most  of  my  verses  spring  from  a  gate-post  or  a  mole- 
hill. Many  hundreds,  as  good  at  least  as  any  I  have  written,  I  have  fore- 
borne  to  write  for  want  of  a  pencil  or  a  dry  seat." 

The  letter  from  Southey  which  accompanied  the  sixth  book  of 
Pelayo  is  a  comment  on  the  most  critical  part  of  this  masterly  poem, 
and  on  the  reasons  that  led  to  the  form  it  finally  assumed,  too  curious 
and  interesting  to  be  lost  :  — 

"  I  know  nothing  like  this  book  in  poetry  ;  but  there  is  something  like  it 
in  romance.  Gyron  le  Courtoys,  a  book  which  has  some  of  the  best  and 
some  of  the  worst  things  of  chivalrous  romance,  has  something  which  is  so 
far  like  it  that  great  part  of  the  hero's  former  history  is  related  to  himself. 
It  has  a  very  good  effect  there,  though  there  is  no  passion  connected  with 
it ;  and  I  was  led  to  this  mode  of  back  narrative  by  the  natural  and  neces- 
sary course  of  my  own  story,  not  by  imitation.  Least  of  all  things  am  I 
an  imitator ;  though  you  will  see  that  I  have  borrowed  something  from 
Count  Julian. 

"  The  next  book  is  nearly  finished.  I  believe  I  must  go  back  to  the  fifth, 
and  interpolate  a  passage  introductory  of  Egilona,  whose  death  I  think  of 
bringing  forward  in  Book  VIII.,  and  in  whose  character  I  must  seek  for  such 
a  palliation  of  the  rape  of  Florinda  as  may  make  Roderick's  crime  not  so 
absolutely  incompatible  with  his  heroic  qualities  as  it  now  appears.  The 
truth  is  that  in  consequence  of  having  begun  the  story  with  Roderick,  I 
have  imperceptibly  been  led  to  make  him  the  prominent  personage  of  the 
poem,  and  have  given  him  virtues  which  it  will  be  very  difficult  to  make 
consistent  with  his  fall 

'•  I  shall  soon  have  two  more  books  to  send  you,  when  I  have  fitted  in 
two  passages  which  must  be  interpolated  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  poem. 
The  way  is  opening  before  me;  and  now  the  further  I  get,  the  more 
rapidly  1  shall  proceed,  for  the  sake  of  getting  to  the  conclusion,  which  will 
be  full  of  fine  things.  The  Spaniards  will  never  forgive  me  for  making 
their  Virgin  Mary  at  Covadinga  into  Adosinda,  and  performing  the  miracle 
by  human  means." 

Acknowledging  this  in  November,  1812,  Landor  writes  :  — 

"  I  have  now  received  two  detachments  of  Pelayo  since  I  wrote,  which 
proves  that  one  sits  much  more  quiet  and  idle  under  pleasurable  sensations 
than  even  under  those  which  are  indifferent.  In  the  mean  time  I  have 
written  a  score  silly  things  to  a  score  silly  people.  .  .  .  The  more  I  read 
of  Pelayo,  the  more  arduous  the  undertaking  seems  to  me  ;  but  at  the  same 
time  the  strength  with  which  it  is  carried  on  increases.  People  have 
formed   their  opinions  of  heroic  poetry  from  Homer   and  his  successors. 

*  Referring  to  what  Southey  had  written  on  the  loth  October,  giving  an  amusing 
picture  of  how  ho  wrote  hi-  epics:  "  Yon  would  have  had  a  book  or  Pelayo  ere  this,  had 
not  Gooch  very  unconsciously  prevented  me.  He  happens  like  myself  to  rise  about 
Beven,  and  found  his  way  into  my  library  as  early  as  I  did.  Now  poetry  is  the  only 
thing  which  I  cannot  compose  it'  any  person  be  present;  because  voice,  gestures,  and 
eyes  require  a  freedom  which  the  sense  of  any  human  presence  would  restrain.  What 
has  been  written  Bince  my  return,  if  it  be  not  good,  deceives  me  grievously;  tor  I  never 
produced  anything  under  the  influence  of  deeper  feeling." 


JET.  30-39.]  ON  KEHAMA  AND  RODERICK.  161 

All  who  have  followed  Homer  have  failed  deplorably.  Virgil  is  great  only 
where  he  has  not  followed  him.  You  will  not  persuade  any  one  that  any- 
thing is  heroic  without  kicks  and  cuffs.  All  can  enter  into  the  spirit  of  a 
battle,  and  perhaps  the  timid  man  likes  it  most  of  all  from  a  consciousness 
of  security ;  there  are  very  few  who  will  feel  at  heart  what  Pelayo  feels, 
and  fewer  still  who  will  follow  up  with  intensity  all  the  vicissitudes  of 
Roderigo.  How  many,  how  nearly  all,  of  our  poets  and  critics  will  read 
these  concluding  lines  as  if  they  were  common  ones  ! 

'  Roderick  alone  appeared 
Unmoved  and  calm ;  for  now  the  royal  Goth 
Had  offered  his  accepted  sacrifice, 
And  therefore  in  his  soul  he  felt  that  peace 
Which  follows  painful  duty  well  performed  — 
Perfect  and  heavenly  peace  —  the  peace  of  God.' 

The  language  is  so  plain  and  the  sentiment  so  natural,  that  I  am  the  only 
man  in  England  who  knows  the  full  value  of  them.  You  yourself  would 
only  find  it  out  in  the  writings  of  another." 

A  verbal  criticism  may  be  worth  preserving  :  — 

"  In  one  place  you  have  written  forsook  as  the  participle.  Now  I  am  very 
jealous  of  the  participles.  I  would  not  write  '  it  was  held,'  but  '  it  was 
holden ' ;  although  custom  authorizes  both,  and  rather  (in  late  years)  has 
preferred  the  former:  I  wish  to  see  our  language  perfect  in  your  works ;  it 
is  very  far  from  perfect  in  any  other  of  our  poets." 

To  which  Southey  :  — 

"  Your  remark  about  the  participles  is  right ;  and  when  I  have  written 
incorrectly,  it  has  been  [in]  virtue  of  a  privilege  which,  in  spite  of  all  prece- 
dent, is  best  honored  in  the  disuse." 

Nor  should  a  pleasant  note  be  lost  on  the  introduction  of  Roder- 
ick's dog  (which  Southey,  by  the  way,  did  not  improve  by  substitut- 
ing Theron  for  Whitefoot  in  the  poem  as  printed)  :  — 

"Resting  his  head  upon  his  master's  knees, 
Upon  the  bank  beside  him  Whitefoot  lay,"  &c. 

"  Though  the  dogs,"  said  Landor,  "  are  the  best  people  among  us,  the 
fastidiousness  of  poetry  rejects  their  names.  Homer  has  given  none 
to  the  dog  of  Ulysses,  though  Ovid  has  signalized  every  cur  that  de- 
voured Actaeon." 

His  last  letter  on  Southey's  manuscript  from  which  I  shall  quote 
for  the  present  has  a  touch  of  personal  significance. 

"  Certainly  this  last  section  of  Pelayo  is  the  most  masterly  of  all.  I  could 
not  foresee  or  imagine  how  the  characters  would  unfold  themselves.  I  could 
have  done  but  little  with  Florinda  and  with  Egilona,  taking  your  outline ; 
yet  I  could  have  done  a  good  deal  more  with  them  than  any  other  man 
except  yourself.  For  I  delight  in  the  minute  variations  and  almost  imper- 
ceptible shades  of  the  female  character,  and  confess  that  my  reveries,  from 
my  most  early  youth,  were  almost  entirely  on  what  this  one  or  that  one 
would  have  said  or  done  in  this  or  that  situation.  Their  countenances, 
their  movements,  their  forms,  the  colors  of  their  dresses,  were  before  my 
eyes. 

11 


1G2  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^-i"1' 

"  One  reason  why  we  admire  the  tragedies  of  the  ancients  is  this,  we  never 
have  had  our  images  broken  by  the  iconoclast  effort  of  the  actors.  "Within 
my  memory  we  never  have  had  any  worthy  of  the  name ;  but  I  feel  con- 
vinced that  Garriek  himself,  who  was  probably  the  greatest  that  ever  lived, 
would  not  have  recompensed  me  for  the  overthrow  and  ruin  of  my  Lear." 

A  kind  of  practical  comment  on  this  will  now  be  laid  before  the 
reader  in  letters  written  during  the  composition  of  Count  Jul  inn,  and 
the  weakness  as  well  as  the  strength  which  Landor  carried  to  the  en- 
terprise of  writing  a  tragedy  will  be  seen.  That  the  natural  bent  of 
his  genius  went  strongly  in  the  direction  of  the  drama,  as  he  seems 
himself  at  all  times  to  have  felt  with  greater  or  less  vividness,  there 
is  no  doubt.  The  old  Greek  had  not  a  more  unquestionable  power 
than  his  of  giving  objective  shape  to  the  most  subtle  and  the  most 
ethereal  fancies,  and  this  in  itself  involves  a  very  intense  element  of 
the  drama.  Where  any  marvel  occurs  in  Gehir,  there  is  no  doubt 
about  it ;  it  is  actually  there,  and  to  be  seen.  Transfer  this  to  the 
drama,  assume  that  a  passion  is  to  be  represented,  and  by  the  same 
power  there  it  is  ;  not  mere  language  describing  it,  but  the  thing 
itself,  and  language  only  as  the  effluence  or  outbreak  of  the  thing. 
In  the  abstract  there  cannot  be  a  higher  form  of  the  dramatic  than 
this,  and  it  holds  to  a  large  extent  even  in  what  may  be  called  the 
concrete,  the  details  of  the  scene.  Because,  no  doubt,  at  a  play  it  is 
from  other  arts  than  the  poet's  that  what  is  mainly  material  should 
reach  us.  Strictly  speaking  the  poet  might  claim  to  be  entirely  dis- 
charged from  any  part  of  the  office  of  setting  forth,  before  an  audi- 
ence of  spectators,  what  already  is  or  ought  to  be  visible  to  them. 
But  unassailable  as  this  is  in  theory,  in  practice  it  is  not  found  to  be 
possible,  and  all  kinds  of  descriptive  and  other  indulgences  have  to  be 
brought  in  aid  of  the  purely  dramatic.  The  result  expresses  just 
the  concession  or  compromise  which  the  stage  requires  from  the 
drama,  which  Shakespeare  understood  as  he  understood  everything, 
and  which  even  such  writers  as  Landor  and  Lamb  comprehend  im- 
perfectly, when  they  object  to  the  stage  presentation  of  Lear.  Lear 
was  written  to  be  played  ;  and  its  author,  we  may  safely  affirm, 
would  rather  have  seen  it  acted,  however  wretchedly,  in  a  barn,  than 
heard  it  read  to  perfection  in  a  palace.  Landor  tells  us  in  this  letter 
that  he  delights  in  "  the  minute  variations  and  almost  imperceptible 
shades  "  of  character,  and  that  he  has  "  countenances,  movements, 
forms,  the  very  colors  of  dresses,"  before  his  eyes  as  he  writes.  Doubt- 
less it  was  so.  No  one  conceives  a  character  more  vividly,  or  puts  it 
more  expreBBively  in  action.  Each  has  a  distinguishing  mark  and  a 
specialty  of  utterance,  the  look  that  none  else  should  give,  the  lan- 
guage that  none  other  so  appropriately  could  use.  He  described  it 
himself  on  another  occasion  in  saying  to  Southey  that  he  could  never 
publish  a  poem  that  contained  any  character  of  a  human  being  until 
he  had  lived  two  or  three  years  with  that  character,  and  that  he  left 
oft'  Count  Julian  and  his  daughter  twice  because  each  had  said  things 


>ET.  30-39.]  THE    TRAGEDY    OP    COUNT    JULIAN.  163 

which  other  personages  might  say.  But  though  all  this  may  seem  to 
raise  a  perfect  ideal,  the  practicable  is  another  thing.  Too  little  is 
left  for  the  art  of  the  actor,  and  too  much  for  the  imagination  of  the 
audience.  We  may  get  at  the  most  magnificent  results  too  quickly, 
when  all  the  little  intermediate  steps  have  been  overlooked.  It  may 
indeed  be  the  smallest  part  of  genius  that  is  thus  wanting  to  com- 
plete upon  the  stage  its  highest  manifestations,  but  the  fact  admits 
of  no  dispute  that  to  the  highest  without  it  the  stage  is  inaccessible. 
An  example  is  about  to  be  afforded  than  which  there  have  been  few 
nobler,  that  no  given  number  of  scenes,  each  of  the  first  order  of 
dramatic  genius,  will  constitute  a  play.  Let  the  characters,  as  here, 
be  all  marked  and  all  in  position ;  let  the  passions  be  at  their  high- 
est, and  always  at  work ;  let  the  situations  even  be  the  best ;  but 
unless  there  is  also  obtainable  from  the  story  an  interest  of  quite 
another  kind  than  that  which,  by  creative  rather  than  merely  appre- 
ciative power,  the  audience  must  elicit  for  themselves,  there  will  be 
no  tragedy  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  There  will  only  be  a  suc- 
cession of  dialogues.  In  all  the  various  "  scenes,"  however,  and  in  all 
the  "conversations,"  through  which,  from  the  beginning  to  the  close 
of  his  life,  and  under  every  "  imaginary  "  form,  Landor's  genius  has 
most  delighted  to  express  itself,  none  have  higher  claims  to  admira- 
tion, or  will  better  reward  faithful  study,  than  those  of  Count  Julian. 

VII.     THE  TRAGEDY  OF  COUNT  JULIAN. 

The  period  of  the  tragedy  is  supposed  to  be  that  which  imme- 
diately preceded  the  final  defeat  and  mysterious  fate  of  the  last  of 
the  Gothic  kings  of  Spain,  when  his  most  powerful  noble  Count 
Julian,  whose  daughter  he  had  by  violence  dishonored,  to  avenge  that 
wrong  brought  back  into  his  native  land  the  Moorish  hosts  whom  he 
had  just  gloriously  driven  out,  overthrew  the  monarchy,  and  delivered 
over  his  country  to  the  infidel.  A  more  tragical  conception  nowhere 
exists.  In  its  isolated  grandeur  indeed  it  is  rather  epical  than  tragic  ; 
and  there  is  a  fine  passage  in  one  of  Mr.  De  Quincey's  essays  where 
he  speaks  of  the  tortures  inflicted  in  old  Rome,  in  the  sight  of  shud- 
dering armies,  upon  a  general  who  had  committed  treason  to  his 
country,  as  not  comparable  to  Landor's  fancy  of  the  unseen  tortures 
in  Count  Julian's  mind;  "who  —  whether  his- treason  prospered  or 
not ;  whether  his  dear  outraged  daughter  lived  or  died  ;  whether  his 
king  were  trampled  in  the  dust  by  the  horses  of  infidels,  or  escaped 
as  a  wreck  from  the  fiery  struggle  ;  whether  his  dear  native  Spain 
fell  for  ages  under  misbelieving  hounds,  or,  combining  her  strength, 
tossed  off  them,  but  then  also  himself,  with  equal  loathing  from  her 
shores  —  saw,  as  he  looked  out  into  the  mighty  darkness,  and 
stretched  out  his  penitential  hands  vainly  for  pity  or  pardon,  nothing 
but  the  blackness  of  ruin,  and  ruin  that  was  to  career  through  cen- 
turies." 


164  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  trtS*^f" 

The  characters  grouped  around  this  central  figure  have  each  an 
individuality  strongly  marked,  but  all  subserve  to  a  common  purpose. 
From  every  point  they  draw  Julian  only  closer  and  closer  within  the 
meshes  of  misery  which  love  for  his  daughter  had  woven  round  him 
first,  and  in  which  all  his  other  virtues  since  have  but  the  more 
despairingly  involved  him.  It  is  the  old  story  of  crime  propagating 
crime  ;  of  evil  failing  ever  to  expiate  evil ;  and  of  blind  necessity,  out 
of  one  fatal  wrong,  reproducing  wrong  in  endless  forms  of  retaliatory 
guilt  and  suffering. 

The  tragedy  opens  at  the  moment  when,  though  the  extent  of  his 
successes  over  his  countrymen  has  alarmed  Julian,  nothing  is  yet 
decisive,  and  there  seems  still  a  chance  for  the  old  monarchy.  The 
outrage  had  been  done  upon  his  daughter  Covilla,  in  the  absence  of 
her  betrothed  Sisabert,  who,  upon  his  return  in  ignorance  of  what  had 
passed,  finding  her  separated  from  him  and  her  father  in  arms  against 
Spain,  believes  Julian  to  be  simply  aspiring  to  the  throne,  and  for  a 
time  joins  Roderigo  against  him.  The  gleam  of  success  emboldens 
the  hard-pressed  king  to  attempt  conciliation.  Imploring  Julian  to 
wipe  out  his  treason  against  Spain  by  a  second  treason  against  his 
Moorish  confederates,  he  proposes  to  divorce  his  wife  Egilona,  himself 
to  marry  the  wronged  Covilla,  and  to  divide  with  the  father  his 
daughter's  throne.  Julian  rejects  these  overtures  with  scorn ;  but. 
Muza,  the  cruel  and  arrogant  Moorish  chief,  suspects  him  to  have 
yielded,  and  Roderigo's  wife,  believing  her  divorce  to  be  resolved  on, 
accepts  the  love  of  Abdalazis,  Muza's  more  generous  son.  This  is  the 
position  at  the  opening  of  the  third  act,  when  Sisabert's  discovery  of 
the  truth  as  to  his  betrothed  joins  again  his  arms  to  those  of  Julian, 
who  accomplishes  the  triumph  of  the  Moor.  Roderigo  is  now  at 
Julian's  feet,  and  is  spurned  by  him  ;  b\it  Spain  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
Infidel,  who  continues  to  watch  with  distrust  the  victorious  renegade, 
and  believes  he  will  yet  prove  traitor  again.  Julian  meanwhile  has 
been  found  by  Roderigo  inaccessible  to  mercy.  The  conqueror  per- 
mits him  to  live  only  that  life  may  become  to  him  a  burden  ;  and 
while  the  fallen  king  still  piteously  pleads  to  be  permitted  to  atone 
his  wrong,  the  terrible  sentence  is  pronounced  which  separates  eter- 
nally the  wrongdoer  and  his  victim,  sending  Covilla  to  the  convent's 
peace  and  Roderigo  to  the  penance  of  the  felon.  Ignorant  of  what 
lias  really  passed,  however,  even  the  most  generous  of  the  Moors 
drops  away  from  Julian  when  he  hears  that  the  defeated  king  has 
been  suffered  to  escape  with  life  ;  and  Egilona,  blinded  by  her 
jealousy  and  love,  and  who  has  witnessed  the  departure  at  the  same 
time  from  the  camp  of  both  Roderigo  and  Covilla,  denounces  Julian 
to  the  Moorish  commander  as  having  yet  the  purpose  to  continue  the 
throne  of  the  Goths  to  his  daughter  and  her  betrayer.  Throughout 
every  scene,  whatever  else  its  ebb  or  flow  of  passion,  Julian  has  to 
bear  the  brunt  of  suffering  and  sorrow.  High  above  the  rest  still 
towers  that  shape  of  solitary  pain,  to  which  all  converge,  whether  in 


JET.  30-39.]         THK  TRAGEDY  OF  COUNT  JULIAN.  165 

love  or  hate,  with  fruitless  effort  to  overstep  the  abyss  that  has 
eternally  parted  him  alike  from  foe  and  friend.  Such  hopes  as  ani- 
mate the  rest  from  scene  to  scene  exist  but  to  show  that  from  him 
hope  is  gone  forever ;  and  the  tragedy  closes  as  the  intelligence  is 
brought  to  him  that,  for  the  supposed  act  of  treachery  which  he  has 
not  committed,  his  wife  and  two  sons  have  been  murdered  by  the 
Moor  whom  his  victories  had  made  master  of  his  native  land. 

I  propose  now,  as  was  done  with  Gebir,  to  fill  in  this  outline  of  the 
story  by  a  series  of  passages  exhibiting  the  varieties  of  power  and 
beauty  with  which  its  tragic  scenes  are  written.  Landor's  style  is 
here  at  its  best ;  and  contemporary  poetry  has  nothing  to  show 
beyond  Count  Julian  in  purity  or  in  grandeur. 

In  the  first  scene  Opas,  metropolitan  of  Seville,  has  found  admit- 
tance to  Julian's  tent,  ostensibly  to  induce  him  to  see  his  daughter, 
but  with  the  secret  desire  that  his  intercession  may  yet  ward  off  the 
last  meditated  stroke  of  vengeance.  Not  unmoved  but  resolute  is 
Julian's  reply.     He  knows  that  by  what  already  he  has  done, 

"  My  fair  fame  in  after-time 
Will  wear  an  alien  and  uncomely  form, 
9  Seen  o'er  the  cities  I  have  laid  in  dust." 

But,  until  the  tyrant  is  hopeless  and  beggared  as  himself,  there  can 
be  no  peace  or  comfort  for  him,  and  no  child.  The  rejoinder  of  Opas, 
interceding  with  Julian  for  those  to  whom  the  war  will  bring  unmiti- 
gated horrors,  is  one  of  the  many  evidences  afforded  throughout  the 
scenes  of  Landor's  recent  personal  experience  of  Spain. 

"  No  pity  for  the  thousand,  fatherless, 
The  thousands  childless  like  thyself,  nay  more, 
The  thousands  friendless,  helpless,  comfortless.  .  .  . 
Such  thou  wilt  make  them,  little  thinking  so, 
Who  now  perhaps,  round  their  first  winter  fire 
Banish,  to  talk  of  thee,  the  tales  of  old. 
Shedding  true  honest  tears  for  thee  unknown : 
Precious  be  these  and  sacred  in  thy  sight. 
Mingle  them  not  with  blood  from  hearts  thus  kind. 
If  only  warlike  spirits  were  evoked 
By  the  war-demon,  I  would  not  complain, 
Or  dissolute  and  discontented  men ; 
But  wherefore  hurry  down  into  the  square 
The  neighborly,  saluting,  warm-clad  race, 
Who  would  not  injure  us,  and  cannot  serve; 
Who,  from  their  short  and  measured  slumber  risen, 
In  the  faint  sunshine  of  their  balconies, 
With  a  half-legend  of  a  martyrdom 
And  some  weak  wine  and  withered  grapes  before  them, 
Note  by  their  foot  the  wheel  of  melody 
That  catches  and  rolls  on  the  Sabbath'  dance." 

^  In  the  scene  that  follows  between  Julian  and  Roderigo,  where  the 
king  has  reached  him  protected  as  a  herald,  and  offers  to  divide  with 
him  the  throne,  there  are  some  noble  passages.  Roderigo  is  permitted 
to  witness  what  the  duty  of  revenge  has  cost  the  avenger.  Julian 
exclaims  in  his  anguish  :  — 

"  And  Spain !  O  parent,  I  have  lost  thee,  too ! 
Yes,  thou  wilt  curse  me  in  thy  latter  days, 


1G6  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^s-i"1' 

Me,  thine  avenger.     I  have  fought  her  foe, 
Roderigo,  I  have  gloried  in  her  sons, 
Sublime  in  hardihood  and  piety : 
Her  strength  was  mine:  I,  sailing  by  her  cliffs, 
By  promontory  after  promontory, 
Opening  like  flags  along  some  castle-tower, 
Have  sworn  before  the  cross  upon  our  mast 
Ne'er  shall  invader  wave  his  standard  there." 

Not  the  less  is  he  adamant  against  every  proposal  for  pardon  of  the 
outrage  of  his  daughter,  or  for  the  baser  compromise,  which  Roderigo 
urges  on  him,  of  condoning  it  by  marriage. 

"Julian.     She  call  upon  her  God,  and  outrage  him 
At  his  own  altar !  she  repeat  the  vows 
She  violates  in  repeating!   who  abhors 
Thee  and  thy  crimes,  and  wants  no  crown  of  thine. 
Force  may  compel  the  abhorrent  soul,  or  want 
Lash  and  pursue  it  to  the  public  ways; 
Virtue  Iooks  back  and  weeps,  and  may  return 
To  these, —  but  never  near  the  abandoned  one 
IVho  drags  religion  to  adultery's  feet, 
And  rears  the  altar  higher  for  her  sake. 

Roderigo.     Have  then  the  Saracens  possest  thee  quite? 
And  wilt  thou  never  yield  me  thy  consent? 

Julian.    Never. 

Roderigo.  So  deep  in  guilt,  in  treachery!  • 

Forced  to  acknowledge  it !  forced  to  avow 
The  traitor! 

Julian.         Not  to  thee,  who  reignest  not, 
But  to  a  country  ever  dear  to  me, 
And  dearer  now  than  ever!     What  we  love 
Is  the  loveliest  in  departure !     One  I  thought, 
As  every  father  thinks,  the  best  of  all, 
Graceful  and  mild  and  sensible  and  chaste: 
Now  all  these  qualities  of  form  and  soul 
Fade  from  before  me,  nor  on  any  one 
Can  I  repose,  or  be  consoled  by  any. 
And  yet  in  this  torn  heart  I  love  her  more 
Than  I  could  love  her  when  I  dwelt  on  each, 
Or  claspt  them  all  united,  and  thankt  God, 
Without  a  wish  beyond.     Away,  thou  fiend! 

0  ignominy,  last  and  worst  of  all ! 

1  weep  before  thee  .  .  .  like  a  child  .  .  .  like  mine  .  .  . 
And  tell  my  woes,  fount  of  them  all !  to  thee." 

In  the  second  act  Julian  and  his  daughter  are  together,  and  the 
tenderness  of  his  pity  for  her  becomes  more  profoundly  affecting  from 
his  inability  to  cheer  her  with  other  hope  than  that  the  misery 
brought  upon  Spain  may  last  for  ages. 

"  Crimes  are  loose 
At  which  ensanguined  War  stands  shuddering, 
And  calls  for  vengeance  from  the  powers  above, 
Impatient  of  inflicting  it  himself. 
Nature  in  these  new  horror-  is  aghast 
At  her  own  progeny,  and  knows  them  not. 
I  am  the  minister  of  wrath;  the  hands 
That  tremble  at  me  -hall  applaud  me  too, 
And  seal  their  condemnation." 

Then  suddenly  enters  Sisabert,  who  had  been  betrothed  to  her,  who 
believes  the  change  he  sees  to  be  her  own  unfaithfulness  leagued  with 


JET.  30-39.]  THE    TBAGEDY    OF    COUNT    JULIAN.  167 

her  father's  ambition,  and  to  whose  reproaches  neither  can  make  the 
only  reply  which  would  show  them  to  be  unjust. 

"  We,  who  have  met  so  altered,  meet  no  more. 
Mountains  and  seas !  ye  are  not  separation : 
Death !  thou  dividest,  but  unitest  too 
In  everlasting  peace  and  faith  sincere." 

When  he  has  left  the  scene,  this  passes  between  the  father  and 

child :  — 

"  Covilla.    He  thinks  me  faithless. 
Julian.  He  must  think  thee  so. 

Covilla.     0  tell  him,  tell  him  all,  when  I  am  dead." 

No,  not  death,  cries  her  loving  father ;  without  crime  she  has  suf- 
fered its  penalties,  and  even  on  the  earth  there  shall  yet  at  the  least 
be  peace  for  her.     The  local  coloring  of  Spain  is  again  strongly  here. 

"  Julian.    Wide  are  the  regions  of  our  far-famed  land: 
Thou  shalt  arrive  at  her  remotest  bounds, 
See  her  best  people,  choose  some  holiest  house; 
Whether  where  Castro  from  surrounding  vines 
Hears  the  hoarse  ocean  roar  among  his  caves, 
And,  through  the  fissure  in  the  green  churchyard, 
The  wind  wail  loud  the  calmest  summer  day ; 
Or  where  Santona  leans  against  the  hill, 
Hidden  from  sea  and  land  by  groves  and  bowers. 

Covilla.     0  for  one  moment  in  those  pleasant  scenes 
Thou  placest  me,  and  lighter  air  I  breathe ! 
Why  could  I  not  have  rested,  and  heard  on ! 
My  voice  dissolves  the  vision  quite  away, 
Outcast  from  virtue,  and  from  nature  too ! 

Julian.     Nature  and  virtue !  they  shall  perish  first. 
God  destined  them  for  thee,  and  thee  for  them, 
Inseparably  and  eternally ! 
The  wisest  and  the  best  will  prize  thee  most, 
And  solitudes  and  cities  will  contend 
Which  shall  receive  thee  kindliest." 

On  the  eve  of  the  decisive  battle  Opas  makes  intercession  with  the 
king,  as  fruitless  as  had  been  his  appeal  to  Julian ;  pleads  in  vain  for 
Egilona ;  and,  replying  to  Roderigo's  taunt  that  he  wants  no  pity, 
wants  nothing  that  enemy  or  friend  can  give,  declares  in  these  noble 
lines  how  lower  than  even  Julian's  is  the  fate  that  awaits  the  man 
who  has  wronged  him. 

"  Proclaim  we  those  the  happiest  of  mankind 
Who  never  knew  a  want  ?     0  what  a  curse 
To  thee  this  utter  ignorance  of  thine ! 
Julian,  whom  all  the  good  commiserate, 
Sees  thee  below  him  far  in  happiness. 
A  state  indeed  of  no  quick  restlessness, 
No  glancing  agitation,  one  vast  swell 
Of  melancholy,  deep,  impassable, 
Interminable,  where  his  spirit  alone 
Broods  and  o'ershadows  all,  bears  him  from  earth, 
And  purifies  his  chastened  soul  for  heaven. 
Both  heaven  and  earth  shall  from  thy  grasp  recede!  " 

In  the  same  mouth  is  placed  one  of  the  most  enchanting  descrip- 
tions in  the  tragedy,  where  Roderigo's  wife,  Egilona,  is  exhibited  as 
she  was  while  yet  her  husband  was  true  to  her,  and  as  she  is,  now 


1G8  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONT.  ^s-."1' 

that  his  indifference  and  falsehood  have  transformed  her,  and  she  is 
ready  to  become  wife  to  the  infidel. 

"  Sisabert.    She  may  forgive  him  yet 

Opas.  Ah,  Sisabert 

Wretched  are  those  a  woman  has  forgiven : 

With  her  forgiveness  ne'er  hath  love  returned. 

Ye  know  not  till  too  late  the  filmy  tie 

That  holds  heaven's  precious  boon  eternally 

To  such  as  fondly  cherish  her;  once  go 

Driven  by  mad  passion,  strike  but  at  her  peace. 

And,  though  she  step  aside  from  broad  reproach, 

Yet  every  softer  virtue  dies  away. 

Beaming  with  virtue  inaccessible 

Stood  Egilona;  for  her  lord  she  lived, 

And  for  the  heavens  that  raised  her  sphere  so  high: 

All  thoughts  were  on  her,  all,  beside  her  own. 

Negligent  as  the  blossoms  of  the  field, 

Arrayed  in  candor  and  simplicity, 

Before  her  path  she  heard  the  streams  of  joy 

Murmur  her  name  in  all  their  cadences, 

Saw  them  in  every  scene,  in  light,  in  shade, 

Reflect  her  image,  but  acknowledge  them 

Hers  most  complete  when  flowing  from  her  most. 

All  things  in  want  of  her.  herself  of  none, 

Pomp  and  dominion  lay  beneath  her  feet 

Unfelt  and  unregarded.     Now  behold 

The  earthly  passions  war  against  the  heavenly! 

Pride  against  love,  ambition  and  revenge 

Against  devotion  and  compliancy : 

Her  glorious  beams  adversity  hath  blunted; 

And  coming  nearer  to  our  quiet  view, 

The  original  clay  of  coarse  mortality 

Hardens  and  flaws  around  her.  ... 

His  was  the  fault;  be  his  the  punishment. 

'T  is  not  their  own  crimes  only  men  commit, 

They  harrow  them  into  another's  breast, 

And  they  shall  reap  the  bitter  growth  with  pain." 

With  the  fourth  act  the  stress  of  the  tragedy  arrives;  for  only 
with  the  completeness  of  Julian's  victory  comes  the  whole  unutterable 
anguish  of  his  misery.  When  the  ruined  and  fallen  king  stands  wail- 
ing before  him  for  mercy,  he  employs  an  image  to  express  his  own 
present  weakness  and  his  former  strength,  which,  for  the  vividness  of 
its  appalling  contrast,  is  probably  among  the  finest  in  the  range  of 
English  poetry  :  — 

"  I  stand  abased  before  insulting  crime, 
I  falter  like  a  criminal  myself; 
The  hand  that  hurled  thy  chariot  o'er  its  wheels, 
That  held  thy  steeds  erect  and  motionless 
As  molten  statues  on  some  palace-gate, 
Shakes  as  with  palsied  age  before  thee  now." 

The  last  lines  are  the  only  others  I  may  quote  from  this  great 
scene  :  — 

"Julian.     1  swerve  not  from  my  purpose:  thou  art  mine 
Conquered;  and  I  have  sworn  to  dedicate, 
Like  a  torn  banner  on  my  chapel's  roof, 
Thee  to  that  power  from  whom  thou  hast  rebelled. 
Expiate  thy  crimes  by  prayer,  by  penances. 

Jtoderigo.     One  name  I  dare  not  .  .  . 


XV.  30-39-1  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COUNT  JULIAN.  169 

Julian.  Go;  abstain  from  that; 

I  do  conjure  thee,  raise  not  in  my  soul 
Again  the  tempest  that  has  wreckt  my  fame ; 
Thou  shalt  not  breathe  in  the  same  clime  with  her. 
Far  o'er  the  unebbing  sea  thou  shalt  adore 
The  eastern  star,  and  may  thy  end  be  peace !  " 

All  that  the  tragedy  has  now  to  do  is  to  show  to  its  extremest 
verge  what  the  conqueror  and  avenger  is  still  to  suffer ;  and  with 
exquisite  art  the  poet  interposes  before  this  a  picture  of  what  he  had 
been  before  he  lifted  arms  against  the  country  that  idolized  and 
gloried  in  him.  His  foster-brother  Hernando,  who  has  cleaved  to  him 
through  all,  who  in  all  that  he  has  done  is  the  solitary  heart  (except 
his  daughter's)  which  has  loved  and  comprehended  him,  strives  to  win 
him  into  gentler  and  reassuring  thoughts  by  memories  of  the  past. 

"  Often  we  hardly  think  ourselves  the  happy 
Unless  we  hear  it  said  by  those  around. 
0  my  lord  Julian,  how  your  praises  cheered 
Our  poor  endeavors !  sure,  all  hearts  are  open, 
Lofty  and  low,  wise  and  unwise,  to  praise : 
Even  the  departed  spirit  hovers  round 
Our  blessings  and  our  prayers ;  the  corse  itself 
Hath  shined  with  other  light  than  the  still  stars 
Shed  on  its  rest,  or  the  dim  taper  nigh. 
My  father,  old  men  say  who  saw  him  dead, 
And  heard  your  lips  pronounce  him  good  and  happy, 
Smiled  faintly  through  the  quiet  gloom  that  eve, 
And  the  shroud  throbbed  upon  his  grateful  breast. 
Howe'er  it  be,  many  who  tell  the  tale 
Are  good  and  happy  from  that  voice  of  praise." 

Again  he  takes  up  the  theme  : — 

"  Early  in  youth,  among  us  villagers 
Converse  and  ripened  counsel  you  bestowed. 
0  happy  days  of  (far-departed!)  peace, 
Days  when  the  mighty  Julian  stoopt  his  brow 
Entering  our  cottage-door;  another  air 
Breathed  through  the  house ;  tired  age  and  lightsome  youth 
Beheld  him  with  intensest  gaze;  these  felt 
More  chastened  joy;  they  more  profound  repose. 
Yes,  my  best  lord,  when  labor  sent  them  home 
And  midday  suns,  when  from  the  social  meal 
The  wicker  window  held  the  summer  heat, 
Praised  have  those  been  who,  going  unperceived, 
Opened  it  wide  that  all  might  see  you  well: 
Nor  were  the  children  blamed,  hurrying  to  watch 
Upon  the  mat  what  rush  would  last' arise 
From  your  foot's  pressure,  ere  the  door  was  closed, 
And  not  yet  wondering  how  they  dared  to  love." 

But  all  such  kindly  efforts  are  vain ;  and  at  the  opening  of  the 
fifth  act,  from  the  same  friendly  lips,  we  have  a  picture  of  him  to 
which  Mr.  De  Quincey's  language  will  do  greater  justice  than  any 
words  of  mine.  "  Mr.  Landor,  who  always  rises  with  his  subject, 
and  dilates  like  Satan  into  Teneriffe  or  Atlas  when  he  sees  before  him 
an  antagonist  worthy  of  his  powers,  is  probably  the  one  man  in 
Europe  that  has  adequately  conceived  the  situation,  the  stern  self- 
dependency  and  the  monumental  misery  of  Count  Julian.      That 


170  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  'ISS-i"' 

sublimity  of  penitential  grief,  which  cannot  accept  consolation  from 
man,  cannot  hear  external  reproach,  cannot  condescend  to  notice 
insult,  cannot  so  much  as  see  the  curiosity  of  by-standers  j  that  awful 
carelessness  of  all  but  the  troubled  deeps  within  his  own  heart,  and 
of  God's  spirit  brooding  upon  their  surface  and  searching  their 
abysses  ;  never  was  so  majestically  described." 

The  generous  Moor,  Tarik,  having  said  that  at  last  Count  Julian 
must  be  happy,  for  "  delicious  calm  follows  the  fierce  enjoyment  of 
revenge,"  here  is  what  succeeds  :  — 

"  Hernando.     That  calm  was  never  his:  no  other  will  be. 
Not  victory  that  o'ershadows  him  sees  he; 
No  airv  and  light  passion  stirs  abroad 
To  rnffie  or  to  soothe  him;  all  are  quelled 
Beneath  a  mightier,  sterner  stress  of  mind: 
Wakeful  he  sits,  and  lonely,  and  unmoved, 
Beyond  the  arrows,  views,"  or  shouts  of  men; 
As  oftentimes  an  eagle,  ere  the  sun 
Throws  o'er  the  varying  earth  his  early  ray, 
Stands  solitary,  stands  immovable 
Upon  some  highest  cliff,  and  rolls  his  eye, 
Clear,  constant,  unobservant,  unabased, 

In  the  cold  light  above  the  dews  of  morn 

He  cannot  live  much  longer.     Thanks  to  God!  " 

Tarik.     What !   wishest  thou  thy  once  kind  master  dead? 
Was  he  not  kind  to  thee,  ungrateful  slave! 

Ihrnando.     The  gentlest,  as  the  bravest,  of  mankind. 
Therefore  shall  memory  dwell  more  tranquilly 
With  Julian  once  at  rest,  than  friendship  could. 
Knowing  him  yearn  for  death  with  speechless  love. 
For  his  own  sake  I  could  endure  his  loss, 
Pray  for  it,  and  thank  God:  yet  mourn  I  must 
Him  above  all,  so  great,  so  bountiful, 
So  blessed  once !  bitterly  must  I  mourn. 
'T  is  not  my  solace  that  't  is  his  desire; 
Of  all  who  pass  us  in  life's  drear  descent 
We  grieve  the  most  for  those  that  wisht  to  die." 

Solemnly  beautiful  is  this  close  to  the  magnificent  image  with 
which  the  speaker  opens.  For  all  the  irreparable  ruin  there  is  only 
death,  and  even  Hernando  wishes  it  for  him ;  not  with  any  comfort 
in  the  thought  that  he  wishes  it  also  himself,  but  because  only  from 
the  grave  can  ever  come  restoration  or  peace.  While  yet  the  hero, 
however,  is  in  presence  of  the  spectator,  this  is  not  to  be.  In  the 
ordinaiv  sense  Death  is  necessary  to  constitute  a  tragedy ;  but  the 
intensity  of  tragic  suffering  here  is  in  continuing  to  live. 

If  I  add  yet  a  few  more  lines  from  this  remarkable  poem,  the  apol- 
ogy which  Mr.  Do  Quincey  made  for  giving  but  one  passage  will  per- 
haps equally  serve  as  mine  for  offering  so  many.  "  How  much,  then, 
is  in  this  brief  drama  <>f  Count  Julian,  chiselled,  as  one  might  think, 
by  the  hands  of  that  sculptor  who  fancied  the  great  idea  of  chisel- 
ling Mount  Athos  into  a  demigod,  which  almost  insists  on  being 
quoted  ;  which  seems  to  rebuke  and  frown  on  one  for  not  quoting  it; 
passages  to  which,  for  their  solemn  grandeur,  one  raises  one's  hat  as 
at  night  in  walking  under  the  Coliseum ;  passages  which,  for  their 


MT.  30-39.]  THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COUNT   JULIAN.  171 

luxury  of  loveliness,  should  be  inscribed  on  the  phylacteries  of  brides 
or  the  frescos  of  Ionia."* 

LOVE    OF    COUNTRY. 

"  All  men  with  human  feelings  love  their  country. 
Not  the  high-born  or  wealthy  man  alone, 
Who  looks  upon  his  children,  each  one  led 
By  its  gay  handmaid  from  the  high  alcove, 
And  hears  them  once  a  day;  not  only  he 
Who  hath  forgotten,  when  his  guest  inquires 
The  name  of  some  far  village  all  his  own ; 
Whose  rivers  bound  the  province,  and  whose  hills 
Touch  the  last  cloud  upon  the  level  sky : 
No ;  better  men  still  better  love  their  country. 
'T  is  the  old  mansion  of  their  earliest  friends, 
The  chapel  of  their  first  and  best  devotions." 

MONARCHIES    ELECTIVE   AND    DIVINE. 

"  Muza.     Where  is  the  king  ? 

Julian.  The  people  must  decide. 

Muza.    Imperfectly,  I  hope,  I  understand 
Those  words,  unworthy  of  thy  birth  and  age. 

Julian.     0  chieftain,  such  have  been  our  Gothic  laws. 

Muza.     Who  then  amid  such  turbulence  is  safe? 

Julian.     He  who  observes  them:  'tis  no  turbulence, 
It  violates  no  peace:  't  is  surely  worth 
A  voice,  a  breath  of  air,  thus  to  create 
By  their  high  will  the  man,  formed  after  them 
In  their  own  image,  vested  with  their  power, 
To  whom  they  trust  their  freedom  and  their  lives. 

Muza.    They  trust!  the  people!  God  assigns  the  charge !  . 

Kings  open  but  the  book  of  destiny 
And  read  their  names;  all  that  remains  for  them 
The  mystic  hand  from  time  to  time  reveals. 
Worst  of  idolaters !  idolater 
Of  that  refractory  and  craving  beast 
Whose  den  is  in  the  city !  at  thy  hand 
I  claim  our  common  enemy,  the  king." 

A    STATESMAN'S    CARES. 

"  0  destiny !  that  callest  me  alone, 
Hapless,  to  keep  the  toilsome  watch  of  state, 

*  See  the  ninth  volume  of  De  Quincey's  works  (Leaders  in  Literature),  pp.  326-332. 
The  closing  passage  affords  evidence  still  more  impressive  of  the  effect  produced  by 
this  tragedy  on  a  mind  of  no  ordinary  character.  "  After  all  has  been  done  which 
intellectual  power  could  do  since  JEschylus,  and  since  Milton  in  his  Satan,  no  embodi- 
ment of  the  Promethean  situation,  none  of  the  Promethean  character,  fixes  the  atten- 
tive eye  upon  itself  with  the  same  secret  feeling  of  fidelity  to  the  vast  archetype,  as 
Mr.  Landor's  Count  Julian.  There  is  in  this  modern  aerolith  the  same  jewelly  lustre, 
which  cannot  be  mistaken;  the  same  non  imitabile  fulgor  ;  and  the  same  character  of 
'  fracture  '  or  '  cleavage,'  as  mineralogists  speak,  for  its  beaming  iridescent  grandeur, 
redoubling  under  the  crash  of  misery.  The  color  and  the  coruscation  are  the  same 
when  splintered  by  violence;  the  tones  of  the  rocky  harp  are  the  same  when  swept  by 
sorrow.  There  is  the  same  spirit  of  heavenly  persecution  against  his  enemy,  persecu- 
tion that  would  have  hung  upon  his  rear,  and  burned  after  him  to  the  bottomless  pit, 
though  it  had  yawned  for  both;  there  is  the  same  gulf  fixed  between  the  possibilities 
of  their  reconciliation;  the  same  immortality  of  resistance,  the  same  eternity  of 
abysmal  sorrow.  Did  Mr.  Landor  consciously  cherish  this  yEschylean  ideal  in  compos- 
ing Count  Julian  f    I  know  not :  there  it  is." 


172  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^s-i"1 

Painful  to  age,  unnatural  to  youth, 
Adverse  to  all  society  of  friends, 
Equality,  and  liberty,  and  ease, 
The  welcome  cheer  of  the  unbidden  feast, 
The  gay  reply,  light,  sudden,  like  the  leap 
Of  the  young  forester's  unbended  bow, 
But,  above  all,  to  tenderness  at  home, 
And  sweet  security  of  kind  concern, 
Even  from  those  who  seem  most  truly  ours." 

A    CHARACTER. 

"  He  was  brave,  and  in  discourse 
Most  voluble;  the  masses  of  his  mind 
Were  vast,  but  varied ;  now  absorbed  in  gloom, 
Majestic,  not  austere;  now  their  extent 
Opening  and  waving  in  bright  levity  .  .  ." 

PERSECUTION    AND    ITS    VICTIMS. 

"  Although  a  Muza  sent  far  underground, 
Into  the  quaiTy  whence  the  palace  rose, 
His  mangled  prey,  climes  alien  and  remote 
Mark  and  record*  the  pang.     While  overhead 
Perhaps  he  passes  on  his  favorite  steed, 
Less  heedful  of  the  misery  he  inflicts 
Than  of  the  expiring  sparkle  from  a  stone, 
Yet  we,  alive  or  dead,  nave  fellow-men 
If  ever  we  have  served  them,  who  collect 
From  prisons  and  from  dungeons  our  remains, 
And  bear  them  in  their  bosom  to  their  sons. 
Man's  only  relics  are  his  benefits; 
These,  be  there  ages,  be  there  worlds,  between, 
.  Retain  him  in  communion  with  his  kind: 

Hence  is  our  solace,  our  security, 
Our  sustenance,  till  heavenly  truth  descends, 
Covering  with  brightness  and  beatitude 
The  frail  foundations  of  these  humbler  hopes, 
And,  like  an  angel  guiding  us,  at  once 
Leaves  the  loose  chain  and  iron  gate  behind." 

CHRISTIAN    SANCTIONS. 

"  Is  any  just  or  glorious  act  in  view, 
Your' oaths  forbid  it :  is  your  avarice, 
Or,  if  there  be  such,  any  viler  passion 
To  have  its  giddy  range  and  to  be  gorged, 
It  rises  over  all  your  sacraments, 
A  hooded  mystery,  holier  than  they  all." 

GUILT. 

"  Guilt  hath  pavilions,  but  no  privacy." 

PEACE. 

"  Peace  is  throughout  the  land :  the  various  tribes 
Of  that  vast  region  sink  at  once  to  rest, 
Like  one  wide  wood  when  every  wind  lies  husht." 

MUZA's    SON    DESCRIBES    RODERIGO'S    FALL. 

"  There  is,  I  hear,  a  poor  half-ruined  cell 
In  Seres,  whither  few  indeed  resort. 
Green  are  the  walls  within,  green  is  the  floor 


JET.  30-39.]  THE    TRAGEDY    OF    COUNT    JULIAN.  173 

And  slippery  from  disuse ;  for  Christian  feet 

Avoid  it,  us  half  holy,  half  accurst. 

Still  in  its  dark  recess  fanatic  Sin 

Abases  to  the  ground  his  tangled  hair, 

And  servile  scourges  and  reluctant  groans 

Roll  o'er  the  vault  uninterruptedly, 

Till  (such  the  natural  stillness  of  the  place) 

The  very  tear  upon  the  damps  below 

Drops  audible,  and  the  heart's  throb  replies. 

There  is  the  idol  maid  of  Christian  creed, 

And  taller  images  whose  history 

I  know  not  nor  inquired.     A  scene  of  blood, 

Of  resignation  amid  mortal  pangs, 

And  other  things  exceeding  all  belief. 

Hither  the  aged  Opas  of  Seville 

Walkt  slowly,  and  behind  him  was  a  man 

Barefooted,  bruised,  dejected,  comfortless, 

In  sackcloth;  the  white  ashes  on  his  head 

Dropt  as  he  smote  his  breast ;  he  gathered  up, 

Replaced  them  all,  groaned  deeply,  lookt  to  heaven, 

And  held  them  like  a  treasure  with  claspt  hands." 

julian's  described  by  the  same. 

"  Behold  him,  once  so  potent,  still  so  brave, 
So  calm,  so  self-dependent  in  distress ; 
I  marvel  at  him:  hardly  dare  I  blame 
When  I  behold  him  fallen  from  so  high, 
And  so  exalted  after  such  a  fall. 
Mighty  must  that  man  be,  who  can  forgive 
A  man  so  mighty;  seize  the  hour  to  rise, 
Another  never  comes:  0  say,  my  father! 
Say,  '  Julian,  be  my  enemy  no  more.' 
He  fills  me  with  a  greater  awe  than  e'er 
The  field  of  battle,  with  himself  the  first, 
When  every  flag  that  waved  along  our  host 
Droopt  down  the  staff,  as  if  the  very  winds 
Hung  in  suspense  before  him.     Bid  him  go 
And  peace  be  with  him,  or  let  me  depart. 
Lo !  like  a  God,  sole  and  inscrutable, 
He  stands  above  our  pity." 

Resuming  Landor's  correspondence  with  Southey,  it  will  now  be 
seen  in  what  circumstances  this  poem  was  composed,  what  varieties 
of  alteration  it  underwent,  and  what  throes  of  labor  and  enjoyment, 
doubt  and  encouragement,  hope  and  despair,  attended  the  successive 
stages  of  its  production. 

The  first  allusion  to  it  is  in  a  letter  of  July,  1810,  when  Landor 
had  heard  from  Southey  that  he  was  beginning  a  poem  on  Roderick. 

"  Among  a  dozen  unfinished  things,  I  have  somewhere  about  the  third 
of  a  tragedy,  the  subject  of  which  is  Count  Julian.  I  represent  him  as  the 
most  excellent  and  the  most  patient  of  all  earthly  beings,  till  the  violation 
of  his  daughter.  When  he  hears  the  narrative  of  this,  or  rather  narratives, 
for  there  are  three,  the  inwards  of  his  heart  develop  themselves.  I  have 
chosen  that  three  different  persons  should  describe  to  him  the  events  that 
had  taken  place,  both  for  the  sake  of  variety  and  extent :  a  father  and  son, 
his  friend  and  Florinda's  lover,  and  a  natural  daughter  of  Eoderigo,  known 
at  present  only  as  the  early  confidante  and  companion  of  Florinda,  and 
beloved  by  Count  Julian.  I  left  off  this  and  began  another  on  Ferrante 
and  Griulio,  natural  sons  of  the  Duke  of  Ferrara,  half-brothers  of  Cardinal 


174  BATH.    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  '^-z"'' 

Ippolito  di  Este.     But  I  left  off  making  cobwebs,  for  I  felt  no  anxiety  to 
catch  flies.    If  I  had  finished  Count  Julian,  he  would  have  landed  in  Spain 

within  a  few  hours  of  the  first  intelligence  of  his  calamity  ;  for  the  Moorish 
army  was  investing  Ceuta  both  by  sea  and  land,  and  had  only  to  sail  a< 
He  would  have  taken  Roderigo  prisoner  during  an  engagement  in  the 
night,  would  have  forced  him  on  board  a  vessel,  and  have  exacted  no  more 
than  his  oath  to  pass  the  remainder  of  his  days  in  penitence  at  the  Holy 
Sepulchre.  If  I  had  written  down  all  I  composed  in  my  walks,  I  should 
perhaps  have  finished  half.  But  I  cannot  sit  to  write  anything,  and  what- 
ever I  propose  to  do,  I  leave  undone.  This  argues  a  most  deplorable  imbe- 
cility of  mind,  such  as  never  can  happen  but  irom  an  uninterrupted  series 
of  vexations  and  disappointments." 

The  reader  sees,  of  course,  how  different  was  this  proposed  execu- 
tion of  the  piece  from  that  which  he  adopted.  The  theme  he  had 
chosen  shook  his  friend  a  little  at  first ;  but  soon  came  the  frank  and 
generous  praise.  Southey  thought  the  conception  of  the  Count  very 
fine  and  original  :  his  own,  on  the  contrary,  imputing  no  grandeur  of 
mind  to  him,  but  a  great  deal  to  bis  daughter.  Not  until  November, 
writing  from  Bath,  does  Landor  refer  again  to  his  tragedy,  with  char- 
acteristic account  of  bow  he  had  been  writing  it ;  and  the  rough  draft 
then  enclosed  of  what  he  meant  for  its  very  last  scene,  sketched 
before  the  first  scene  of  the  first  act  was  completed,  is  here  given 
with  the  letter  because  of  its  agreement  in  feeling,  but  entire  \mlike- 
ness  in  detail,  to  the  scene  as  subsequently  altered  and  printed.  It 
begins  when  Julian  has  been  told  of  the  murder  of  his  sons. 

"  One  evening,  as  I  returned  from  the  concert,  I  wrote  down  a  speech  for 
my  tragedy  of  Count  Julian.  I  am  happy  we  take  such  opposite,  or  rather 
such  distant  ground  ;  for  if  I  came  too  near  you,  it  would  avail  me  little  to 
be  intrenched  up  to  the  teeth.  My  magnificent  plan  is  now  totally  changed. 
I  had  made  gome  line  speeches,  really  and  truly;  but,  alas,  I  rejected  them 
all  because  they  were  fine  speeches.  I  am  a  man  who  semper  ad  eventwn 
festinat;  and  although  I  have  not  more  than  about  four  hundred  verses 
that  will  remain  on  the  permanent  establishment  and  do  duty,  yet  I  have 
finished  the  last  scene.     Here  it  is.     I  will  write  it  as  legibly  as  I  can. 

'  Julian  (after  a  pause).     I  will  not  weep  —  pity  and  joy  and  pride 
Soften  me  and  console  me.     (Pause.)    Are  they  dead? 

Mii~.ii.    Yes,  and  unsepulchred. 

Julian.  Nor  wept  nor  seen 

By  any  kindred  and  fax-following  eye?  (Pause.) 

O  children,  ye  are  happy.  Ye  have  lived 
Of  heart  nnconquerea,  honor  unimpaired, 
And  died,  true  Spaniards,  loyal  to  the  last. 

M'i.:a.     Away  with  him! 

Julian.  Slaves !  not  before  I  lift 

My  voice  to  heaven  and  man:  though  enemies 
Surround  me,  and  nunc  else,  yet  other  men 
And  other  times  shall  hear:  the  agony 
Of  soul,  the  wheel  th:it  racks  the  heart,  is  heard. 
Nature,  amidst  her  BOlitndes,  recoils 

At  the  dread  sound,  nor  knows  what  she  repeats. 
The  cities  -well  with  it.    The  villager 
I!    ieya  with  fallen  pride  his  infanta'  lore. 

I  he  element  We  hreafhe  will  scatter  it. 

The  ministers  of  heaven,  presiding  o'er  them, 


/ET.  30-*g.]  THE  TRAGEDY  OF  COUNT  JULIAN.  175 

Breathe  it !     And  none  dares  dream  whence  it  arose. 
From  prisons  and  from  dungeons  mortals  hear 
Expiring  truth,  uor  curse  repentant  crime. 

Enter  a  Messenger. 

M.     Thy  wife,  Count  Julian  — 

Julian  (afraid).  Pause !  — 

j/.  —  is  dead. 

Julian.  Adieu, 

Earth !  and  the  humblest  of  all  earthly  hope, 
To  hear  of  comfort,  though  to  find  it  vain. 
0  soother  of  mv  hours,  while  I  beheld 
The  light  of  day,  and  thine !     Adieu,  adieu ! 
0  my  lost  child,  thou  livest  yet  —  in  shame ! 

0  agony  past  utterance !  past  thought ! 

That  throwest  death,  like  some  light  idle  thing, 
With  all  its  terrors,  into  dust  and  air,  — 

1  will  endure  thee,  —  for  I  see  again 
My  natal  land,  and  cover  it  with  woe.' 

When  Count  Julian  says  to  the  messenger,  Pause  !  he  says  it  in  great  vehe- 
mence and  distraction,  as  if  he  apprehended  the  same  outrage  as  had  dis- 
honored his  daughter. 

"  I  have  one  passage  which  is  better  than  this,  and  only  one  of  any  great 
extent.     I  will  now  give  you  a  specimen  of  the  old  leaven  :  — 

'  Opns.     I  never  yet  have  seen  where  long  success 
Hath  followed  him  who  warred  upon  his  king. 

Julian.     Because  the  virtue  that  inflicts  the  stroke 
Dies  with  him,  and  the  rank  ignoble  heads 
Of  plundering  factions  soon  unite  again, 
And,  prince-protected,  share  the  spoil  in  peace.' 

"  I  sometimes  rise  into  too  high  a  key,  but  I  have  an  instinctive  horror 
of  declamation." 

Replying  in  December,*  Southey  tells  his  friend  that  he  is  not  sure 
he  does  wisely  in  rejecting  fine  speeches  from  his  tragedy,  and  re- 
marks of  the  speech  of  Julian  above,  given  as  a  specimen  of  the  old 
leaven,  that  it  seems  to  him  perfectly  in  character,  such  sort  of  rea- 
soning being  of  the  essence  of  passion.  The  concluding  scene  he 
thinks  very  fine,  though  he  loses  some  of  its  force  from  want  of  know- 
ing precisely  the  situation.     One  line,  where  the  villager 

"  Honeys  with  fallen  pride  his  infants'  lore," 

he  does  not  yet  understand.  But,  as  in  Gebir  he  used  to  read  over 
difficult  passages  till  the  meaning  flashed  upon  him,  perhaps  by  to- 
morrow he  shall  feel  the  purport  of  this.  The  action  of  his  own 
poem,  he  adds,  does  not  begin  till  Landor's  has  finished,  and  he 
encloses  and  explains  its  opening  sections.  Landor  meanwhile,  at  the 
end  of  the  same  month,  had  been  sending  further  news  of  Julian, 
when,  in  the  midst  of  his  letter,  that  of  Southey  with  its  enclosures 
arrived.  He  has  now  altogether  discarded  the  plan  first  chosen,  and 
has  concluded  his  first  act  on  the  new  plan. 

"  I  have  completed  my  first  act  of  Count  Julian.  I  believe  I  have  not  a 
syllable  to  alter ;  but  who  knows  that,  so  early  in  the  business  ?     Has  no- 

*  It  is  perhaps  not  necessary  again  to  remark  that  what  is  quoted  here  of  Southey's 
from  the  correspondence  will  not  be  found  in  his  Lift  or  Letters. 


17G  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONT.  ^s-il"' 

body  ever  chosen  Count  Julian  for  the  subject  of  a  tragedy  ?  Not  that  I 
care,  —  I  find  that  Allien  has  not.  I  shall  reject  the  greater  part  of  what  I 
wrote  long  ago.  I  cannot  graft  anything  on  such  twigs.  I  am  abler  than 
I  was.  I  will  cut  all  my  figures  out  of  one  block,  under  one  conception  of 
their  characters.  My  tragedy,  after  all,  will  have  many  defects;  but  I  did 
not  imagine  I  could  do  so  well  as  I  have  done.  The  popularis  aura,  though 
we  are  ashamed  or  unable  to  analyze  it,  is  requisite  for  the  health  and 
growth  of  genius.  .  .  .*  I  believe  I  am  the  first  man  who  ever  wrote 
the  better  part  of  a  tragedy  in  a  concert-room.  Your  letter  has  come  this 
instant." 

He  explains  the  line  not  intelligible  to  Southey  ;  throws  out  a 
remark  worth  study  on  the  varieties  of  ancient  method  'in  poetical 
language  ;  and  closes  with  a  remark  on  the  opening  of  his  friend's 
Roderick. 

"  I  spared  as  poetry  what  I  had  once  rejected  as  tragedy.  'Honeys  with 
fallen  pride,'  &c. ;  the  villager  sweetens  his  children's  lesson  by  giving  them 
a  story  of  fallen  pride.  This  is  the  meaning;  but  nothing  ought  to  stand 
in  a  tragedy  of  which  one  is  obliged  to.  say,  This  is  the  meaning.  Added 
to  which,  all  views  of  country  life  should  be  excluded  by  the  turmoil  and 
deploiement  of  the  passions.  The  ancients  permitted  the  sense  to  sink 
deeper  below  the  surface  than  we  do.  Look  at  Pindar  and  Sophocles;  or 
take  Sophocles  alone.     His  language  is  generally  the  sacred  language  of 

] try   in   the   more   impassioned   parts,   though   in   the  shorter  and  more 

familiar  dialogue  it  is  nothing  more  than  the  conversation  of  ordinary  life. 
You  rise  in  energy  and  spirit  as  you  proceed ;  but  I  fear  that  the  portico 
will  be  too  large  for  the  temple,  if  you  propose  to  rear  your  structure  by 
the  ancient  rules.  Is  this  necessary  ?  May  not  a  poem  be  more  compre- 
hensive than  we  have  been  used  to  ?  " 

Then,  on  the  21st  of  January,  1811,  less  than  three  weeks  from 
the  time  when  the  first  act  had  been  completed,  writing  from  the 
South  Parade  in  Bath,  he  exultingly  announces  that  the  entire 
tragedy  is  done,  and  is  unable  to  suppress  the  hope  he  entertains 
that  it  may  even  prove  worthy  to  be  acted. 

"  I  have  finished  Count  Julian  this  evening.  It  cannot  be  well  done, 
Written  with  such  amazing  rapidity.  In  forty  hours  I  have  done  a  thousand 
lines.  Little  of  the  original  plan  is  retained,  but  about  three  hundred  verses 
are  unaltered,  or  nearly  so.  When  my  fingers  are  fairly  well  again,  I  will 
transcribe  tin'  whole  for  you,  that  the  eye  may  take  in  all  at  a  time.  ^  I 
ought  to  have  it  acted,  as  an  indemnity  for  the  sleeve  of  a  new  coat  which 
it  has  actually  made  threadbare.  Do  not  whisper  to  any  one  that  I  have 
written  a  tragedy.  My  name  is  composed  of  unlucky  letters.  But  if  you 
know  any  poor  devil  who  can  be  benefited  by  the  gift  of  one,  he  may  have 
it,  —  profit,  fame,  and  all;  and  what  is  more,  if  it  is  not  successful,  he  may 
say  it  is  mine.  At  all  events,  it  will  have  a  better  chance  with  him  than 
with  me.  It  would  be  impossible  for  me,  indeed,  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  such  people  as  managers  and  lord  chamberlains,  —  though,  as  the  latter 
is  a  person  of  rather  inure  consequence,  I  may  employ  him,  a  few  years  hence, 
to  empty.  .  .  I  used  to  believe  that  I  was  prodigiously  less  alinnit.  as  people 
call  it,  than  other  reading  and  writing  men  ;  and  I  can  hardly  bring  to  my 

*  A  touching  passage,  already  given  in  note,  p.  108,  is  omitted  here. 


JET. 


.39.]  THE   TRAGEDY   OP   COUNT   JULIAN.  177 


memory  an  instance  of  the  kind,  before  the  one  I  am  going  to  mention.  I  sent 
for  a  volume  of  Racine  (having  no  books)  from  the  library,  for  the  sole  pur- 
pose of  counting  what  number  of  verses  was  the  average  of  a  tragedy.  I 
was  writing  when  it  came ;  and  I  turned  over  his  messieurs  and  mesdames 
with  a  vacant  stare,  and  sent  the  volume  away  in  a  passion  without  the  least 
idea  what  had  induced  me  to  order  an  author  I  disliked  so  much.  Let  me, 
however,  do  justice  to  Racine.  I  have  a  reluctance  to  begin,  but  if  I  begin 
I  go  on.  His  great  fault  is,  every  tragedy  represents  the  same  state  of 
society,  of  whatever  country  the  characters  may  be,  or  in  whatever  age  the 
event.  In  a  few  of  our  higher  feelings  this  is  really  the  case;  but  the 
reasonings  and  moral  sentiments  of  this  poet,  and  above  all  the  mode  of 
expressing  them,  may  be  fairly  laid  down  between  the  Luxembourg  and  the 
Bois  de  Boulogne." 


'6' 


He  had  indeed  done  wonders  with  Count  Jtdian,  was  Southey's 
answer  ten  days  later.  He  had  never  himself  had  a  quicker  run  (in 
sailors'  phrase)  than  twelve  hundred  lines  in  a  week.  But  that  was 
nothing  to  Landor's  exploit ;  "  and  your  manner  involves  so  much 
thought  (excess  of  meaning  being  its  faidt),  that  the  same  number  of 
lines  must  cost  thrice  as  much  expense  of  passion  and  of  the  reason- 
ing faculty  to  you  as  they  would  to  me."  To  see  the  tragedy  as 
completed  he  is  now  all  impatience.  As  to  the  line  of  which  he  had 
asked  an  explanation,  the  meaning  had  flashed  upon  him,  as  he 
thought  it  would,  ten  minutes  after  the  letter  was  gone,  and  he  be- 
blockheaded  himself  according  to  his  deserts.*  As  to  the  notion  of 
putting  it  on  the  stage  he  says,  with  a  manifest  ignorance  of  the  art 
which  may  in  some  sort  excuse  his  not  less  obvious  contempt  for  its 
workmen  and  professors  :  "Of  managers  I  have  as  great  an  abhor- 
rence as  you  have  ;  but  if  your  play  be  fitted  for  representation, 
which  is  supposing  it  to  have  certain  vices  that  it  is  not  likely 
to  have,  and  to  be  without  certain  merits  which  are  sure  to  be  found 
there,  means  may  be  devised  of  putting  it  into  their  hands,  in  that 
sort  of  cavalier  manner  which  is  likely  to  have  more  effect  with  such 
fellows  than  any  other  conduct."  The  tragedy,  in  its  complete  form, 
reached  Southey  with  a  letter  of  the  date  5th  February,  1811. 

*  As  an  illustration  not  without  value  of  what  the  keenest  perception  may  here 
and  there  find  "  obscure"  in  Landor's  style,  I  give,  with  his  friend's  comment  and 
explanation,  another  passage  which  to  Southey  had  been  unintelligible.  It  is  where 
Opas  implores  Julian  that  it  should  never  be  his 

"  To  drag  the  steady  prop  from  failing  age, 
Break  the  young  stem  that  fondness  twines  around, 
Widen  the  solitude  of  lonely  sighs, 
And  scatter  to  the  broad  bleak  wastes  of  day 
The  ruins  and  the  phantoms  that  replied." 

The  last  two  lines  being  the  difficulty,  Landor  told  him  thereupon  that  between  them 
he  had  written 

"  Spectres  of  bliss  and  avenues  of  hope  " ; 

"  the  meaning  being  —  and  destroy  all  those  scenes  of  privacy  and  retirement  in 
which  the  wretched  raise  up  those  illusions  which  reply  and  are  correspondent  with 
their  distempered  imagination."  The  explanatory  line  nevertheless  has  failed  to  get 
into  the  printed  copies  of  the  play. 

12 


178  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTHONY.  ^fs^-I"' 

u  I  have  labored  clays  and  nights,  without  intermission  almost,  in  correct- 
ing my  tragedy.  I  send  it  you  transcribed.  Keep  the  copy,  for  I  never 
shall  have  another  fair  enough  to  print  from,  —  if  I  c7o  print.  My  rapidity 
in  the  composition  was  not  quite  so  great  as  I  led  you  to  imagine.  My 
hours  were  four  or  five  together,  after  long  walks,  in  which  I  brought  be- 
fore me  the  various  characters,  the  very  tones  of  their  voices,  their  forms, 
complexions,  and  step.  In  the  daytime  I  labored  and  at  night  unburdened 
my  mind,  shedding  many  tears.  People  have  laughed  at  Voltaire  for  weep- 
ing at  the  representation  of  his  own  tragedies.  For  my  own  part  I  believe 
he  never  was  half  so  sincere  on  any  other  occasion.  Thorough-paced  rascal 
and  true  Frenchman  as  he  was,  here  was  neither  deceit  nor  affectation." 

Not  disappointed  was  Southey  in  the  finished  Count  Julian.  After 
six  da}*s  he  acknowledged  it.  Too  Greek  for  representation  in  those 
days,  it  was  altogether  worthy  of  its  author.  The  thought  and  feel- 
ing frequently  condensed  in  a  single  line  was  unlike  anything  in 
modern  composition.  The  conclusion  too  was  Greek.  He  should 
have  known  the  play  to  be  Landor's  if  it  had  fallen  in  his  way  without 
a  name.  What  that  tvas,  poor  Rough's  had  only  tried  to  be.  Never 
was  a  character  more  finely  conceived  than  Julian.  The  picture  of 
his  seizing  the  horses  was  the  grandest  image  of  power  that  ever  poet 
produced,  and  in  the  very  first  rank  of  sublimity.*  Nor  could  he 
have  placed  the  story  in  a  finer  dramatic  light.  Of  course  he  must 
print  the  tragedy.  It  would  not  have  many  more  admirers  than 
Gebir,  but  they  would  be  of  the  same  class  and  cast  ;  and  with  Gebir 
it  woidd  be  known  hereafter,  when  all  the  rubbish  of  their  generation 
should  have  been  swept  away.  And  what,  was  asked  in  conclusion, 
would  he  do  next  1  "I  cannot  reconcile  myself  to  the  abandonment 
of  the  Phocceans,  of  which  the  fragments  are  so  masterly." 

This,  at  the  close  of  February,  1811,  brings  grateful  reply  from 
Landor.  First  he  sends  several  corrections ;  says  there  was  an  em- 
barrassed sentence  at  the  end,  to  which  after  vast  labor  he  has  given 
pliability;  and  presents  the  last  brief  scene  in  an  unquestionably  im- 
proved form,  as  will  be  observed  by  comparison  of  the  version  given 
in  these  letters  with  that  in  the  printed  play.  Then  he  continues  : 
incidentally  remarking  on  two  subjects,  Sertorius  and  Spartacus,  from 
which  Southey  had  been  anxious  that  he  should  make  choice  for  a 
poem,  unless  he  should  prefer  to  go  on  with  the  Phocaans  :  — 

"I  finished  this  tragedy  only  because  I  thought  it  disgraceful  to  have 
formed  SO  many  plans  and  to  have  completed  none.  Indeed.  I  had  some 
doubt  whether  I  could  write  a  tragedy,  a  thing  which  I  have  always  con- 
sidered as  a  desideratum  in  modern  literature.  For  the  Harpies  have  left 
their  filth  among  even  the  rich  feasts  in  the  theatre  of  Shakespeare,  and 
Otway  is  an  unclean  beast.  Surely  an  age  that  can  endure  the  vile  and 
despicable  insipidities  of  Addison's  Cato  may  listen  to  C<>»/>f  Julian.  I 
wish  it  were  possible  for  me,  without  a  name,  to  bring  it  forward.  I  care 
not  what  is  omitted  in  the  representation.  The  plan  and  characters  are  well 
proportioned,  which  is  sure  to  please  people,  though  they  know  not  why. 

*  See  ante,  p.  168. 


JET.  30-39.]  THE   TRAGEDY    OP   COUNT   JULIAN.  179 

The  events  of  the  first  act  lead  naturally  to  the  last,  and  every  scene  is  in- 
strumental to  the  catastrophe.  Twice  I  struck  out  and  replaced  the  verses, 
'  0  happy  days,'  &c*  Such  feelings  and  reflections  occur  in  Sophocles  and 
Euripides,  but  generally  in  the  choruses.  I  wanted  them  as  a  demi-tint,  to  use 
the  expression  of  another  art,  to  surround  and  set  off  Count  Julian.  It  re- 
lieves us  from  the  agonies  of  the  preceding  scene,  and  renders  him  an  object 
of  the  most  powerful  sympathy  as  well  as  of  the  highest  admiration.  How 
different  from  the  man  who  is  forced  to  become  the  scourge  of  his  country ! 

"  I  never  could  have  made  the  PhocwaAs  a  good  poem.  I  began  in  a 
wrong  key  for  English  verse.  I  had  written  several  hundred  lines  in  Latin, 
but  I  threw  them  into  the  fire  at  the  bad  reception  that  English  volume  met 
with.  If  I  had  not,  my  Latin  poem  of  '  Phocaeis '  would  have  been  the 
sheet-anchor  of  my  poetical  fame,  and  the  labor  of  this  very  hour,  probably. 
It  would  have  contained  very,  very  little  of  what  is  now  in  the  English. 

"  I  admire  the  character  of  Sertorius  more  than  any  other  Kornan  what- 
soever; but  the  Eomans  are  the  most  anti-picturesque  and  anti-poetical 
people  in  the  universe.  No  good  poem  ever  was  or  ever  will  be  written 
about  them.  The  North  opens  the  most  stupendous  region  to  genius. 
What  a  people  were  the  Icelanders !  what  divine  poets !  Even  in  the 
clumsy  version  of  William  Herbert  they  strike  my  imagination  and  heart 
differently  from  others.  Except  Pindar's,  no  other  odes  are  so  high-toned. 
I  have  before  me,  only  in  the  translation  of  Mallet's  Northern  Antiquities, 
the  ode  of  Regnor  Lodbrog,  the  corrections  of  which  I  remember.  What 
a  vile  jargon  is  the  French !  '  Nous  nous  sommes  battu  a  coups  d'epees ' !  1 
There  is  one  passage  I  delight  in.  '  Ah,  if  my  sons  knew  the  sufferings  of 
their  father,  &c,  &c.  — for  I  gave  a  mother  to  my  children  from  whom  they 
inherit  a  valiant  hearV  Few  poets  could  have  expressed  this  natural  and 
noble  sentiment ;  few  are  aware  that  it  is  the  highest  of  all  virtues  to  choose 
such  a  woman  as  may  confer  a  good  form  and  good  dispositions  on  her 
progeny." 

This  striking  letter,  another  proof  of  the  invariable  effect  of  the  old 
Northern  fictions  on  poets  and  men  of  genius,  was  followed  after  a 
few  days  by  siindry  fillings  up  for  the  last  act  of  Julian,  to  come  im- 
mediately on  the  announcement  made  to  the  hero  of  the  death  of  his 
sons. 

"  The  tragedy  is  now  sixteen  hundred  lines  long,  —  too  much  I  fear ;  but 
when  I  recollect  first  one  thing  and  then  another  which  I  have  omitted,  I 
cannot  help  saying  of  one  or  two  favorites,  '  I  have  thrown  a  pearl  away 
richer  than  all  its  tribe.'  But  I  was  afraid  of  the  verses  above.f  I  fancied 
the  tenderness  of  them  was  almost  equal  to  what  he  felt  for  his  daughter. 
This  would  have  been  wrong.  I  see  it  plainly,  now  I  can  bring  the  whole 
into  one  view,  and  at  some  considerable  distance  from  the  period  of  writing 
it.  His  feelings  were  inadequately  and  improperly  expressed  before.  I  made 
him  betray  some  anger  and  resentment  at  the  idea  that  Muza  had  caused 

*  See  ante,  p.  169. 

t  The  speech  is  that  beautiful  one  in  which,  with  pathetic  yearning  to  his  favor- 
ite, called  after  him,  he  contrasts  the  characters  of  his  sons:  — 

"  Ermenegild!  thou  mightest,  sure,  have  lived! 
A  father's  name  awoke  no  dread  of  thee! 
Only  thy  mother's  early  bloom  was  thine ! 
There  dwelt  on  Julian's  brow  .  .  .  thine  was  serene  .  .  . 
The  brightened  clouds  of  elevated  souls, 


180  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^x&^i"1' 

the  death  of  his  wife.*  Now,  the  keeping  is  good,  and  I  have  only  to 
scrutinize  the  words  and  retain  the  verses,  which  I  do.  I  have  added  one 
touch  of  vanity  and  selfishness,!  of  that  hardness  which  is  so  frequently 
superinduced  on  the  female  character  when  the  bloom  of  early  fondness  is 
blown  off." 

On  the  12th  of  March  Southey  answered.  Too  Greek  for  represen- 
tation as  he  thought  the  tragedy  to  be,  he  seems  nevertheless  to  have 
gravely  entertained  his  friend's  manifestly  eager  desire  to  have  it 
acted.  First  he  remarks  upon  the  changes  and  interpolations,!  and 
in  particular  says  of  the  speech  last  sent,  upon  Julian's  sons,  that  it 
is  "  a  grand  passage,  —  a  mixture  of  the  pathetic  and  the  lofty  and 
the  profound,  which  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  other  living  writer, 
and  in  very  few  of  those  who  are  immortal " ;  next  he  says  that 
"  there  is  nothing  in  the  play  so  obscure  as  the  last  line  and  a  half 
will  be "  ;  and  then  he  talks  of  the  stage.  The  chance  for  it,  he 
shrewdly  remarks,  would  lie  in  John  Kemble's  vanity ;  and  he  thinks 
that  through  Longman,  who  has  some  property  in  Covent  Garden, 
backed  by  a  note  from  himself,  he  can  at  least  insure  a  reading  from 
the  actor-manager  who  would  doubtless  bring  it  out  if  he  thought  it 
calculated  to  display  his  talents,  though  as  for  "  understanding  the 
power  and  might  and  majesty  that  the  tragedy  manifests,"  this  was 
not  to  be  expected  from  a  man  who,  after  Shakespeare,  could  act  in 
such  trash  as  Cato  and  the  Revenge :  the  last  a  play  which  had  so 
turned  his  stomach  on  seeing  it  nine  vears  ago  that  he  verily  believed 
he  should  never  set  foot  in  a  theatre  again.  But  was  it,  after  all, 
worth  trial  ]  Less  from  its  want  of  pageantry  than  because  of  its 
excellences,  he  very  much  doubted  its  success  ;  and  for  himself  he 
did  not  think  he  could  ever  consent  to  submit  to  the  decision  of  such 
a  crew  as  the  London  dramatic  critics  a  production  that  had  cost  him 
thought  and  passion,  blushes  of  cheek  and  throbs  of  head  and  quiet 
tears.     However,  he  was  ready  to  send  the  play  to  Kemble,   and 

Feared  by  the  most  below :  those  who  lookt  up 
Saw  at  their  season  in  clear  signs  advance 
Kapturous  valor,  calm  solicitude, 
All  that  impatient  youth  would  press  from  age, 
Or  sparing  age  sigh  and  detract  trom  youth: 
Hence  was  his  fall!  my  hope!  myself!  my  Julian! " 

*  See  ante,  p.  175. 

t  This  i<  where  Egilona,  whose  heart  had  softened  to  Tioderigo  on  hearing  of  his  last 
humiliation,  hardens  again  at  hearing  that  no  word  but  that  of  penance  had  fallen  from 
him :  — 

"  If  he  had  only  called  upon  my  name, 
Seeking  my  pardon  ere  he  lookt  to  heaven's, 
I  could  have  —  no !  he  thought  not  once  on  me !  " 
X  The  reader  who  compares  the  last  scene  as  given  in  Landor's  letter  at  pp.  174, 175, 
with  the  same  Bcene  as  divided  into  two  in  the  printed  play,  will  understand  what 
these  were;  and,  besides  that  named  in  the  text,  I  may  subjoin  these:  — 

"  The  agony 
Of  an  opprest  and  of  a  bursting  heart 
No  violence  can  silence:  at  its  voice 
The  trumpet  is  o'crpowered,  and  glory  mute, 
And  peace  and  war  .  .  ." 


JET.  30-39.]  THE   TRAGEDY    OF    COUNT   JULIAN.  181 

manage  all  the  correspondence  with  him ;  and  failing  him,  he  thought 
he  might  send  it  with  yet  a  better  chance,  through  Walter  Scott,  to 
the  Edinburgh  theatre. 

Landor  promptly  replied,  after  two  days'  interval,  first,  that 
Southey's  remark  on  the  last  lines  of  the  tragedy*  was  perfectly 
just.  He  might  -explain  them ;  but  as  he  could  explain  them  in 
two  ways,  and  was  not  able  to  recollect  his  precise  feeling  at  the 
moment  of  writing  them,  it  was  proper  they  should  be  altered. 
He  would  now  say, 

"  I  will  endure  thee !  I  have  seen  again 
My  natal  land,  and  covered  it  with  woe ! 
What  can  I  not,  what  should  I  not,  endure !  " 

That  idea,  he  thinks,  would  open  a  new  source  of  pathos.  Then,  as 
to  the  stage,  he  makes  an  interesting  and  noteworthy  comment.  Not 
until  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  the  reader  at  all  conversant  with 
such  matters  will  remember,  this  disgrace  of  the  lobbies  was  wiped 
out  by  Mr.  Macready,  the  last  of  the  really  great  actors  of  our  gen- 
eration. 

"  Kemble  may  be  tried.  It  really  does  appear  to  me,  on  recollection, 
that  Count  Julian  is  a  character  suited  to  him  ;  bu,t  I  have  seen  very  little 
of  Kemble.  You  would  hardly  imagine  it,  I  have  not  seen  a  play  acted  a 
dozen  times  in  my  life.  I  am  not  remarkably  pure  or  chaste ;  but  to  hear 
generous  and  pathetic  sentiments  and  to  behold  glorious  and  grand  actions 
amidst  the  vulgar,  hard-hearted  language  of  prostitutes  and  lobby-loungers, 
not  only  takes  away  all  my  pleasure  by  the  evident  contrast,  but  seizes  me 
with  the  most  painful  and  insuperable  disgust.  Added  to  which,  I  cannot 
restrain  my  tears,  sometimes  at  even  an  indifferent  piece.  It  is  curious  that 
we  should  be  more  anxious  to  conceal  our  best  passions  than  our  worst. 
Our  pity  and  love  are  profaned  by  the  most  casual  glance ;  but  one  would 
imagine  our  hatred  and  vengeance  were  pro  bono  publico.  I  think  now  of 
the  public  taste  precisely  as  I  did  when  I  wrote  the  first  preface  to  Gehir. 
That  preface  would  not  serve  for  a  second  edition.  It  was  the  language  of 
a  man  who  had  not  tried  the  public,  and  who  threw  down  the  full  measure 
of  his  expectations.  If  Count  Julian  is  endured,  it  will  be  because  it  is 
different  from  anything  of  the  day,  and  not  from  any  excellence.  If  Kemble 
will  not  act  it,  I  would  not  submit  it  to  .inferior  actors." 

Thereupon,  writing  early  in  May,  1811,  Southey  told  Landor  he 
was  going  up  to  London,  and  would  carry  with  him  the  tragedy  for 
Kemble.  He  ought  to  jump  at  it  if  he  knew  what  was  really  excel- 
lent in  dramatic  composition  •  but  Southey  did  not  expect  that  from 
him,  and  Landor  might  rely  at  least  on  "the  man's  being  made  to 
understand  that  no  favor  was  solicited,  the  obligation  being  quite  as 
much  on  the  Kemble  part  as  on  theirs.  But  at  this  point  Landor 
seems  suddenly  to  have  gathered  from  Southey's  tone,  what  he  ought 
clearly  to  have  discovered  much  earlier,  how  vain  was  any  hope  from 
that  quarter ;  and  the  eagerness  so  suddenly  expressed  for  the  stage 
was  now  just  as  hastily  withdrawn.  "  Count  Julian  shall  never  lie 
at  the  feet  of  Kemble.     It  must  not  be  offered  for  representation.     I 

*  These  remained  still  as  in  the  first  draft,  ante,  p.  175. 


182  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  'ritos-i"1' 

will  print  it,  and  immediately.     Give  me  your  advice  how  this  is  to 
be  done." 

Southey's  advice  was  ready,  though  hardly  what  Landor  meant  by 
his  question.  "  Print  the  tragedy  in  a  volume,"  he  wrote  early  in 
June,  "  with  boarded  covers,  not  as  a  pamphlet  to  be  dog-leaved." 
Scott  also,  he  told  him,  was  writing  on  Roderigo  ;  and  if  the  old 
Goth  ever  got  any  literary  news  in  the  other  world,  it  would  surprise 
him  to  hear  what  work  he  had  made  for  the  poets  of  the  nineteenth 
century  !  * 

While  yet,  however,  that  letter  was  on  its  way,  Landor  had  written 
three  or  four  more  to  his  friend,  each  with  its  changes,  interpolations, 
additions,  or  suggestions.  Whether  to  admit  the  fresh  lines  that  rise 
to  his  mind  he  is  frequently  doubtful  ;  and  the  doubt  mostly  ends  in 
exclusion.  But  some  there  are  that  haunt  him,  so  that  he  cannot 
decide ;  and  two  or  three,  apparently  unimportant,  it  had  cost  him  a 
day  each  on  an  average  to  alter.  The  second  scene  of  the  third  act 
he  had  found  it  necessary  to  enlarge ;  and  instead  of  officers  without 
names  he  had  introduced  Osma  and  Ilamiro.  By  augmenting  the 
same  scene  he  had  given  time  for  the  return  of  Sisabert  and  Opas,  as 
well  as  reason  and  opportunity  for  the  departure  of  Ramiro  and  Osma, 
to  whose  characters  he  had  moreover  given  size  enough  for  some  dis- 
criminating touches.  "I  have  made,"  he  adds,  "many  improve- 
ments"; and  he  instances  some  new  lines  descriptive  of  Egilona.f 
Southey  would  observe  also  that  he  had  slightly  altered  the  last  line. 
Does  he  now  like  it  better  1 

"  No,  not  yet,  not  quite,"  Southey  at  once  replied.  Those  con- 
cluding lines  were  not  yet  what  thty  should  be  ;  nor  would  Landor 
have  asked  for  a  further  judgment  if  they  had  been.  "  All  had  poets 
admire  all  that  they  write.  A  true  one  never  suspects  a  passage  of  his 
own  to  be  imperfect  without  cause.  His  suspicions  are  of  the  nature 
of  conscience."  But  the  passage  he  had  sent  descriptive  of  Egilona 
was  indeed  perfectly  Landorean  !  "  It  has  a  character  of  sublimity 
wholly  your  own,  and  of  that  kind  which  has  set  the  seal  of  immor- 
tality on  GebirJ"  Not  welcomcr  to  the  thirsty  grass  the  summer 
dews  and  rains,  than  to  Southey's  friend  his  ever  noble,  unstinting, 
unmisgiving  praise  ;  and  with  fresh  heart  he  labors  on,  adding, 
transcribing,   strengthening  everywhere. 

" I  have  had  enough  trouble  in  the  transcribing;  I  will  have  no  more. 
The  conclusion  never  pleased  me,  and  I  shall  pass  a  few  hours  agreeably 
enough  in  bringing  it  nearer  to  my  mind." 

He  had  scaled  his  letter,  but  opens  it  again  to  send  the  fresh  clos- 
ing lines,  which  he  thinks  have  something  of  a  moral,  —  a  thing  most 
critics  want. 

*  Writing  to  Scott  in  1812.  to  thank  him  for  his  Vision  of  Don  Roderick,  Southey  tells 
him :  "  I  Ikivc  a  tragedy  "I"  Lander's  in  my  desk,  of  which  <  fount  Julian  ia  the  hero;  it 
contain'-  -nine  of  the  finest  touches,  both  of  passion  and  poetry,  that  1  have  ever  seen." 

t  See  ante.  p.  168.  The  introduced  lines  are  those  beginning,  "  Negligent  as  the 
blossoms  of  the  field,"  to  the  close. 


MT.  30-39.]  THE    TRAGEDY    OF    COUNT   JULIAN.  183 

"  I  will  endure  thee,  —  I,  whom  heaven  ordained 
Thus  to  have  served  beneath  my  enemies, 
Their  conqueror,  thus  to  have  revisited 
My  native  laud  with  vengeance  and  with  woe." 

Still  this  does  not  satisfy  him  ;  and  the  letter  containing  it  had 
hardly  been  despatched  when  another  took  to  Southey  the  additional 
lines  as  they  now  stand. 

"  I  have  added  some  lines  for  the  conclusion,  more  dramatic  according  to 
modern  notions,  containing  one  stroke  more  of  Julian's  character.  He 
orders  the  guards  of  Muza  to  follow  him.  It  was  requisite  that  even  Muza, 
at  the  last,  should  acknowledge  his  superiority. 

'  Henceforward  shall  she  recognize  her  sons 
Impatient  of  oppression  or  disgrace, 
And  rescue  them  or  perish.     Let  her  hold 
This  compact,  written  with  her  blood  and  mine. 
Now  follow  me  .  .  .  but  [turning  round,  as  he  goes  out,  to  Muza]  tremble ! 

Years  shall  roll 
And  wars  rage  on,  and  Spain  at  last  be  free.' 

"  I  wrote  also  for  my  last  scene,  immediately  on  reading  your  letter,  after 
some  repressions,  these  lines  :  — 

'  Justice,  who  came  not  up  to  us  through  life, 
Loves  to  survey  our  likeness  on  our  tombs, 
When  rivalry,  malevolence,  and  wrath, 
And  every  passion  that  once  stormed  around, 
Is  calm  alike  without  them  and  within.'  " 

That  letter  was  written  in  the  middle  of  June ;  when  already,  after 
a  fashion  his  friend  had  not  dreamt  of,  he  had  been  acting  on 
Southey's  suggestion  about  the  printing  of  the  play.  The  result  was 
described  in  a  letter  from  Llanthony  on  the  25th  June,  1811  ;  and  a 
more  characteristic  one  does  not  appear  in  the  series. 

"  I  sent  Count  Julian  to  your  bookseller,  Mr.  Longman,  and  gave  him  to 
understand,  though  not  in  so  many  words,  as  people  say,  that  you  thought 
not  unfavorably  of  it.  I  would  have  been  glad  to  have  given  it  up  to  him 
for  half  a  dozen  copies ;  not  that  I  have  half  a  dozen  friends  who  know  any- 
thing of  poetry,  or  indeed  so  many  of  any  kind ;  but  I  wanted  half  a  dozen 
to  give  to  people  who  have  been  civil  to  me.  This  would  not  do.  I  then 
proposed  to  print  it  at  my  own  expense.  This  also  failed.  They  would 
have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  We  have  lately  had  cold  weather  here,  and 
fires.  On  receiving  the  last  letter  of  Mr.  Longman  to  this  purport,  I  com- 
mitted to  the  flames  my  tragedy  of  Ferranti  and  Giulio,  with  which  I  in- 
tended to  surprise  you,  and  am  resolved  that  never  verse  of  mine  hereafter 
shall  be  committed  to  anything  else.  My  literary  career  has  been  a  very 
curious  one.  You  cannot  imagine  how  I  feel  relieved  at  laying  down  its 
burden  and  abandoning  this  tissue  of  humiliations.  I  fancied  I  had  at  last 
acquired  the  right  tone  of  tragedy,  and  was  treading  down  at  heel  the  shoes 
ofAlfieri." 

At  all  this  Southey  is  overwhelmed  with  grief.  Why  such  a  man 
as  his  friend,  certain  as  he  must  be  of  the  sterling  value  of  his  poems, 
should  care  either  for  good  or  evil  report  of  them,  was  utterly  unac- 
countable to  Southey.  He  looked  upon  Gebir  as  he  did  upon  Dante's 
long  poem  in  the  Italian,  "  not  as  a  good  poem,  but  as  containing  the 


184  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  'f&s-il"' 

finest  poetry  in  the  language  "  ;  so  it  was  with  Julian ;  and  so  no 
doubt  it  was  with  the  play  he  had  so  provokingly  destroyed.  Could 
he  only  have  known  that  Landor  thought  of  offering  Count  Julian  to 
Longman,  ;i  word  from  himself  would  have  prevented  all  that  irrepa- 
rable mischief ! 

"  The  people  at  that  house  know  nothing  about  books  except  in  the  mere 
detail  of  trade;  and  the  only  thing  which  they  would  think  of  was,  that 
single  plays  did  not  sell  unless  they  were  represented.  And  because  these 
Paternoster  Row  men  have  acted  in  the  spirit  of  their  vocation,  you  have 
burnt  a  play  which  doubtless  contained  as  much  pure  ore  as  Julian,  and 
which  would  have  lived  as  long  as  the  language.  Zounds!  I  could  swear 
almost  as  vehemently  at  you  as  at  them  I  " 

This  was  written  from  London  ;  in  the  interval  before  returning  to 
Keswick,  Southey  and  his  wife  visited  Landor  at  Llanthony  ;  and 
September  was  the  date  of  Landor's  next  letter.  He  talks  of  the 
favorable  weather,  and  what  it  is  doing  for  the  land.  "  After  all  this, 
if  I  talk  of  my  tragedy,  I  shall  remind  you  of  the  lottery-men  in  the 
newspapers.  The  weather  has  most  certainly  made  several  verses 
grow  up  in  several  places,  and  occasioned  me  to  prune  some  of  the 
rankest  parts."  He  speaks  of  portions  recovered  from  his  holocaust 
of  Ferranti  and  Giulio  ;  and  closes  by  saying  that  if  Southey  could 
tell  him  of  any  bookseller  who  would  print  Count  Julian  without 
giving  him  any  more  trouble  than  might  arise  from  correcting  the 
sheets,  he  should  be  very  much  obliged. 

When  that  letter  arrived  at  Keswick,  Southey  tells  him  on  the 
10th  of  October,  both  the  Latin  and  English  Gebirswerc  on  his  table. 
He  had  been  putting  them  into  the  hands  of  Doctor  Gooch,  then  on  a 
visit  to  him  ;  which  was  sufficiently  expressing  his  opinion  of  Gooch, 
as  it  was  a  maxim  with  him  never,  except  in  the  unavoidable  way  of 
publication,  to  throw  pearls  before  swine.  The  doctor  had  left  that 
afternoon,  and  the  last  word  spoken  by  him  at  parting  was  an  en- 
treaty to  himself  to  entreat  Landor  to  write  another  poem.  He 
winds  up  by  saying  that  he  had  written  by  the  same  post  to  Murray, 
the  publisher  of  the  Quarterly,  in  order  that  no  time  might  be  lost 
about  the  tragedy.  The  residt  was  declared  in  a  note  dated  nine 
days  later. 

"Send  Count  Julian  as  soon  as  you  please  to  Mr.  Murray,  Fleet  Street, 
and  he  will  be  your  publisher.  I  told  him  that  I  should  recommend  it  to 
you  to  prinl  only  two  hundred  and  fifty  copies,  because  the  play  would  be 
highly  admired  by  the  few,  but  probably  not  popular;  being  too  good  for 
the  many.  In  the  latter  part  of  this  opinion  I  may  be  mistaken;  so  much 
the  better:   in  the  first  I  cannot." 

Landor  acted  <>n  this  suggestion  at  once;  and  in  his  next  letter,  at 
the  opening  of  1812,  he  is  in  the  midst  of  proofs  and  printing.  He 
forgets  whether  lie  had  mentioned  to  Southey  that  after  some  delib- 
eration he  rejected  the  name  of  Florinda  as  that  of  Julian's  outraged 
daughter. 


MT.  30-39.]  THE   TRAGEDY    OF    COUNT    JULIAN.  185 

"  It  is  absolutely  worse  than  Amanda  or  Musidora.  I  am  certain  that  in 
the  time  of  the  Goths  there  never  was  so  finical  a  perversion  of  a  Roman 
name.  I  have  substituted  Covilla.  It  is  said  that  the  city  so  named  was 
called  so  from  La  Cava ;  which,  by  the  way,  was  a  designation  given  after 
her  death.  If  Covilla  was  named  so  after  the  daughter  of  Count  Julian, 
that  probably  was  her  very  name,  without  any  change  or  derivation.  I 
have  said  something  of  this  kind  in  a  short  preface. 

"  Mr.  Murray  wrote  me  a  very  civil  letter  indeed.  He  prints  the  thing  in 
the  same  manner  as  Gebir.  I  have  added  another  fifty  to  the  number  of 
copies,  wishing  to  give  so  many  to  the  poor  fellow  who  desired  to  print  that 
poem,  and  suffered  for  his  temerity.  I  believe  he  sold  a  hundred  or  two, 
but  he  printed  five.  I  receive  a  sheet  every  week.  At  present  only  the 
first  has  reached  me,  but  I  expect  another  on  Monday.  Of  course  it  will 
not  appear  in  a  shorter  time  than  two  months  after  this.  If  you  have 
leisure  to  read  it  again,  you  will  find  that  I  have  polished  it  somewhat.  I 
have  reflected  more  on  it  than  on  Gebir,  and  my  critics  will  be  very  angry 
that  they  cannot  find  so  many  faults  in  it.  I  am  surprised  that  Upham  has 
not  sent  me  Mr.  Scott's  poem  yet.  However,  I  am  not  sorry.  I  feel  a  sort 
of  satisfaction  that  mine  is  gone  to  the  press  first,  though  there  is  little 
danger  that  we  should  think  on  any  subject  alike,  or  stumble  on  any  one 
character  in  the  same  track." 

Early  in  February,  1812,  Soutliey  received  the  printed  Count 
Julian  ;  and  most  fitly  shall  I  close  these  curious  critical  passages  by 
giving  the  substance  of  his  manly  letter.  It  was  a  work,  as  he 
believed,  sui  generis.  No  drama  to  which  it  could  be  compared  had 
ever  yet  been  written ;  and  none  ever  would  be,  except  it  were  by  the 
same  hand.  Landor  was  the  only  poet  whom  it  seemed  to  Southey 
impossible  to  imitate.  Milton's  language  and  structure,  Shake- 
speare's phraseology,  though  attempted  by  men  immeasurably  infe- 
rior, might  yet  be  so  resembled  as  infallibly  to  remind  of  the  proto- 
type ;  but  in  Gebir,  and  still  more  in  Count  Julian,  the  manner  was 
no  more  separable  from  the  matter  than  the  color  from  the  rainbow. 
The  form  seemed  incapable  of  subsisting  without  the  spirit.  And 
therefore  never  had  he  regretted  anything  so  much  as  the  play  which 
Landor  lately  destroyed,  —  except  the  lost  books  of  the  Faery  Queen; 
and  for  them  he  had  never  grieved  to  the  same  extent,  because  the 
evil  was  too  long  past  to  be  a  vexation  as  well  as  a  loss. 

Some  of  the  finest  passages  as  printed  he  found  to  be  new.  He 
spoke  of  the  picture  of  the  Spaniards  at  the  opening,  and  of  various 
passages  with  a  marked  local  coloring  in  them,*  as  evincing  of  what 
importance  it  was  for  a  poet  to  have  witnessed  his  own  scenery.  He 
singled  out  the  description  of  Julian  by  Hernando,  and  the  image  of 
the  eagle,  as  to  his  feeling  in  the  very  highest  degree  of  sublimity. 
The  concluding  scenes,  he  also  thought,  were  greatly  improved. 

What  then  would  be  the  reception  of  this  drama  1  With  the 
Athenians  for  its  audience,  Southey  could  have  told  the  author.  But 
being  what  they  were,  and  living  in  an  age  when  public  criticism 
upon  works  of  fine  literature  was  "  at  the  very  point  of  pessimism," 

*  The  reader  will  find  these,  ante,  pp.  137,  165,  166,  167,  &c. 


18G  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^Bos-xJ.11' 

he  could  only  guess  that  it  would  pass  silently ;  that  a  few  persons 
would  admire  it  with  all  th(?ir  hearts,  and  all  their  soul,  and  all  their 
strength  ;  hut  that  envy  and  her  companions  in  the  Litany  would  not 
hear  enough  to  induce  them  to  hlow  their  trumpets,  and  even  ahuse 
it  into  notoriety. 

And  thus,  by  a  hand  skilful  as  generous,  was  the  horoscope  of 
Count  Julian  cast,  and  its  fate  exactly  prefigured  ! 

VIII.    IN  POSSESSION  OF  THE  ABBEY. 

Between  Landor's  return  from  Spain  and  his  completion  of  Count 
Julian  three  years  had  passed,  and  personal  incidents  now  calling  for 
mention  had  occurred  in  the  interval. 

The  Staffordshire  estate,  which  had  been  .so  long  in  his  family,  and 
which  alone  became  absolutely  his  by  his  father's  death  (the  Warwick- 
shire estates  of  Ipsley  Court  and  Tachbrooke  not  descending  to  him 
until  the  death  of  his  mother),  fell  short  in  value  of  a  thousand  a 
year,  and  went  but  an  inconsiderable  way  to  the  purchase  of  an  es- 
tate with  an  estimated  annual  rental  of  more  than  three  thousand. 
But  after  the  failure  of  Loweswater  and  its  lake  he  had  set  his  heart 
on  Llanthony  and  its  abbey,  and  everything  had  to  give  way  to  his 
overpowering  desire  to  possess  it.  In  the  end  his  mother  consented 
to  sell  Tachbrooke,  the  smaller  of  her  two  estates,  to  enable  him  to 
buy  Llanthony,  on  condition  of  a  life  settlement  upon  her  from  the 
latter  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year.  What  she  thus  gave 
her  eldest  son  was  the  difference  between  that  amount  and  the  sum 
of  twenty  thousand  pounds,  for  which  Tachbrooke  sold;  but  she  im- 
posed only  the  further  condition  that  the  advowson  of  Colton  should 
be  surrendered  to  his  brother  Charles,  to  whom  he  had  already  pre- 
sented that  family  living.  An  act  of  Parliament  and  the  consent  of 
all  the  brothers  were  required  to  give  effect  to  these  arrangements; 
the  settlement  being  the  same  as  that  of  his  mother's  estates,  upon 
Landor  for  life  with  remainder  to  his  issue  and  that  of  his  brothers 
successively  in  tail  male.  The  act  was  also  to  enable  additional  sums 
to  be  raised  upon  the  new  purchase  for  improvements  and  to  pay  off 
mortgages,  and  it  gave  to  the  tenants  in  possession  power  to  charge 
the  estate  with  marriage  jointures  of  not  more  than  five  hundred  a 
year. 

The  letter  of  January,  1809,  in  which  he  told  Sonthey  that  he  had 
a  private  bill  coming  on  before  Parliament,  replied  likewise  to  an  in- 
vitation from  his  friend  to  go  to  the  Lakes,  giving  him  the  additional 
startling  information  that  since  affairs  had  been  K<)H1g  on  so  badly  in 
Spain  he  IkkI  again  offered  his  services,  and  that  if  he  went,  there  was 
little  chance  he  should  ever  again  see  Derwentwater,  or,  what  was 
next  in  beauty  and  he  hoped  to  have  called  his  own,  Loweswater. 
But  that  he  was  not  going,  all  the  rest  of  the  letter  showed  pretty 
clearly.     "  I  wish  1  had  settled  in  your  country.     I  could  live  with- 


JET.  30-39.]  IN    POSSESSION    OF   THE   ABBEY.  187 

out  Bath.  As  to  London,  its  bricks  and  tiles  and  trades  and  fogs 
make  it  odious  and  intolerable.  I  am  about  to  do,  whether  I  live  or 
die,  what  no  man  hath  ever  done  in  England,  to  plant  a  wood  of 
cedar  of  Lebanon.  These  trees  will  look  magnificent  on  the  moun- 
tains of  Llanthony  unmixt  with  others ;  and  perhaps  there  is  not  a 
spot  on  the  earth  where  eight  or  ten  thousand  are  to  be  seen  to- 
gether." He  proposed  to  be  in  London  shortly,  and  should  lose  all 
abhorrence  of  travelling  if  he  could  but  hope  that  they  should  meet. 

No  sooner  did  Southey  get  this  news  of  the  Parliamentary  bill 
than  he,  was  all  eagerness  to  introduce  his  friend  to  his  older  friend 
Rickman,  clerk  to  Parliament,  praised  by  everybody,  and  whom 
Charles  Lamb  thought  to  be  the  most  perfect  man,  up  to  anything, 
down  to  everything,  fullest  of  matter  with  the  least  verbosity,  that 
he  had  ever  known.  He  would  manage  all  the  House  of  Commons 
part  of  the  bill.  To  him  Southey  wrote  accordingly,  with  no  mis- 
giving that  he  should  raise  too  high  his  expectation  of  the  friend  he 
had  to  introduce.  In  seeing  him,  he  said,  Rickman  would  see  one 
of  the  most  extraordinary  men  that  it  had  ever  been  his  fortune  to 
fall  in  with,  and  who  would  be  one  of  the  greatest  if  it  were  possible 
to  tame  him.  "  He  does  more  than  any  of  the  gods  of  all  my  mythol- 
ogies, for  his  very  words  are  thunder  and  lightning,  such  is  the 
power  and  the  splendor  with  which  they  burst  out.  But  all  is  per- 
fectly natural ;  there  is  no  trick  about  him,  no  preaching,  no  parade, 
no  playing  off."  Of  Rickman  at  the  same  time  he  wrote  to  Landor, 
that  he  was  a  man  to  whom  he  owed  hardly  less  than  to  himself  in 
the  way  of  mental  obligation  ;  for  it  was  not  more  true  that  he  had 
learnt  how  to  see  for  the  purposes  of  poetry  from  Landor  than  that 
he  had  learnt  how  to  read  for  the  purposes  of  history  from  Rickman. 

I  doubt  however  if  these  two  worthies  ever  saw  each  other. 
Everything  preliminary  to  the  bill  had  to  be  done  exclusively  in 
the  upper  house,  and  Landor  failed  to  find  Rickman,  though  he 
attempted  it  twice.  "  My  brother,  who  manages  my  affairs,  saw 
him,  but  I  did  not ;  nor  could  I  have  enjoyed  his  conversation  if  I 
had,  for  London,  as  usual,  gave  me  a  fever  and  cough."  Southey 
had  explained  his  own  inability  to  be  in  London  at  the  time  by  a 
promise  made  to  visit  Walter  Scott  in  Edinburgh  ;  and  Landor  tells 
him  in  this  letter  to  be  sure  and  see  Professor  Young.  "  He  is  an 
admirable  scholar ;  but  his  version  of  Tyrtams  is  as  bad  as  it  ought 
to  be.  I  met  him  at  Harrowgate,  and  he  showed  me  great  civility." 
Unhappily  the  loss  of  one  of  his  children  prevented  Southey's  Edin- 
burgh visit,  and  was  thus  referred  to  in  Landor's  next  letter  :  — 

"I  fancied  you  were  in  Scotland,  and  my  mind  was  often  occupied  on  the 
accessions  you  had  been  procuring  to  your  fame  and  happiness.  If  I 
moralize  or  reflect  on  these  events,  it  disinclines  me  from  speaking  and  from 
writing;  not  from  an  excess  of  sorrow  or  depression  of  spirits,  so  much  as 
from  inertness  and  torpor,  and  that  flatness  of  soul  lying  abject  at  the  foot 
of  fatalism." 


188  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  C*££-iJ.11' 

He  had  other  matters  equally  troubling  him  at  the  same  date. 
Though  hardly  yet  in  complete  possession  of  the  abbey,  his  "  unin- 
terrupted series  of  vexations  and  disappointments  in  connection  with 
it "  had  already  begun.  Not  only  his  Welsh  neighbors  had  been 
doing  him  some  mischief,  but  one  of  his  own  servants  had  cut  down 
about  sixty  fine  trees,  lopping  others  ;  and  this,  which  he  considered 
as  the  greatest  of  all  earthly  calamities,  as  he  told  Southcy  in  a  letter 
from  Bath,  had  confined  him  to  the  house  several  davs.  "  We 
recover  from  illness,  we  build  palaces,  we  retain  or  change  the  fea- 
tures of  the  earth  at  pleasure,  —  excepting  that  only  !  The  whole  of 
human  life  can  never  replace  one  bough."  But  it  is  time  that  I 
should  now,  however  briefly,  describe  the  place  which  was  to  be  the 
source  to  him  of  so  many  anxieties,  and  whose  acquisition  cost  him 
so  much  more  than  was  justified  or  repaid  by  any  happiness  it 
yielded  him. 

A  letter  to  me  nearly  thirty  years  ago  thus  whimsically  referred  to 
it :  "  Llanthony  is  a  noble  estate  :  it  produces  everything  but  herb- 
age, corn,  and  money.  My  son,  however,  may  perhaps  make  some- 
thing of  it ;  for  it  is  about  eight  miles  long,  and  I  planted  a  million 
of  trees  on  it  more  than  thirty  years  ago.  I  lived  there  little  more 
than  eight  months  altogether,  and  built  a  house  to  pull  it  down 
again.  Invent  a  hero,  if  you  can,  who  has  performed  such  exploits." 
Here  was  an  instance  of  my  old  friend  setting  down  as  the  thing  he 
did  the  thing  he  only  intended  to  do  ;  for  his  million  of  trees  fell 
considerably  short  in  the  reality  of  perhaps  a  tenth  of  the  number  at 
which  his  fancy  reckoned  them.  Such  as  they  were,  however,  his 
plantations  have  been  the  most  profitable  part  of  the  estate  ;  which 
might  in  other  points  also  have  deserved  as  little  the  irony  applied 
to  it,  if  its  capabilities  even  to  the  same  extent  had  been  seen  and 
used.  Very  far  from  ill  laid  out  would  have  been  the  whole  seventy 
or  eighty  thousand  pounds  drawn  into  it,  if  they  had  but  been 
expended  with  competent  skill  and  prudent  management. 

I  saw  it  lately.  From  Abergavenny  I  posted  along  those  eight 
miles  of  hill  and  vale  which  belong  still  to  Lander's  son,  the  moun- 
tains on  either  side  becoming  more  steep,  and  the  valley  more  rich 
and  picturesque,  as,  twining  round  and  round  the  circuitous  approach, 
Llanthony  comes  in  view.  Less  of  corn  than  pasture  there  is  of 
course,  and  much  of  unreclaimed  and  mountain  waste  ;  but  I  saw 
also,  through  the  whole  extent  of  valley  that  we  passed,  abundance 
of  fair  meadow  land,  farms  to  all  appearance  under  good  cultivation, 
and  sheep  feeding  on  the  slopes  that  even  the  famous  breeds  which 
Landor  boasted  to  have  brought  over  from  Spain  could  hardly  have 
excelled.  At  almost  the  farthest  corner  of  the  northern  angle  of 
Monmouthshire,  into  which  the  estate  projects  itself,  stands  what  is 
left  of  the  abbey  from  which  it  takes  its  name  ;  and  it  would  not  be 
easy  to  find  in  any  part  of  Britain  a  ruin  amid  nobler  surroundings. 

It  is  at  the  base  of  an  amphitheatre  of  lofty  hills,  forming  part  of 


>ET.  30-39.]  IN   POSSESSION    OF   THE  ABBEY.  189 

the  chain  of  the  Black  Mountains,  through  which  runs  the  rich  deep 
vale  of  Ewyas.  Drayton  has  described  the  place  in  that  good  old 
book  the  Polyolbion,  which  Charles  Lamb  himself  could  hardly  have 
liked  better  than  Landor  did  :  — 

"  'Mongst  HatterilPs  lofty  hills,  that  with  the  clouds  are  crowned, 
The  valley  Ewyas  lies,  immured  so  deep  and  round, 
As  they  below«that  see  the  mountains  rise  so  high 
Might  think  the  straggling  herds  were  grazing  in  the  sky: 
Which  in  it  such  a  shape  of  solitude  doth  bear, 
As  nature  at  the  first  appointed  it  for  prayer  " :  — 

and  that  still  is  the  impression  it  gives.  As  it  may  have  been  two 
hundred-  or  twelve  hundred  years  ago,  as  when  the  old  poet  saw  it 
or  when  the  uncle  of  King  Arthur  is  fabled  to  have  chosen  it  for  his 
retreat,  it  strikes  the  visitor  now.  I  saw  it  in  the  later  days  of  autumn ; 
but  the  gayety  of  summer  would  not  have  been  so  suited  to  the  scene. 
Beautiful  as  the  principal  portion  of  the  ruin  is,  the  sense  of  beauty 
is  not  the  feeling  it  first  awakens.  AH  that  instantly  attracts  and 
fascinates  the  eye  in  the  lovely  and  light  picturesqueness  of  Tintern 
is  absent  from  Llanthony.  But  deeper  thoughts  connect  themselves 
with  the  solid  simplicity  of  its  gray  massive  towers,  and  the  severely 
solemn  aspect  of  its  ruined  church,  taking  from  nature  no  ornament 
other  than  that  worn  by  the  hills  around,  majestic  and  bare  as  they, 
and  even  in  ruin  seeming  as  eternal.  A  place  to  meditate  or  pray  in ; 
but  not,  one  cannot  but  instinctively  feel  in  looking  at  it,  to  carouse 
or  build  a  house  in. 

What  is  yet  standing  of  the  house  once  attempted  to  be  built  there, 
something  less  than  half  a  mile  up  the  slope  at  the  back  of  the  abbey, 
is  nearly  all  that  is  left  upon  the  spot  to  point  the  moral  of  the  story 
I  am  to  tell.  Of  the  million  trees  that  were  to  have  enriched  the 
estate,  but  a  small  tithe  are  visible  in  the  plantations  now.  The 
bridge  built  over  the  river  Hondy  that  crosses  the  valley  was  swept 
away  by  floods.  The  praiseworthy  design  of  restoring  the  magnifi- 
cent centre  nave,  for  which  many  Saxon  and  Norman  stones  were 
taken  down  and  numbered,  added  only  fresh  fragments  to  the  ruin. 
The  road  that  was  to  connect  the  abbey  with  the  mansion  has  all  but 
passed  away  without  a  trace.  But  in  three  high  ragged  walls,  open 
to  the  sky  and  when  I  saw  them  enclosing  a  haystack,  and  in  some 
ruined  but  not  yet  unroofed  stables  and  cellars,  built  on  the  very 
edge  of  a  mountain  stream  that  rushes  swiftly  past  into  the  valley, 
what  had  once  been  an  inhabited  dwelling  presents  itself  still.  And 
the  visitor  who  doubts  the  wisdom  of  building  in  such  a  scene  at  all 
has  his  wonder  infinitely  raised  at  the  spot  selected  for  the  mansion. 

Fifty-six  years  ago  appeared  the  well-known  Beauties  of  England 
and  Wales,  in  which  Landor  is  stated  to  have  become  recently  pro- 
prietor of  the  abbey,  and  is  reproached  for  indifference  to  its  artificial 
beauties  by  having  "  directed  many  alterations  to  be  made  in  the 
ruins,  and  fitted  up  some  parts  for  habitation."  This,  however,  is 
not  just.     Landor's  only  wish  was  to  restore  ;  and  it  was  not  his  act, 


190  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHOXY.  '^s-.'.'1' 

but  that  of  his  predecessor,  to  build  among  the  ruins.  In  March, 
1809,  a  year  before  that  book  was  published,  he  was  thus  writing  to 
Southey  :  "  I  am  about  to  remove  an  immense  mass  of  building 
which  Colonel  Wood  erected  against  the  abbey,  and  with  which  he 
bus  shamefully  disfigured  the  ruins.  I  would  live  on  bread  mid 
water  three  years  to  undo  what  he  has  done,  and  three  more  to  re- 
pair what  he  has  wasted.  It  is  some  consolation  to  have- the  idea  of 
receiving  you  in  Monmouthshire  next  season.  1  will  soon  have  some- 
thing of  a  cottage  built,  and  will  send  down  a  whole  teacaddyful  of 
books."  The  something  of  a  cottage  was  the  unfortunate  mansion  ; 
but  it  rose  from  the  earth  so  slowly  and  amid  so  many  troubles  and 
vexations,  that  he  was  fain  from  time  to  time  to  add  to  his  temporary 
abode  in  the  southern  tower  originally  fitted  up  by  Colonel  Wood  as 
a  shooting-box,  ami  which  these  additions  enabled  him  to  make  his 
home  for  the  most  part  of  the  time  he  lived  at  Llanthony.  That 
home  is  now  the  Llanthony  Abbey  Tavern,  the  bailiff  of  the  property 
being  landlord  ;  and  its  condition  at  this  day  is  proof  that  Landor's 
makeshifts  "  sixty  years  since  "  were  not  contemptible.  Part  of  the 
old  abbot's  lodgings  are  adjacent,  the  arched  refectory  now  serving 
for  cellar  to  a  spacious  antique  kitchen  at  the  base  of  the  tower  ;  and 
there  is  also  part  of  the  old  building  in  separate  use  as  a  farm, 
which  then  was  available  for  domestic  offices.  Altogether,  when  the 
pictures  had  been  placed  and  the  teacaddy  of  books  emptied,  it  was 
no  bad  temporary  dwelling  for  the  new  lord  of  Llanthony. 

Nor  were  the  objects  proposed  by  him  in  taking  possession  of  his 
new  estate  other  than  the  worthiest,  and  such  as  he  might  fairly  have 
hoped  to  accomplish.  He  was  bent  upon  restoring  and  civdizing  on 
everv  side  of  him  ;  the  mountain  wastes,  the  church  and  abbey  ruins, 
the  shocking  impassable  roads,  the  ignorant  barbarous  people.  The 
extent  to  which  he  failed  will  appear  as  the  little  story  unfolds  itself, 
and  some  of  the  reasons  why  ;  but  it  is  right  to  say  at  once  that  he 
really  entertained  such  designs.  Unhappily  he  found  the  stubborn 
and  evil  qualities  of  the  Welsh  in  his  neighborhood  to  lie  greatly  in 
excess  of  his  expectation  ;  and  what  most  repelled  him  from  his  self- 
chosen  task  was  what  should  most  have  impressed  him  with  its 
supreme  necessity.  Objecting  a  few  years  later  to  the  phrase  that 
the  vulgar  have  their  prejudices,  he  said  that  the  prejudices  belong 
not  to  them  but  to  those  who  ought  to  remove  them  if  they  have 
any;  and  the  same  remark  applies  equally  to  other  accompaniments 
of  humanity  in  its  more  aliased  and  neglected  forms,  which  will  ever 
remain  ill-intentioned  till  we  have  given  it  other  intention  by  some 
kind  of  cherishing  and  care. 

Landor's  earliest  correspondence  about  Llanthony  was  with  the 
bishop  of  the  diocese,  Burgess  of  St.  Davids,  afterwards  translated  to 
Salisbury.  A  pari  of  the  estate  was  the  living  of  Cwmyoy,  of  which 
the  parish  church  is  five  miles  from  the  abbey  on  the  Abergavenny 
road  ;  its  chapel  of  ease,  in  which  there  is  regular  afternoon  service 


JET.  30-39.]  IN    POSSESSION    OP    THE   ABBEY.  191 

still,  being  the  old  church  within  the  abbey  enclosure ;  a  structure 
which  by  its  rudeness  as  much  startled  me  at  my  visit  the  other  day. 
as  it  seems,  when  first  seen,  to  have  surprised  and  dissatisfied  the 
new  lord  of  the  estate.  He  at  once  put  before  the  bishop  a  proposal 
to  restore  what  he  believed  to  have  been  the  original  church,  and  to 
apply  to  more  becoming  use  the  materials  of  the  existing  chapel.  His 
letter  had  been  six  weeks  unanswered  when  he  wrote  again  ;  and  one 
would  like  to  have  seen  the  bishop  as  he  read  this  second  letter. 

"  Several  weeks  ago  I  thought  it  my  duty  to  address  a  letter  to  your 
lordship  on  some  alterations  it  is  expedient  to  make  in  the  chapel  of  Llan- 
thony.  I-wished  to  restore  to  its  former  state  and  uses  an  edifice  which  I 
believe  to  have  been  the  original  chapel,  no  less  from  its  internal  and  ex- 
ternal structure  than  from  the  field  in  which  it  is  situated  being  called  the 
Chapel  Field.  The  ruinous  pTace  which  receives  the  few  people  who  attend 
divine  service  in  the  summer  months  was  not  originally  built  for  any  such 
purpose ;  and  your  lordship  is  best  able  to  judge,  or  to  discover,  whether  it 
ever  has  been  consecrated.  If  it  has,  it  is  the  only  instance  of  an  ancient 
chapel  in  which  I  ever  saw  a  chimney.  It  is  under  the  same  roof  with  ox- 
stalls,  and  surrounded  with  a  farm-yard.  My  intention  is  to  remove  instan- 
taneously the  buildings  on  which  it  leans ;  and  it  declines  so  greatly  from 
the  perpendicular  that  its  fall  is  certain.  I  had  hoped  for  permission  to 
construct  from  the  materials  a  school  and  a  receptacle  for  the  poor.  I  have 
conversed  with  the  lower  ranks  of  more  than  one  nation  in  Europe,  and  last 
of  all  with  those  who  have  generally  been  considered  the  most  super- 
stitious and  the  most  barbarous.  But  if  drunkenness,  idleness,  mischief,  and 
revenge  are  the  principal  characteristics  of  the  savage  state,  Avhat  nation,  I 
will  not  say  in  Europe,  but  in  the  world,  is  so  singularly  tattoed  with  them 
as  the  Welsh  ?  Had  I  never  known  how  to  appreciate  the  sacrifice  your 
lordship  makes,  voluntarily  and  silently  and  alone,  turning  away  your  eyes 
from  the  most  perfect  models  of  the  most  polished  ages  on  a  country  which 
at  no  period  of  its  history  hath  produced  one  illustrious  character,  most  cer- 
tainly I  should  not  have  requested  your  assistance  in  forwarding  its  inter- 
ests. God  alone  is  great  enough  for  me  to  ask  anything  of  twice.  I  wished 
to  repair  some  monuments  of  antiquity,  and  to  rescue  some  others  from  the 
injuries  of  time.  We  have  beheld  without  attention  a  strange  phenomenon. 
While  Scotland  and  Ireland  have  been  producing  in  every  generation  his- 
torians, philosophers,  and  poets,  the  wretched  Welsh  repeat  their  idle 
legends  from  first  to  second  childhood,  bring  forward  a  thousand  attesta- 
tions to  the  existence  of  witches  and  fairies,  boast  of  their  illustrious  ances- 
tors and  of  the  bards  more  illustrious  who  have  recorded  them,  and  convert 
the  tomb  of  Taliessin  into  a  gate-post." 

To  this  the  bishop  was  prompt  in  his  reply,  wisely  avoiding  the 
Celtic  question  introduced  so  explosively,  and  confining  himself  as 
strictly  to  the  first  letter  as  if  but. a  jog-trot  reminder  had  reached 
him  with  the  second. 

"  Abergwilly,  October  9,  1809.  Sir,  I  am  very  sorry  that  your  letter  of  the 
13th  of  August  has  lain  by  me  so  long  unanswered.  My  only  apology  is 
the  true  one,  that  it  has  been  overwhelmed  in  an  accumulation  of  daily 
correspondence.  I  was  much  interested  in  the  subject  of  your  letter,  and 
in  the  liberality  of  your  offer  to  exonerate  the  parish  from  all  charges  in  the 
improvement  which  you  suggest,  by  the  removal  of  Llanthony  chapel.     I 


192  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  Otto's- 1"'" 

should  be  very  glad  if  my  consent  would  be  sufficient  for  enabling  you  to 
do  what  you  think  would  be  serviceable  to  the  parish,  as  well  as 
convenient  to  yourself.  But  I  believe  an  act  of  Parliament  would  be 
necessary  for  the  removal  of  a  place  of  public  worship.  Of  this,  however, 
you  are  probably  aware.  I  shall  have  it  in  my  power  very  shortly  to 
inform  myself  of  everything  that  concerns  your  request  and  my  consent, 
when  you  shall  hear  from  me  again.  I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 
T.  St.  Davids." 

The  promise  was  kept  within  a  month  ;  the  bishop  writing  again 
on  the  8th  of  November  to  tell  Landor  that,  having  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  inquiring  into  the  state  of  Llanthony  church,  and  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  proposal  for  its  renewal,  he  had  no  hesitation  in 
giving  his  assent  to  it ;  but  that  an  act  of  Parliament  also  would  be 
necessary.  To  which  Landor  replied  on  the  15th  from  Clifton;  first 
remarking  veiy  dryly  that  as  he  had  recently  been  obliged  to  adopt 
such  a  measure  to  effect  the  settlement  of  some  estates,  he  should  be 
slow  to  renew  his  efforts  in  that  quarter ;  and  next  proceeding  to 
submit  some  points  for  episcopal  consideration  which  the  bishop 
found  probably  harder  to  digest  than  even  the  Celtic  onslaught  had 
been. 

"  Although  the  chapel  might  be  better,  I  dare  not  replace  it  when  we 
must  be  exposed  ad  millia  quindecim  et  ducentos.  When  I  first  addressed 
your  lordship  on  the  subject,  I  had  a  precedent  in  view  obscurely.  Mr. 
Chetwynd,  of  Ingestre,  had  permission  from  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
to  take  down  the  parish  church  and  build  another.  Plott  mentions  it  in  his 
History  of  Staffordshire.  This  event  has  been  impressed  on  my  memory 
from  another  cause.  The  church  is  dedicated  Deo  Opt:  Max:  although 
Voltaire  has  asserted  that  he  was  the  first  and  only  man  who  had  ever 
dedicated  a  church  to  God.  I  should  not  have  ventured  so  far  in  reply  to 
your  lordship's  condescension,  if  I  had  been  aware  that  Parliament  had  ever 
taken  away  or  lessened  this  power  in  the  bishop  or  the  primate." 

The  bishop  made  no  reply,  and  here  ended  Landor's  first  and  last 
effort  as  a  church-restorer.  But  a  Conservative  in  church  affairs  he 
always  called  himself,  soberly  as  well  as  jocosely  ;  and  when  proposing, 
some  thirty  years  later,  to  cut  down  bishops'  incomes  and  add  a  trifle 
to  the  stipends  of  curates,  he  published  his  letters  under  that  title  ;  * 
which,  in  this  particular  transaction  of  Llanthony  church,  let  us  con- 
fess that  he  deserved  perhaps  better  than  his  right  reverend  corre- 
spondent did. 

*  Tlie  Letters  of  a  Qmtervative  (1836).  I  quote  from  the  third  letter:  "  I  had  three 
church  livings  in  my  gift,  one  very  considerable  (about  a  thousand  a  year),  and  two 
smaller,  which  are  still  in  my  gift.  It  may  therefore  be  conceived  that  I  am  not  quite 
Indifferent  to  what  may  befall  the  church.  These  things  it  is  requisite  to  mention, 
now  I  deem  it  proper  to  appear  not  generically  as  a  Conservative,  but  personally."  A 
sentence  <>r  two  from  the  second  letter  are  also  worth  giving.  "  I  never  had  a  quarrel 
or  disagreement  with  any  clcrgvman  on  any  occasion.  I  owe  my  education,  such  as  it 
is,  to  virtuous  men  of  that  profession.  Two  of  them  are  dead,  wh<»n  I  remember  with 
love  and  reverence ;  the  gentle  and  saintly  Benwell.  my  private  tutor  at  Oxford,  and 
the  good  old  fatherly  Langley,  who  received  me  previously.  The  patient  instructor  and 
the  gentlemanly  scholar.  Doctor  Sleath  of  St.  Paul's,  will  accept  the  gratitude,  while 
he  discountenances  the  politics,  of  his  unruly  pupil  at  Rugby." 


;et. 


3° -39-]  IN    POSSESSION    OF    THE    ABBEY.  193 


Six  months  earlier  than  his  first  letter  to  the  bishop  he  had  been 
writing  of  the  AVelsh  to  Southey  in  much  the  same  strain,  and  the 
letter  will  tell  us  also  how  slowly  things  were  getting  into  shape  at 
Llanthony.  He  writes  from  Bath,  and  has  been  sending  a  message 
to  his  friend's  uncle,  who  had  a  parsonage  on  the  borders  of  the  Wye. 

"  Happily  on  the  borders  of  the  Wye  the  people  are  more  civilized  than 
about  me.  They  are  more  active,  and  activity  will  not  permit  the  lurking 
and  loose  indulgence  of  malignity  and  revenge.  My  people  are  idle  and 
drunken.  Idleness  gives  them  time,  and  drunkenness  gives  them  spirit,  for 
mischief.  I  hope  before  the  close,  not  of  the  next  but  of  the  succeeding- 
summer,  to'  have  one  room  to  sit  and  converse  in,  with  two  or  three  bed- 
rooms. The  bad  weather  has  endangered  both  what  is  ruined  and  what  is 
repaired.  As  these/ repairs  are  to  be  annihilated  by  me,  I  grieve  the  less ;  but 
if  the  stones  are  thrown  down,  they  will  be  broken,  and  much  time  will  be 
consumed  in  working  more." 

In  the  succeeding  summer  he  wrote  from  Llanthony  itself,  not  un- 
comfortably lodged,  in  the  southern  tower,  and  eager  to  have  a  visit 
from  his  friend.  Direful  and  never  ceasing  had  been  his  troubles. 
His  new  house,  not  half  finished,  had  cost  him  already  two  thousand 
pounds.  Upon  his  estate,  of  which  he  had  not  been  in  possession 
three  years,  he  had  expended  in  labor  eight  thousand  pounds.  Yet 
the  people  who  chiefly  had  benefited  by  this  outlay  treated  him  as 
their  greatest  enemy.  The  picture  is  not  a  cheerful  one,  but  would 
probably  have  been  not  less  true  if  its  tints  had  been  somewhat 
softened. 

"  While  I  was  in  Spain  more  injury  was  done  to  the  abbey  than  I  think  it 
possible  to  repair,  though  I  would  live  on  a  hundred  a  year  for  the  remainder 
of  my  life  to  do  it.  In  architects  I  have  passed  from  a  great  scoundrel  to  a 
greater,  a  thing  I  thought  impossible ;  and  have  been  a  whole  year  in  mak- 
ing a  farm-house  habitable.  It  is  not  half  finished,  and  has  cost  already 
two  thousand  pounds.  I  think  seriously  of  filling  it  with  chips  and  straw 
and  setting  fire  to  it.  Never  was  anything  half  so  ugly,  though  there  is  not 
a  brick  or  tile  throughout.  Again  and  again  I  lament  I  was  disappointed  in 
'my  attempt  to  fix  in  your  delightful  country.  The  earth  contains  no  race  of 
human  beings  so  totally  vile  and  worthless  as  the  Welsh.  I  doubt-  whether 
they  will  allow  me  to  make  improvements,  I  am  certain  they  will  not  allow 
me  to  enjoy  them.  I  have  expended  in  labor,  within  three  years,  eight 
thousand  pounds  amongst  them,  and  yet  they  treat  me  as  their  greatest 
enemy.  Nevertheless,  when  I  see  the  spherical  head  of  a  Welshman,  I  am 
indebted  to  him  for  a  perfect  view  of  Loweswater.  My  mind  glances  from 
him  as  the  point  of  a  sword  from  a  block  of  stone,  and  I  lose  my  aversion 
in  my  regret." 

[The  letter  is  finished  at  "Crickhowel"  on  "Monday  morning."] 
"  So  far  I  had  written  on  Friday  night.  On  Saturday  I  went  to  Ragland, 
and  yesterday  came  hither.  I  am  dismissing  one  half  of  my  workmen  ;  and 
by  superintending  the  remainder  I  shall  certainly  find  irkeov  rjfiiav  ivavros. 
When  I  had  the  happiness  of  meeting  you  in  Bristol,  you  mentioned  your 
design  of  coming  into  Monmouthshire  this  summer.  I  hope  nothing  will 
hinder  it.  Before  two  months  have  passed,  I  can  give  you  a  comfortable 
bed.     I  have  two  small  rooms  finished,  and  my  kitchen  wdl  be  completed 

13 


194  BATH,    SPAIN",    AND    LLANTHONT.  ^£5-14"' 

iii  srx  weeks.  If  yon  go  soon  to  your  uncle's.  I  will  send  yon  some  melons. 
It*  he  La  fond  of  them,  I  will  send  him  some  more.  Let  me  hear  it'  you  are 
not  too  busy,  for  I  would  wish  him  to  remember  me;  though  sending  him 
melons  is  like  twitching  him  by  the  coat  to  make  him  look  back  at  me. 

When  the  weather  is  bad  ami  unhealthy,  as  we  have  hail  it  lately.  1  think 
of  your  little  family;  when  it  is  fine  I  think  of  you  and  the  mountains  and 
lakes.     Adieu.     Let  me  add,  for  a  little  while." 

The  visit  was  not  paid  till  the  summer  following ;  and  soon  after 
the  date  of  that  letter  he  left  Llanthony.  Worth  subjoining  are 
some  remarks  of  his  written  just  before  he  left  to  a  friend  (.Miss 
Holt'ord)  who  had  sent  him  a  printed  reply  to  one  of  the  sneering 
attacks  on  Wordsworth  of  which  there  was  no  lack  in  those  days. 

"I  am  not  surprised  that  the  criticism  stands  higher  in  your  estimation 
than  in  mine.  It  is  evidently  the  composition  of  a  zealous  and  indignant 
friend.  The  poems,  in  my  opinion,  are  far  above  the  necessity  of  any  such 
defence.  The  attack  was  not  only  weak  but  wicked.  Weak,  because  a 
man  of  genius  must  know,  and  common  minds  alone  can  be  ignorant,  what 
breadth  of  philosophy,  what  energy  and  intensity  of  thought,  what  insight 
into  the  heart,  and  what  observation  of  nature,  are  requisite  for  the  produc- 
tion of  such  poetry.  Wicked,  to  behold  such  signal  gifts  not  merely  with 
disrespect,  but  with  irreverence  and  malice.  I  am  sorry  to  say  it,  there  is 
as  great  a  difference  between  our  commendations  and  our  censures  as  there 
is  between  a  riding-school  and  a  race-course,  both  in  respect  to  latitude  and 
animation.  Still,  indignation  is  not  only  the  offspring  but  the  parent  of  in- 
justice, as  regularly  as  the  John  Joneses  in  my  parish  are  fathers  and 
children  of  J.  Joneses  with  a  Jones  ap  John  between.  I  will  show  it  to  be 
the  case  in  this  criticism  on  Mr.  Wordsworth,  where  there  is  often  an  outcry 
preceded  by  no  wound,  and  a  sarcasm  accompanied  by  no  wit.  The  charm 
of  irony  is  always  broken  at  the  very  first  glance  of  anger.  No  write!-  ever 
wrote  more  violently  than  Swift,  yet  he  had  the  just  caution  and  genuine 
taste  to  keep  his  irony  at  all  times  separate  from  any  such  expressions. 
This,  added  to  a  closeness  of  anrument  and  a  compactness  of  style,  was  in- 
deed his  principal  excellence.  He  never  attempted  to  round  his  sentences 
by  redundant  words,  aware  that  from  the  simplest  and  the  leu  est  arise  the 
secret  springs  of  genuine  harmony." 

And  because  he  would  himself  have  liked  that  a  particular  letter 
should  be  printed  that  did  not  reach  till  he  had  quitted  Llanthony, 
from  which  it  followed  him,  I  here  subjoin  it.  During  this  year 
Doctor  Parr  had  lost  in  rapid  succession  his  wife,  his  granddaughter, 
and  his  eldest   daughter  (Sarah,  married  to  Mr.  Wynne);*   Landor 

*  Put  up  with  the  sumo  letter.  T  find  two  others,  dated  respectively  the  15th  and 
24th  November,  1  ■**"'>,  having  reference  to  his  younger  daughter  Catherine's  death, 
really  touching.  I  find  also,  under  date  of  21st  .Time,  1808,  a  reply  from  Parr  to  Lan- 
der's disavowal  of  a  satirical  attack  that  seems  to  have  made  sonic  noise  in  \\  arwick. 
"  To  my  learned,  ingenious,  high-spirited,  sound-hearted  friend,  Walter  I. and"]-,  greet- 
ing. I  had  not  even  heard  of  the  poem  yon  mention;  and  it'  it  contain  anj  abuse  of 
me,  1  should  instantly  have  pronounced  it  impossible  far  Buch  abuse  to  flow  from  your 
pen.  My  excellent  and  dear  friend,  how  could  you  give  yourself  the  trouble  of  defend- 
ing yourself  to  me  against  a  Warwick  rumor;  or  for  one  moment  suppose  me  so 
completely  sottish  as  to  believe  Buch  an  imputation  against  Walter  Landor?"  Some 
light  is  thrown  on  what  the  Bquib  was,  and  on  the  general  prevalence  of  the  rumor  that  , 
rendered  necessary  Landor's  disavowal,  by  the  subjoined  allusion  in  one  of  his  Bister 


.ST.  30-39.]  IN    POSSESSION    OF    THE    ABBEY.  195 

had  been  eager  to  offer  sympathy  to  his  grieving  friend ;  and  here  is 
the  old  man's  acknowledgment,  dated  in  August,  1810.  It  is  curi- 
ously characteristic  of  him.  One  can  hardly  read  it  with  gravity, 
yet  it  would  be  grossly  unjust  to  treat  it  with  disrespect.  Grandiose 
and  attitudinizing  as  it  is,  it  is  yet  the  expression  of  a  genuine  sor- 
row, for  his  daughter's  death  had  struck  him  heavily. 

"  Dear  Walter  Landor,  —  Many  and  wise  and  affectionate  are  the  let- 
ters which  I  have  received  from  my  friends,  wishing  to  console  me  under 
the  severe  afflictions  which  with  a  rapidity  almost  unexampled  have  lately 
fallen  upon  me.  But  in  candor  of  feeling,  in  grandeur  of  topics,  in  energy 
of  language,-  they  are  for,  very  far  surpassed  by  the  letter  which  you  wrote 
to  me  on  the  last  and  the  heaviest  of  the  calamities  which  I  am  doomed  to 
suffer.  Walter,  I  shall  cherish  and  preserve  it  as  a  noble  monument  of 
your  eloquence,  your  sensibility,  and  your  friendship.  My  religious  princi- 
ples, Walter,  are  deep  and  most  sincere.  They  are  sufficient,  I  believe,  to 
support  me,  even  in  this  season  of  sorrow.  I  have  yet  remaining  friends 
whom  I  love  and  honor.  I  have  many  duties  to  discharge  for  the  good  of 
my  fellow-creatures.  I  resign  myself  to  the  unsearchable  but  righteous  dis- 
pensations of  my  Maker  ;  and  I  will  endeavor  so  to  act  that  death  succeeded 
by  judgment  may  be  a  pure  and  perpetual  source  of  the  most  salutary  and 
animating  reflection.  I  am  going  on  a  ramble  into  Shropshire,  and  pray 
write  to  me,  at  Rev.  Mr.  Butler's,  Shrewsbury.  I  intend  some  time  or 
other  to  go  into  Devonshire.  I  shall  reside  next  in  Bath,  and  I  will  so 
make  my  arrangements  as  to  have  the  comfort  of  your  society.  Write  to 
me,  and  come  to  me  when  you  come  to  Warwick.  Again  and  again  your 
letter  recurs  to  me,  and  refreshes  me.  Let  us  cultivate  friendship  while  we 
continue  in  this  world,  and  cherish  the  hope  of  meeting  in  another  and  a 
better  state,  where  the  pangs  of  separation  will  be  felt  no  more.  I  pray 
God  to  bless  you,  and  am  most  sincerely,  dear  Walter,  your  friend,  S.  Parr. 
When  you  have  nothing  else,  or  nothing  better  to  do,  recall  to  ybur  mind 
the  image  of  my  dear  Sarah,  and  employ  your  mighty  genius  in  describing 
what  you  think  of  her  deserts  and  her  virtues.     July  31,  1810." 

From  Bath,  to  which  that  letter  was  redirected,  he  continued  to 
report  to  Southey  of  his  buildings  and  plantings  at  the  abbey  ;  and 
this  was  the  winter  when  he  began  Count  Julian  in  the  concert-room. 


^o" 


"  In  reading  your  History  of  Brazil  I  envied  those  who  possessed  the 
seeds  of  the  pine,  and  wish  Sir  Home  Popham  had  brought  a  few  to  Eng- 
land. I  am  convinced  that  in  time  the  prophecy  in  Virgil's  Pollio  will  not 
be  for  from  verified  :  Omnis  fert  omnia  tellus.  All  resinous  woods,  I  think, 
are  better  adapted  to  cold  climates  than  to  hot,  because,  if  insects  puncture 
them  while  young,  or  any  violence  is  done  to  them  in  later  periods,  the  gum 

Elizabeth's  letters  of  the  10th  of  June,  1808:  "  A  little  poem  entitled  Guy's  Porrirlge- 
put  has  been  much  talked  of  here:  it  is  printed  by  Slatter  and  Munday,  and  sent  here 
to  Perry's,  who  on  reading  sent  it  back  again,  as  they  feared  to  offend  their  neighbors 
by  selling  it.  You  are  supposed  to  be  the  author,  as  Mrs.  Perry  told  Ellen  with  some 
half-hour's  circumlocution;  and  she  affirmed  it  to  be  the  comieallest  book  she  ever 
read.  It  could  not  be  written  by  other  people  hereabout,  because  it  was  far  too  clever 
for  them.  It  laughs  at  most  of  the  people  who  go  to  Dr.  Parr's,  some  it  treats  ten- 
derly, some  it  roasts  terribly:  whilst  the  Doctor  himself  fills  the  foreground  of  the 
picture,  with  all  his  good  and  many  of  his  ridiculous  qualities  about  him.  Yet  though 
it  professes  to  bring  in  all  who  surround  the  Doctor,  it  never  mentions  your  name." 
Landor  nevertheless  was  not  the  author. 


19G  BATII,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTIIOXY.  'tfS-™ 

exudes  from  them  and  kills  them.  This  cannot  be  so  excessive  in  a  colder 
and  more  astringent  climate.  I  fancy  I  am  acting  wisely  in  ordering  ash  to 
be  planted  on  the  highest  ground,  because  ash  is  more  flexible  and  more 
tough  than  fir;  added  to  which,  by  losing  its  leaves,  it  does  not  present  so 
compact  a  body  to  the  wintry  winds." 

Still  bis  planting  did  not  thrive  ;  his  cedar  groves  were  like  the 
groves  of  romance  ;  and  lie  saw  the  million  trees  with  which  he  had 
indulged  his  fancy  daily  dwindle  and  decay.  He  began  by  buying 
two  thousand  cones,  calculating  a  hundred  seeds  for  each,  and  believ- 
ing that  such  had  really  been  the  product ;  "but  alas  !  the  rains  and 
the  field-mice  have  hardlv  left  me  a  thousand.  I  must  begin  again  ; 
and  instead  of  raising  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  trees  must  be 
contented  with  fifty  thousand,  or  perhaps  with  thirty."  The  rest  of 
the  letter  is  about  Count  Julian,  which  he  says  will  be  fairly  tran- 
scribed within  a  week. 

The  evening  of  the  day  when  the  transcription  began  was  for  Lan- 
dor  a  memorable  one. 


IX.    MARRIAGE  AND  LIFE  AT  LLAXTHOXY. 

Writing  to  Scruthey  in  April,  1811,  of  many  unimportant  and  in- 
different things  ;  suggestions  for  his  tragedy,  criticism  of  an  epitaph 
by  his  friend  which  he  thought  comparable  to  the  few  finest  speci- 
mens of  such  things  in  the  Greek,  questions  of  whether  they  are  to 
meet  in  London  or  in  Bath,  where  he  has  a  spare  bed  ready  ;  he  thus 
fills  up  the  last  unoccupied  corner  of  his  letter.  "  It  is  curious  that 
the  evening  of  my  beginning  to  transcribe  the  tragedy,  I  fell  in  love. 
I  have  found  a  girl  without  a  sixpence,  and  with  very  few  accomplish- 
ments. She  is  pretty,  graceful,  and  good-tempered,  —  three  things 
indispensable  to  my  happiness.  Adieu,  and  congratulate  me. .  I  for- 
got to  say  that  I  have  added  thirty-five  verses  to  Scene  2  of  Act  111. 
There  was  hardly  time  enough  for  the  reappearance  of  Opas." 
Southev  is  delighted  at  the  news  and  gives  him  joy  sincerely.  The 
very  Welshmen  will  become  more  endurable  if  he  takes  a  wife  to 
Llanthony.  He  means  himself  to  be  at  Bath  in  July,  and  insists 
that,  if  Landor  is  absent  from  it  then,  he  shall  come  on  to  Kes- 
wick. 

A  few  days  after  the  letter  to  Southev  he  wrote  to  bis  mother, 
who  had  questioned  him  on  the  reports  she  had  heard,  qualifying  her 
motherly  interest  with  a  little  tender  reproach. 

"Dear  Mother, —  I  hasten  to  acknowledge  your  very  kind  and  affec- 
tionate letter,  though  I  am  several  hours  too  late  lor  the  post.  You  have, 
throughoul  the  whole  of  my  life,  constantly  treated  me  with  the  same  _rood- 
ness,  and  I  should  be  very  ungrateful  if  I  could  ever  forget  it.  I  hope  we 
shall  often  meet  again,  ami  pass  many  happy  days  together  yet.  My  pres- 
ence will  be  so  often  requisite  to  overlook  what  is  going  on  at  Llanthony 
that  I  am  afraid  I  should  hardly  he  able  to  stay  longer  than  a  few  days  with 
you  at  Ipsley.     It  would  give  me  the  greatest  pleasure  to  see  you,  and  I 


JET.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE    AND    LIFE    AT    LLANTHONT.  197 

certainly  would  come  over  for  that  purpose  if  it  were  only  for  a  day.  The 
name  of  my  intended  bride  is  Julia  Thuillier.  She  has  no  pretensions  of 
any  kind,  and  her  want  of  fortune  was  the  very  thing  which  determined 
me  to  marry  her.  I  shall  be  sorry  to  leave  Bath  entirely,  but  when  I  have 
completed  my  house  I  must  remain  there.  Believe  me,  dear  mother,  your 
ever  affectionate,  W.  S.  Landor." 

Not  only  had  want  of  fortune  been  no  sort  of  drawback,  but  it  was 
in  truth  the  very  thing  for  which  he  was  marrying  the  girl  !  There 
was  small  opening  for  family  remonstrance  after  that,  nor  does  any 
seem  to  have  been  attempted.  The  marriage  took  place  before  the 
end  of  May.  It  had  all  been  arranged  and  settled  after  the  manner 
of  the  eternal  friendship  between  Cecilia  and  Matilda  in  the  Anti- 
Jacobin.  A  sudden  thought  had  struck  him  and  the  thing  was  done. 
-He  had  married  a  pretty  little  girl,  of  whom  he  seems  literally  to 
have  had  no  other  knowledge  than  that  she  had  more  curls  on  her 
head  than  any  other  girl  in  Bath  ;  and  that  she  was,  as  I  find  him 
also  saying  in  one  of  his  letters,  descended  from  a  Swiss  noble  family. 
In  sober  fact  his  little,  baroness,  as  he  liked  to  call  her,  was  the 
daughter  of  a  banker  at  Banbury,  whom  ill  success  had  taken  to  other 
employment  in  Spain,  while  his  family  found  a  home  in  Bath.  There 
was  nevertheless,  in  all  this,  nothing  of  necessity  to  prevent  the  mar- 
riage proving  suitable  and  happy,  if  what  was  so  entirely  wanting  in 
both  before  the  ceremony  had  only  been  in  any  sufficient  degree  sup- 
plied by  either  after  it.  This,  unfortunately,  continued  to  the  last  to 
be  altogether  absent ;  and  with  whom  primarily,  and  to  the  greatest 
extent,  the  blame  must  be  held  to  rest,  I  do  not  think  there  can  be 
any  kind  of  doubt.  I  will  in  fairness  add  what  is  told  me  by  Mr. 
Robert  Landor.  "  I  must  do  this  little  wife  the  justice  to  say  that  I 
saw  much  of  her,  about  three  years  after  her  marriage,  during  a  long 
journey  through  France  and  Italy,  and  that  I  left  her  with  regret  and 
pity." 

All  the  danger  appears  to  have  been  foreseen  by  Birch,  who  wrote 
his  congratulations  from  Magdalen  College  on  the  20th  of  June.  The 
marriage  had  taken  him  by  surprise,  and  he  had  been  expecting  that 
Landor  would  have  written  to  him.  He  now  told  him  that  such  a 
step,  he  had  long  thought,  would  be  likely  to  improve  and  secure 
his  happiness,  and  he  did  not  doubt  but  that  the  choice  made  would 
confirm  this  opinion.  Excellent  as  the  rude  material  might  be,  how- 
ever, something  would  still  be  wanting.  "  You  will  think  me  a 
strange  fellow  for  talking  in  this  coarse  and  homely  way  on  such  an 
occasion.  The  air  of  a  college  perhaps  contributes  to  chill  one's 
feelings  a  little  prematurely,  though  indeed  it  is  time  they  should  be 
pretty  well  sobered  by  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  at  which  I  am  now 
arrived.  Well,  then,  do  not  smile  at  me,  but  it  is  my  belief  that  an 
excellent  wife  is  seldom  made  perfect  to  our  hands,  but  is  in  part  the 
creation  of  the  husband  after  marriage,  the  result  of  his  character  and 
behavior  acting  upon  her  own."     How  much  might  have  been  saved  to 


198  BATH,    SPAIN*     AND    LLANTHONT.  i:  nl- 

Lander  if  he  had  but  taken  sufficiently  into  his  brain  and  heart  these 
few  wise  words ! 

"No  misgivings  had  the  good  old  Parr,  nothing  but  affectionate  re- 
joicings. "  Be  assured,"  he  wrote  on  the  7th  of  June,  "  that  my 
heart  would  leap  for  joy  if  I  saw  both  of  you  at  my  parsonage  gate, 
and  that  I  should  give  you  a  most  cordial  reception.  God  bless  you 
both!  Walter,  your  genius  and  talents,  your  various  and  splendid 
attainments,  your  ardent  affections,  your  high  and  heroic  spirit,  will 
ever  command  my  admiration,  and  give  me  a  lively  interest  in  your 
happiness.  1  have  read  the  Alcaics  five  or  six  times.  They  are 
worthy  of  you."  With  the  announcement  of  his  marriage  Landor 
bad  sent  the  stanch  old  Whig  a  Latin  poem  against  the  ministry. 

By  the  middle  of  June  Landor  and  his  wife  had  taken  up  their 
abode  at  Llanthony,  and  at  the  end  of  that  month  he  reminded 
Southey  of  his  promised  visit.  "After  my  marriage  I  stayed  at 
Rodboro'  and  Betty  France  for  three  weeks,  intending  to  spring  upon 
you  on  your  way  to  London.  There  was  a  disinclination  in  my  wife 
either  to  remain  at  Bath  or  visit  Clifton.  She  wished  to  escape 
from  visits  of  ceremony  and  curiosity,  and  1  would  not  hint  to  her 
any  reason  why  I  should  be  happy  to  pass  a  few  days  at  Bath."  Tell- 
ing him  then  of  his  correspondence  with  Longman  about  Count 
Julian,  the  ruin  of  his  hopes  and  conflagration  of  his  unfinished  tra- 
gedies, as  already  detailed,  he  goes  on  :  — 

"  I  now  employ  my  mornings  in  cutting  off  the  heads  of  thistles  with  my 
stick,  and  hoeing  my  young  chestnuts.  My  house  is  raised  half  its  height. 
Do  we  lie  out  of  your  way  ?  I  cannot  promise  you  much  comfort  here,  but 
I  should  be  most  heartily  glad  to  see  you.  I  live  among  ruins  and  rubbish, 
and,  what  is  infinitely  worse,  bandboxes  and  luggage  and  broken  chairs : 
but  I  have  a  spare  bed  in  the  same  turret  where  I  sleep;  and  1  have  made 
a  discovery,  which  is,  that  there  are  both  nightingales  and  glowworms  in 
my  valley.  I  would  give  two  or  three  thousand  pounds  less  for  a  place 
that  was  without  them.  I  hardly  know  one  flower  from  another,  but  it 
appears  to  me  that  here  is  an  infinite  variety.  The  ground  is  of  so  various 
a  nature  and  of  such  different  elevations,  that  this  might  be  expected.  I 
love  these  beautiful  and  peaceful  tribes,  and  wish  I  was  better  acquainted 
with  them.  They  always  meet  one  in  the  same  place,  at  the  same  season  ; 
and  years  have  no  more  effect  on  their  placid  countenances  than  on  so  many 
of  the  most  favored  gods."* 

To  this  and  another  letter  extending  the  invitation  to  Mrs. 
Southey,  Ids  friend  replied  from  London  in  the  middle  of  July  that  in 
three  weeks  they  hoped  to  see  him  in  his  turret.  They  were  to  leave 
London  that  day  week.  Southey  was  full  of  hope  and  eagerness  for 
the  visit.  He  had  been  once  at  Llanthony  thirteen  years  before,  and 
had  then  to  ford  the  Hondy  on  foot  because  he  could  not  find  a 
bridge.  He  wonders  whether  Landor  had  yet  discovered  the  St. 
David's  Cavern  which  Drayton  places  there,  and  for  which  he  had 
himself  inquired  in  vain.     They  proposed  before  nightfall  on  Monday, 

*  For  the  rest  of  this  passage  in  his  letter,  see  ante,  p.  8. 


^T.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE   AND    LIFE    AT   LLAMTHONY.  199 

the  12th  of  August,  to  reach  the  Vale  of  Ewyas,  where  they  would 
stay  two  days,  going  on  then  to  Ludlow;  and,  weary  of  London 
which  he  hated,  it  would  refresh  him  both  soul  and  body  to  breathe 
the  air  of  the  mountains  once  more.  No  time  was  lost  by  Landor  in 
replying. 

"  We  shall  be  most  happy  to  see  you  on  the  twelfth.  But  there  are  two 
things  which  trouble  me  not  a  little,  —  your  departure  so  soon  as  two  days 
afterwards,  and  your  arrival  here  just  at  nightfall.  The  road  is  perfectly 
safe,  and  indeed  excellent :  but  I,  who  could  not  in  common  decency  take  a 
seat  in  the  inside  of  the  carriage,  dare  not,  for  fear  of  a  rheumatism  which 
tormented  me  nearly  two  whole  years,  sit  on  the  outside  late  in  the  evening. 
If  you  are' resolved  to  continue  your  journey  in  such  haste,  however,  do  not 
let  me  lose  the  only  chance  perhaps  I  shall  ever  have  of  being  your  fellow- 
traveller.  My  travelling-carriage  is  the  easiest  I  believe  in  the  world,  and 
the  road  to  Hereford,  through  which  place  I  presume  you  go  to  Ludlow,  is 
the  roughest.  I  have  looked  in  vain  for  St.  David's  Cave :  not  a  cave  is 
there*  in  my  whole  manor.  This  is  very  extraordinary  in  so  mountainous  a 
country,  and  where  the  earth  has  given  way  in  so  many  other  directions." 

The  visit  passed  off  with  perfect  success.  Visits  of  other  friends 
were  made  in  that  and  the  following  year ;  Landor's  sisters  came ; 
and  he  prevailed  even  upon  his  mother  to  see  for  herself  what  the 
abbey  was  like  ;  but  he  always  had  a  satisfaction  in  remembering 
that  the  first  who  shared  his  turret  with  him  there  were  Robert  and 
Edith  Southey.  They  stayed  three  nights  and  two  days  :  days  to 
which  Southey  referred  six-and-twenty  years  later,  when  writing  the 
prefaces  to  his  collected  poems,  as  having  left  with  him  still  "  a  joy 
for  memory  "  ;  and  of  which,  more  than  forty  years  later,  Landor  gave 
this  memorial,  in  lines  to  Southey's  son. 

"  Twelve  years  had  past*  when  upon  Avon's  cliff, 
Hard  by  his  birthplace,  first  our  hands  were  joined; 
After  three  more  lie  visited  my  home. 
Along  Llanthony's  ruined  aisles  we  walkt 
And  woods  then  pathless,  over  verdant  hill 
And  ruddy  mountain,  and  aside  the  stream 
Of  sparkling  Hondy.     Just  at  close  of  day 
There  by  the  comet's  light  we  saw  the  fox 
Rush  from  the  alders,  nor  relax  in  speed 
Until  he  trod  the  pathway  of  his  sires 
Under  the  hoary  crag  of  Cwmyoy. 
Then  both  were  happy." 

Other  memorial  of  the  visit  remains  not,  excepting  in  such  hints 
as  may  be  gathered  of  subjects  talked  of  between  them,  from  these 
passages  of  letters  written  immediately  afterwards. 

"  Julia  and  I  have  been  anxiously  waiting  to  hear  how  Airs.  Southey  and 
you  find  yourselves  after  so  long  a  journey." 

"  This  morning  I  had  a  letter  from  Portugal  from  a  sensible  man  and  ex- 
cellent officer,  Walter  O'Hara.  The  officers  do  not  appear  to  entertain  very 
sanguine  hopes  of  ultimate  success.     We  have  lost  a  vast  number  of  brave 

*  He  means,  from  the  time  when  Southey  wrote  the  generous  review  of  Gebir. 


200  BATIT,    BFAIK,    AXD    LLAXTIIOXY.  '  Jt1, 

men,  and  the  French  have  gained  a  vast  number,  and  fight  as  well  as  under 
the  republic.  This  revives  in  my  mind  a  toasl  I  was  accused  of  giving  at 
Oxford  :  May  there  be  only  two  classes  of  people,  the  republican  and  the 
paralytic  I " 

••  As  there  are  not  quarrels  enough  in  the  world,  my  plasterers  and  car- 
penters have  had  a  vehement  one,  and  one  party  or  other  resolved  to  go 
away.  The  dispute  was  referred  to  me.  I  told  them  I  would  examine  it 
thoroughly;  that  a  very  tew  days  would  show  who  were  in  the  wrong; 
and  that  if  I  heard  anything  more  until  I  had  taken  time  to  consider.  I 
should  think  those  the  most  blamable  who  showed  themselves  the  most 
impatient.  How  easily  duped  men  are!  I  had  heard  nothing  of  the  mat- 
ters in  dispute,  ye!  all  were  satisfied,  and  probably  I  shall  hear  nothing,  and 
they  will  all  stay.  I  cease  to  wonder  how  Pitt,  the  shallowest  man  I  can 
bring  to  my  recollection,  cajoled  the  gentlemen  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
who  certainly  are  far  less  acute  than  these  carpenters  and  plasterers,  and 
whose  living  is  far  less  dependent  on  the  continual  practice  of  petty  knav- 
eries." 

"  Let  me  trouble  you,  if  you  have  any  correspondence  with  the  agricultu- 
rist in  Durham,  to  mention  that  I  have  already  several  hundred  acres  to  let 
instantly,  for  a  pound  an  acre,  tithe  free,  extremely  .-mall  parochial  rates,  a 
lease  for  twenty-one  years,  but  after  the  firsl  ten  a  rise  of  four  shillings  per 
acre.  Many  thousands  of  land  to  be  enclosed,  at  three  shillings  for  the  first 
ten  years,  six  for  the  remaining.  A  railroad  now  forming  within  a  mile 
along  a  perfect  level  to  the  market-town;  lime  and  marl  on  the  estate,  and 
underwood  sufficient  for  all  the  new  enclosures,  which  will  be  given.  I 
hope  to  get  a  scientific  tenant  for  about  sixteen  hundred  acres.  He  shall 
have  every  encouragement,  but  he  should  have  six  or  seven  thousand  pounds. 
I  have  received  two  offers  since  I  saw  you,  but  l'or  parts  only." 

That  last  reference  was  to  the  subject  of  Landor's  earnest  wish  to 
get  a  good  tenant  for  a  large  farm  at  Llanthony,  on  which  they  had 
specially  talked  together  at  the  visit;  and  it  contained  unhappily  the 
germ  of  infinite  vexation  and  trouble.  Southey  now  replied  that  he 
bail  written  to  Durham,  and  hoped  to  get  him  the  tenant:  but  he 
had  to  inform  him  afterwards  that  his  Durham  farmer,  George  Taylor, 
would  not  be  ready  for  a  year  or  two.  Then  there  went  another 
letter  to  tell  him  that  Taylor  had  strongly  recommended  Thomas 
Hutchinson,  the  brother  of  AVordsworth's  wife,  and  that  through 
Wordsworth  he  was  going  himself  at  once  to  put  the  matter  in  train. 
"Thomas  rents  a  farm  not  very  far  from  you,  being  on  the  edge  of 
Radnorshire  near  Kin-ton  :  lie  is  an  illiterate  man,  but  a  very  worthy 
one,  and  a  thorough-bred  farmer,  with  money  at  command."*      I'n- 

*  In  tho  srime  letter  from  Keswick  (of  course  unpublished,  or  I  should  not  quote  it), 
there  i>  a  whimsical  mention  of  the  lengths  to  which  priest-tyranny  was  going  in  Ire- 
land.    "  Wakefield,  who  i-  about  a  Btatistic  account  of  Ireland,  ha-  been  here.     He  tells 

me  that  when  a  Methodist  gets  up  to  preach  to  the  | pie  the  Catholic  priest  comes 

with  a  horsewhip  and  lays  about  him  till  he  puts  the  congregation  to  flight.  This  he 
has  twice  been  an  eyewitness  of.  The  Bishop  of  Meath  also,  who  is  lodging  here,  tells 
me  that  when  a  Bcnool  had  been  established  in  hi-  neighborhood  upon  Lancaster's 
sneaking  system  of  teaching  no  peculiar  religion,  the  priest  ased  to  waylay  the  children 
with  the  horsewhip;  ami  thus  literally  kept  the  little  Catholics  away  by  main  force, 


MT.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE    AND    LIFE   AT    LLANTHONY.  201 

fortunately  it  turned  out  that  even  Thomas  was  not  to  be  had  either, 
and  they  must  try  again  elsewhere.  The  man  yet  unthought  of,  who 
was  to  be  Landor's  plague  in  the  matter,  waited  in  the  background. 
Southey  had  volunteered  to  find  a  "  farmer  agriculturist "  willing  to 
become  a  Llanthony  tenant,  and  nothing  short  of  success  woidd  sat- 
isfy him ;  but  the  very  last  man  in  his  thoughts,  the  man  of  all 
others  he  was  not  likely  to  have  chosen,  the  spiteful  Fates  had  them- 
selves already  laid  hold  of,  and  when  the  rest  had  withdrawn  were  to 
thrust  unasked  on  the  scene.     These  are  things  of  destiny. 

By  this  time  September  had  arrived  ;  and  the  abbot  of  Llanthony, 
as  his  half-sister  Arden  persisted  always  in  calling  him,  was  writing' 
with  unwonted  cheerfulness,  as  commonly  happens  at  the  very  mo- 
ment (astrologically)  when  some  malignant  influence  is  crossing  one's 
house  of  life. 

"  Julia  desires  I  will  present  her  love  to  Mrs.  Southey.  '  Yes,  if  you  will 
send  it  to  Mr.  Southey  too.'  We  had  lately  some  rainy  days,  after  six 
weeks  of  weather  perfectly  fine  and  hot,  —  a  thing  never  known  before  since 
the  creation.  Thanks  to  the  comet.  When  Darwin  was  projecting  a 
scheme  for  destroying  the  ice  at  both  poles,  I  wish  he  could  have  found  a 
coadjutor  who  would  have  planned  a  large  wire  trap,  or  any  other,  to  catch 
comets.  Your  hills  in  Cumberland  and  ours  in  Monmouthshire  might  then 
produce  plenty  of  good  wine,  and  perhaps  a  little  coffee.  I  seriously  think 
we  have  the  best  climate  in  the  world ;  because  it  is  the  most  comfortable 
to  brute  animals,  —  and  there  are  a  hundred  of  these  to  one  man,  —  and 
because  men  must  be  industrious  to  keep  themselves  warm  in  winter. 
Bodily  strength,  of  course  national  strength,  arises  from  it ;  together  with 
such  habits  as  exempt  them  from  the  vices  of  idleness."  * 

When  next  he  writes  it  is  winter ;  but  though  the  scene  has  sadly 
changed,  he  is  happily  unconscious  yet  of  the  blow  that  has  fallen  on 
him,  and  thus  innocently  discourses  of  that  man  of  destiny,  his  com- 
ing tenant,  who  is  to  occasion  him  so  much  misery. 

■when  he  could  not  operate  upon  the  minds  of  their  parents."  Eemembering  the  clamor 
raised  with  especial  vehemence  at  the  time  for  Catholic  "  Emancipation,"  this  seems 
rather  strong. 

*  The  action  of  climate  on  character  is  a  subject  frequently  mentioned  in  his  writ- 
ings ;  and  something  of  the  thought  in  this  letter  found  afterwards  nobler  utterance  in 
the  magnificent  lines  (Hellenics) :  — 

"  We  are  what  suns  and  winds  and  waters  make  us; 
The  mountains  are  our  sponsors,  and  the  rills 
Fashion  and  win  their  nursling  with  their  smiles. 
But  where  the  land  is  dim  from  tyranny, 
There  tiny  pleasures  occupy  the  place 
Of  glories  and  of  duties ;  as  the  feet 
Of  fabled  faeries  when  the  sun  goes  down 
Trip  o'er  the  grass  where  wrestlers  strove  by  day. 
Then  Justice,  called  the  Eternal  One  above, 
Is  more  inconstant  than  the  buoyant  forms 
That  burst  into  existence  from  the  froth 
Of  every-varying  ocean:  what  is  best 
Then  becomes  worst;  what  loveliest,  most  deformed. 
The  heart  is  hardest  in  the  softest  climes; 
The  passions  flourish,  the  affections  die." 


202  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  [\  ";f  "L 

"It  is  likely  that  I  shall  owe  a  tenant  to  you.  A  Mr.  Bethara  has  men- 
tioned your  name,  and  proposes  to  come  over  here  next  week.  He  brings 
his  wife,  I  am  afraid  she  will  be  starved  to  death  almost.  The  rain  runs 
every  day  down  the  stairs;  and  the  wind,  once  or  twiee  a  week,  blows  half 
a  window  down.  I  cannot  wait  for  my  masons  to  finish.  1  must  be  oil'  to 
Bath  in  another  fortnight.  This  is  no  place  to  spend  a  Christmas  in.  I  have 
lost  some  stained  glass  which  I  intended  for  my  bath,  and  must  supply  its 
place  with  worse." 

To  which  replied  Southey  that  Charles  Betham  was  certainly  known 
to  him,  and  came  of  an  excellent  stock,  but  he  had  never  thought  of 
■asking  him  to  be  tenant  at  Llanthony.  His  knowledge  of  him  was 
derived  from  a  liking  for  one  of  his  sisters,  very  dear  to  Charles  Lamb 
as  well  as  himself  for  her  genius  and  goodness,  though  both  had  to  be 
discerned  through  a  most  unprepossessing  exterior  and  a  nervousness 
looking  like  silliness.  The  introduction  of  her  brother  was  the 
strangest  accident.  Writing  to  himself  the  other  day  she  said  her 
brother  wanted  a  farm,  but  she  as  little  expected  in  such  a  matter  to 
lie  helped  by  him,  as  he  to  be  asked  by  her.  "Betham  has  probably 
to  learn  farming,"  he  ominously  added,  "  and  so  far  is  less  desirable 
than  Hutchinson."  This  was  of  course  disregarded,  and  Betham  was 
duly  installed.     Considerably  more  will  be  heard  of  him  hereafter. 

Landor's  next  letter  was  from  Bath,  and  dated  the  12th  February, 
1812  :  — 

"  After  travelling  through  Gloucestershire,  "Worcestershire,  and  "Warwick- 
shire, where  I  passed  several  weeks  with  my  mother,  I  went  to  superin- 
tend my  workmen  at  Llanthony.  Violent  floods  have  carried  away  two 
bridges.  1  am  engaged  in  building  a  third  also,  lor  the  union  of  two  farms, 
now  under  one  tenant,  I  am  rebuilding  a  house  for  Ch.  Betham,  and 
erecting  a  new  one  for  a  Gloucestershire  man.  Yesterday  I  returned  to 
Bath,  for  the  sake  of  meeting  Mr.  Thuillier,  my  wife's  father. 

A  few  months  later  Southey  pleasantly  took  up  the  strain  of  Bath, 
the  friends  interchanged  their  experiences  of  the  famous  city,  and 
what  they  said  of  it  has  not  yet  lost  its  interest. 

SOUTHEY    TO    LANDOR. 

"Will  this  find  you  in  the  Vale  of  Ewyas,  or  have  you  taken  wing  for 
Bath,  which,  in  spite  of  thirty  years'  labor   toward   spoiling  it,  still   remains 

the  pleasantesl  city  in  the  kingdom?     I  remember  it  when  it  ended  at  the 

Crescent,  and  there  was  not  a  house  on  the  Bath-wick  side  of  the  river. 
The  longest  walk  iu'which  I  was  ever  indulged  was  to  a  cottage,  —  the  cot- 
tage  we  called  it.  in  a  little  orchard,  a  sweet  sequestered  spot  at  that  time,  — 

my  ne  plus  ulna  then,  beyond  which  all  was  terra  incognita.  No  doubt  it 
is  now  overgrown  with  streets.  But  the  only  alteration  which  I  cannot 
forgive  is  die  abominable  one  of  converting  the  South  Parade  into  one  side 
of  a  square,  and  thus  destroying  the  finest  thing,  perhaps  the  only  thing,  of 
its  kind  in  the  world.  I  have  often  walked  upon  that  terrace  by  moon- 
light, after  the  play,  my  head  full  of  the  heroics  which  1  had  been  im- 
bibing,—  and  perhaps  lam  at  this  day  the  better  for  those  moonlight 
walks." 


.ET.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE   AND   LIFE  AT   LLANTHONT.  203 

LANDOR   TO    SOUTHEY. 

"  You  remind  me  of  Bath !  if  not  a  delightful,  a  most  easy  place.  _  I  can- 
not bear  brick  houses  and  wet  pavements.  A  city  without  them  is  a  city 
fit  for  men  before  the  Fall.  But,  alas,  they  fell  before  they  built.  The 
South  Parade  was  always  my  residence  in  winter.  Towards  spring  I 
removed  into  Pulteney  Street,  —  or  rather  towards  summer;  for  there 
were  formerly  as  many  nightingales  in  the  garden,  and  along  the  river  op- 
posite the  South  Parade,  as  ever  there  were  in  the  bowers  of  Schiraz.  The 
situation  is  unparalleled  in  beauty,  and  is  surely  the  warmest  in  England. 
I  could  get  a  walk  into  the  country  without  crossing  a  street,  which  I  hate. 
These  advantages  often  kept  me  in  Bath  until  the  middle  of  June,  and  I 
always  returned  in  the  beginning  of  November.  I  wonder  that  your  grave 
meditations  were  not  disturbed  there  ;  for  as  sure  as  ever  there  was  moon- 
light, a  train  —  not  qualis  per  juga  Cynthi  exercet  Diana  chores  —  was 
ready  to  invite  you.  I  always  hated  plays  and  playhouses,  and  in  the  nine 
first  years  I  was  only  once  at  the  Bath  Theatre ;  but  if  I  had  a  very  large 
fortune  I  would  have  one  of  my  own,  and  give  a  company  a  thousand 
pounds  to  act  once  a  week  in  the  summer,  for  me  and  four  or  five  more.  I 
would  have  only  the  best  actors  and  the  best  audiences,  and  I  would  have 
no  comedies,  -*-  except  Moliere's,  for  the  ladies." 

What  progress  meanwhile  was  making  in  affairs  at  Llanthony, 
whether  affecting  Landor  himself  or  his  relations  with  the  neighbor- 
ing gentry,  should  now  be  told.  Southey's  prediction  that  a  wife 
would  make  the  very  Welshmen  endurable  had  unfortunately  not 
been  realized.  Matters  went  on  so  badly,  that  even  when  the  build- 
ing of  his  house  was  finished,  and  some  rooms  had  become  habitable, 
he  simply  from  time  to  time  occupied  these,  left  the  rest  unfurnished, 
and  never  wholly  quitted  the  tower.  He  never  seems  quite  to  have 
settled  to  the  conviction  that  he  should  continue  to  occupy  the  place. 
"This  blessed  day,"  he  wrote  in  August,  1812,  "  to  use  an  expres- 
sion which  people  seldom  use  so  emphatically,  my  masons  have  left 
me,  after  a  job  of  three  years.  I  live  in  my  house  merely  to  keep  it 
dry,  just  as  a  man  would  live  in  a  dog-kennel  to  guard  his  house.  I 
hate  and  detest  the  very  features  of  the  country,  so  much  vexation 
have  I  experienced  in  it.  I  wish  to  God  I  could  exchange  it  for  a 
house  in  Bath,  or  anywhere.  Another  man  would  not  have  the  same 
causes  for  vexation.  The  people  would  not  be  his  tenants.  I  never 
can  be  happy  here,  or  comfortable,  or  at  peace.  Adieu.  Melioribus 
utere  fatis  ! "  He  had  also  special  causes  of  vexation  at  this  exact 
date,  of  which  the  brief  narrative  contained  in  letters  preserved 
among  his  papers  may  now  be  not  unamusing.  It  will  at  least  be 
full  of  character. 

Being  a  member  of  the  grand  jury  of  the  county  of  Monmouth,  he 
had  startled  his  colleagues  at  the  summer  assizes  of  1812  by  an 
unexampled  departure  from  precedent.  Accepting  in  their  literal  sig- 
nification the  formal  expressions  in  Mr.  Baron  Thompson's  charge,  he 
presented  with  his  own  hand  into  that  of  the  judge  a  statement  of 
alleged   felony  committed  by  one  of  the  surveyors  of  taxes  in  the 


20-i  BATH,    SPAIX,    AXD    LLANTHONY.  ''ll'f-i"1' 

county.  And  this  he  did,  as  he  further  amazed  the  learned  baron  by 
informing  him,  liecau.se  his  fellow-jurymen,  whom  with  himself  his 
lordship  had  adjured  to  lay  before  him  whatever  they  might  have 

heard  of  felony  committed  in  the  county,  had  in  the  particular  case 
refused  to  perform  that  duty. 

At  the  same  time  (29th  August,  1812)  he  wrote  to  the  grand  jury 
in  their  official  character  to  acquaint  them  with  what  he  had  done. 
I  substitute  initials  for  names,  though  there  is  nothing  now  to  give 
offence  to  any. 

"  Gentlemen,  —  As  one  of  the  grand  jury  for  the  county  of  Monmouth,  I 
have  thought  proper  to  give  into  the  hands  of  Baron  Thompson  a  state- 
ment of  felony  committed  by  J.  P.,  surveyor  of  the  taxes  in  that  county.  I 
understood  that  he  was  displaced  from  that  office  for  neglect  of  duty,  and 
since  hear  that  he  has  been  reinstated  by  the  influence  of  Sir  C.  M.  and  Sir 
R.  S.  That  he  has  on  many  occasions  been  guilty  of  vexatious  surcharges 
is  a  matter  of  the  most  public  notoriety ;  and  that  he  has  met  with  coun- 
tenance and  favor  from  certain  men  in  power  for  something-  the  very  re- 
verse of  surcharging  is  as  much  the  subject  of  general  belief.  That  the 
minds  of  the  common  people,  which  are  too  apt  to  be  unquiet  in  i 
times  of  severe  and  almost  intolerable  taxation,  may  be  relieved  from  the 
painful  idea  that  they  are  paying  up  the  deficiencies  of  the  rich,  is  the  in- 
tention and  purport  of  my  letter.  1  was  informed  (I  am  not  certain 
whether  it  was  officially),  when  I  came  into  the  county,  that  if  I  would 
invite  Mr.  P.  to  dinner,  and  send  him  occasionally  some  game.  I  should  not 
find  him  troublesome;  that  he  surcharged  Mr.  B..  of  Caerleon,  and  offered 
to  remove  the  surcharge  for  a  dinner;  that  Major  M.  and  Mr.  J.  of  Lanarth 
for  several  years  were  not  charged  to  near  the  same  amount  as  he  dis- 
covered they  were  liable  to  when  hunger  or  resentment  made  him  more 
keen:  thai  Sir  A.  M.,  Sir  R.  S.,  Mr.  L..  ofLandilo,  and  many  other  gentle- 
men in  the  neighborhood,  have  never  been  charged  up  to  four  parts  in  five 
of  the  amount  These  things  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  ascertain  ;  but  it  is 
your  duty  to  examine  into  them,  and  if  I  shall  be  found  to  mention  the 
facts  from  light  and  frivolous  report,  I  am  subject  to  no  small  portion  of 
just  censure.  T  have  heard  it  again  and  again,  in  the  county  and  out  of  it; 
and  was  myself  surcharged  while  I  was  in  Spain.  Since  my  return  I  was 
surcharged  again,  to  which  no  man  in  his  senseswould  be  liable  knowingly  ; 
and  although  half  a  year  has  elapsed,  the  surcharge  has  not  been  confirmed. 
A  servant  in  my  absence  was  twice  seen  riding  an  old  coach  horse  of  mine 
use:  while  I  was  at  Bath  my  gamekeeper  was  said  to  have  dogs  of 
mine,  which  however  were  not  mine:  and  some  other  things  were  brought 
against  me  which  \  left  totally  to  the  management  of  my  agent,  as  I  did  the 
whole  of  my  entries,  &c.  For  the  present  I  think  it  more  proper  to  lay 
this  statement  before  you  than  before  Parliament  or  the  public ;  because  an 
open  discussion  would  irritate  the  public  at  a  period  of  such  accumulated 
oppression  and  almost  universal  distress ;  and  because  you  will  be  equally 
able  to  quiet  the  minds  of  the  suffering  community  by  immediately  institut- 
ing a  strict  inquiry,  and  by  showing  them  that  it  is  not  they  alone  who  are 
liable  to  surcharges,  and  that  a  surveyor  is  not  readmitted  to  an  office 
which  he  was  dismissed  from  for  neglecting-,  merely  because  he  is  favored 
by  the  rich  and  powerful,  who  are  now  not  only  the  dispensers  of  but  the 
gainers  by  this  patronage.     I  have  the  honor  to  be,  W.  S.  Landor." 


.::;'.  3° -39-]  MARRIAGE    AND    LIFE    AT   LLANTHOXT.  205 

Some  days  passed,  and  no  direction  for  inquiry  being  vouchsafed 
by  the  judge,  Landor  proceeded  to  write  to  that  learned  person  him- 
self. He  recounted  what  he  had  done,  and  why  he  had  done  it ;  said 
he  had  never  in  the  most  trifling  matter  disputed  or  quarrelled  with 
any  of  his  colleagues  on  the  grand  jury  ;  named  one  of  them  as  the 
magistrate  who  had  given  him  the  evidence  on  which  the  statement 
of  felony  was  drawn  up  ;  and  asked  if  his  lordship  was  prepared  to 
screen  these  Monmouthshire  gentlemen  in  refusing  inquiry  against 
the  demand  of  that  member  of  their  body  who  had  shown  its  neces- 
sity ;  "  a  man  who  never  committed,  or  connived  at,  any  base  action, 
who  never  avenged  an  injury,  who  never  accepted  a  favor  at  the  ex- 
pense of  independence  ;  and  who,  in  everything  that  elevates  the 
character  or  adorns  the  mind,  would  blush  at  descending  to  a  com- 
parison with  the  first  and  wTisest  among  them."  Very  lately,  indeed, 
it  was  reported,  his  lordship  had  entertained  the  majority  of  the 
grand  jury  at  dinner,  when  this  matter  had  been  the  subject  of  con- 
versation ;  and  if  he  had  really  said  to  them,  as  alleged,  in  giving  up 
the  question  to  their  wishes,  we  shall  cell  go  to  the  House  of  Lords  to- 
gether, he  had  taken  accurate  measure  of  the  character  of  his  present 
coi'respondent.  "  I  would  indeed  bring  you  all  before  the  House  of 
Lords  if  such  a  step  were  requisite  ;  but  if  I  read  your  decision  as 
clearly  as  you  read  mine,  you  will  order  the  affair  to  be  investigated, 
and  you  will  consider  it  worth  some  deliberation  whether  felons 
should  be  servants  of  the  king,  or  are  proper  supporters  of  his  crown 
and  dignity." 

The  learned  baron  nevertheless,  meaning  nothing  of  the  sort,  pru- 
dently abstained  from  even  answering  the  letter ;  upon  which  Lan- 
dor wrote  again  to  remind  him  that  there  was  a  time  when  the 
courtesies  of  life  required  that  a  letter  should  be  answered,  though 
written  by  an  inferior  in  fortune  or  in  learning.  "  Matters  of  even 
small  importance  had  always  their  share  of  notice  ;  and  somewhat 
was  occasionally  added  that  they  might  not  repine  at  what  they 
could  not  aspire  to,  and  that  the  inequalities  of  fortune  might  be 
smoothened  by  her  condescension.  These  things  have  been.  Among 
the  things  that  I  should  have  fancied  could  never  be,  is  a  judge  re- 
fusing to  investigate  a  felony,  when  a  grand  juror,  whom  he  had 
commanded  to  lay  such  matters  before  him,  states  the  fact,  and  a 
magistrate  brings  the  evidence.  I  acknowledge  my  error  and  must 
atone  for  my  presumption.  But  I  really  thought  your  lordship  was 
in  earnest,  seeing  you,  as  I  did,  in  the  robes  of  justice,  and  hearing 
you  speak  in  the  name  and  writh  the  authority  of  the  laws."  And  so 
ended  the  matter,  as  indeed  it  could  not  help  ending ;  Landor  being 
not  so  much  wrong  as  wrong-headed,  and  preferring  to  lose  what  he 
wanted  rather  than  fail  to  overturn  all  common  law  and  usage  in 
getting  it. 

The  transaction  was  in  truth  not  so  foolish  as  it  looks.  The  object 
of  Landor's  wrath  was  an  electioneering  attorney  whom  everybody 


20G  BATH,    SPAIN,    AXD    LLANTHONY.  **%£_  ™- 

believed  to  be  a  rascal,  but  some  bad  found  convenient  to  their  pur- 
poses, others  did  not  like  to  meddle  with,  and  Landor  alone  was  for 
exposing  at  all  hazards.  The  thing  in  its  way  was  quite  as  chival- 
rous as  anything  in  the  page  of  Cervantes,  and  to  many,  perhaps, 
will  seem  not  much  less  absurd;  but  that  at  least  one  Monmouth- 
shire magistrate,  a  clergyman  and  a  man  of  education  and  refine- 
ment, thought  Landor  right  and  unselfish  in  moving  in  the  matter,  I 
learn  from  the  letters  of  Mr.  Davies  of  Court-y-Uollen.  They  are 
besides  very  pleasing  evidence  of  the  terms  on  which  the  lord  of 
Llanthony  remained  with  one  of  the  most  intelligent  of  the  resident 
gentry  as  long  as  he  lived  in  the  county.  The  families  exchange 
visits,  and  more  substantial  courtesies.  Mr.  Davies  overflows  with 
thanks  for  a  Rembrandt  Landor  has  given  him,  and  sends  him  back 
no  end  of  poplars  and  other  trees.  They  stock  each  other's  ponds 
and  gardens  with  fish  and  fruit,  discuss  amicably  Cuyps  and  Claudes, 
and  do  not  quarrel  even  over  politics.  Mr.  Davies  is  for  an  influence 
in  the  county  adverse  to  the  Beauforts,  "  or  we  shall  be  lost  "  ;  being 
appealed  to  in  one  of  Landor's  disputes  with  his  tenantry,  he  decides 
in  his  favor,  but  not  without  shrewd  advice  as  to  points  of  temper  ; 
and  he  is  one  of  the  two  magistrates  long  afterwards  referred  to  in 
the  imaginary  conversation  with  a  Florentine  visitor,  where  Landor, 
speaking  in  his  own  person,  says  :  "  In  the  county  where  my  chief 
estate  lies,  a  waste  and  unprofitable  one,  but  the  third  I  believe  in 
extent  of  any  there,  it  was  represented  to  me  that  the  people  were 
the  most  lawless  in  Great  Britain  ;  and  the  two  most  enlightened 
among  the  magistrates  wished  and  exhorted  me  to  become  one."* 

He  made  the  application  accordingly  ;  and  I  am  able  to  relate 
from  his  papers  what  followed  its  rejection.  The  time  for  making  it 
must  be  admitted  to  have  been  ill-chosen  ;  his  letter  to  the  lord-lieu- 
tenant bearing  date  in  the  same  month  when  he  had  written  to  the 
grand  jury,  the  foreman  of  whom  was  the  lord-lieutenant's  brother. 
This  was  hardly  an  excuse,  however,  for  the  dryness  of  the  duke's 
reply. 

"Badminster,  A.ugus1  28,  1812.  Sib,  I  beg  leave  to  acknowledge  the 
receipt  of  your  letter,  and  to  express  my  regret  that  at  present  it  is  not  in 

*   Works,  I.  326.    The  result  is  thus  described:  "Itwould  have  1 n  a  great  hin- 

drance  to  my  studies;  yet  a  sense  of  public  good,  and  a  desire  to  promote  it  by  any 
sacrifice,  induced  me  to  propose  the  thing  to  the  Duke  of  Beaufort,  tin-  lord-lieutenant 

Hi-  could  have  heard  nothing  more  of  me,  g 1  or  evil,  than  that  I  was  a  studious  man, 

and  that,  although  I  belonged  to  no  <ocirty.  club,  or  party,  ami  never  Bat  in  my  life  at 
a  public  dinner,]  should  oppose  his  family  in  elections.  The  information,  however 
probable,  was  wrong.  I  had  votes  in  four  counties,  ami  could  influence  6fty  or  sixty, 
and  perhaps  many  more ;  yet  I  never  did  or  will  influence  >>ur  in  any  case,  nor  ever 
give  one  while  Representation  i-  either  cheat  or  coaxer.  The  noble  duke  declined  my 
proposal.'1  In  the  same  dialogue  he  makes  these  further  personal  allusions:  "Had 
avarice  or  ambition  guided  me,  remember  that  I  started  with  a  larger  hereditary  estate 
than  those  of  Pitt,  Fox.  Canning,  and  twenty  more  such  amounted  to:  and  not  scraped 
together  in  this,  or  tie-  last,  or  the  preceding  century,  in  ages  of  stockjobbing  and 
peculation,  of  cabinet-adventure  and  counterfeit  nobility.  My  education,  and  that 
which  education  work-  upon  or  produces,  was  not  below  theirs;  yet  certain  I  am 
that,  if  I  had  applied  to  he  made  a  tide-waiter  on  the  Thames,  the  minister  would  have 
refused  me." 


yET.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE   AND    LIFE    AT    LLAXTHONY.  207 

my  power  to  comply  with  your  request.     I  am,  sir,  your  most  humble  ser- 
vant, Beaufort." 

Landor's  rejoinder,  written  on  the  2d  of  September,  was  not  with- 
out dignity.  Since  it  was  not  his  grace's  pleasure,  he  wrote,  to  nomi- 
nate him  on  the  commission  of  the  peace,  he  requested  that  the  duke 
would  have  the  goodness  to  appoint  some  other  person  of  more  infor- 
mation and  of  more  independence ;  "  qualities  which  no  one  can 
better  appreciate,  and  which  are  so  abundant  in  all  parts  of  the 
county,  particularly  the  magistracy."  It  was  absolutely  requisite,  he 
added,  that  some  justice  of  the  peace  should  reside  within  ten  miles 
of  Llanthony  parish,  in  which,  for  want  of  one,  every  sort  of  misde- 
meanor was  almost  daily  committed  with  impunity;  and  he  now 
made  that  request  not  only  as  a  compliment  usually  paid  the  lord- 
lieutenant,  but  to  avoid  any  appearance  of  discourtesy  in  applying 
directly  to  the  chancellor. 

The  duke  made  no  reply  :  a  circumstance  he  probably  regretted 
when,  after  a  very  few  days,  the  subjoined  communication  reached 
him,  and,  as  well  from  its  contents  as  from  the  papers  transmitted  with 
it,  he  knew  better  the  kind  of  man  he  had  treated  with  discour- 
tesy. 

"  Mr.  Landor  begs  leave  to  enclose  some  testimonies  of  his  fitness  for  the 
office  which,  in  furtherance  of  the  public  good,  he  was  Avilling  and  desirous 
to  undertake.  When  the  lord-lieutenant  sees  them  coming  from  persons  of 
experience  and  virtue,  it  is  much  to  be  hoped  that  he  will  approach  one 
step  towards  wisdom  by  taking  some  advantage  of  theirs.  By  generous  and 
elevated  minds  many  deficiencies  are  overlooked  on  a  little  relaxation  of 
arrogance,-  and  many  follies  are  pardoned  for  retracting  one.  This  observa- 
tion is  made  by  Mr.  Landor  in  the  same  spirit  of  pure  benevolence  as  con- 
stantly and  zealously  animates  him  in  the  guidance  of  Aveaker  intellects, 
which  are  always  in  the  more  clanger  the  higher  the  station  is ;  and  he 
entreats  that  it  may  not  be  considered  as  a  reflection,  much  less  as  a 
reproach.  He  has  been  given  to  understand  that  the  Duke  of  Beaufort  acts 
honestly  according  to  his  ideas  of  honesty,  wisely  according  to  his  ideas  of 
wisdom,  and  independently  according  to  his  ideas  of  independence ;  and  it 
would  be  ungenerous  to  try  him  by  any  other  standard.  Never  will  Mr. 
Landor  be  induced  to  believe  that  a  person  invested  with  authority  (which, 
however,  as  a  stronger  safeguard  against  revolutionary  principles,  is  more 
often  conferred  on  rank  than  on  information,  and  on  subservience  than  on 
integrity)  would,  for  the  indulgence  of  an  irrational  prejudice,  or  the  gratifi- 
cation of  an  unmanly  resentment,  render  himself  an  object  of  detestation  to 
the  honest  or  of  ridicule  to  the  wise." 

Landor  followed  this  up  by  a  letter  of  nearly  the  same  date  to  the 
chancellor,  in  which  he  stated  the  urgent  grounds  that  existed  for  the 
appointment  of  a  justice  of  peace  in  the  neighborhood.  There  was 
not  one  within  ten  miles,  and  several  parts  of  the  parish  were  thir- 
teen miles  from  one.  As  a  consequence  thefts  and  every  kind  of 
misdemeanor  were  committed  almost  daily,  and  always  with  impu- 
nity.    For  men  were  unwilling  to  leave  their  little  farms,  cultivated 


208  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTHONY.  .*"/• 

by  their  own  personal  labor,  to  take  offenders  a  whole  day's  journey 
over  'mountains  so  wild  and  perilous ;  and  were  no  less  afraid  of 
returning  to  their  homes  than  reluctant  at  leaving  them  on  such  a 
business.  He  had  mentioned  these  facts  to  the  lord-lieutenant,  and 
had  taken  the  trouble  also  of  drawing  the  inferences  for  him  ;  but 
they  were  probably  not  understood.  The  office  of  a  magistrate 
would  of  course  be  a  troublesome  one  to  a  man  of  retirement  and 
letters,  if  it  was  not  presumptuous  to  call  himself  so  ;  yet  he  was 
willing  to  have  undertaken  it.  The  Duke  of  Beaufort,  however, 
thought  him  unfit,  and  he  was  quite  content  to  submit  to  the  deci- 
sion of  a  person  whose  family  had  always  been  so  remarkable  for  its 
discernment.  His  grace's  inducement  or  motive  he  had  not  himself 
asked,  this  being  an  inquiry  of  a  by  no  means  philosophical  cast;  but 
it  was  right  the  chancellor  should  know  the  rumor  prevalent  in  the 
county  that  the  lord-lieutenant's  principal  reason  "  which  it  was  fore- 
told me  would  operate  as  it  has  done,  is  that  I  preferred  a  charge  of 
felony  against  an  attorney  who  is  said  to  have  been  very  serviceable 
in  elections.  In  doing  so,  I  conceive  I  did  my  duty  as  a  grand  jury- 
man. The  chairman,  Lord  Arthur,  thought  otherwise  :  the  rest  fol- 
lowed." The  letter  closed  with  a  waiver  of  his  own  claims  in  favor 
of  any  more  suitable  person,  and  with  a  reiteration  that  the  appoint- 
ment was  necessary. 

The  chancellor  made  no  reply.  It  is  difficult  now  to  believe  possi- 
ble, what  could  then  be  done,  or  omitted  to  be  done,  with  per- 
fect impunity.  As  Sydney  Smith  says  of  the  time  comprised  in  the 
first  quarter  of  the  century  when  this  particular  chancellor  and  his 
court  pressed  so  heavily  on  mankind,  it  was  an  awful  time  for  liberal 
opinions  and  for  all  who  had  the  misfortune  to  entertain  them.  A 
man  raising  his  voice  against  a  Tory  lord-lieutenant  was  a  man  crying 
out  in  a  desert,  with  about  equal  chances  of  reply  ;  but  Landor  did 
not  therefore  abate  his  voice,  and  happily  we  may  hear  it  still.  He 
wrote  another  letter,  which  I  think  myself  fortunate  to  have  found, 
because  its  interest  rises  above  the  occasion  of  it,  and  gives  it  value  in 
a  higher  sense.  It  tells  us  what  in  favorable  circumstances  he  pro- 
posed to  have  done  at  Llanthony,  and  what,  in  circumstances  less 
happy,  he  did;  and  so  much  as  it  eloquently  and  quite  truly  claims 
of  unselfishness  of  intention  and  worthiness  of  design  may  stand 
hereafter  not  unfairly  against  some  serious  faults  and  failures  of  exe- 
cution. It  is  a  masterly  apology,  if  not  a  complete  defence,  and  will 
soften  if  it  does  not  arrest  judgment.      Its  date  is  October,  1812. 

TO    THE   LORD-CHANCELLOR    ELDON. 

"  Mv  Lord,  — Tt  would  ill  become  me  to  complain  in  public  or  private  that 
your  Lordship  lias  not  noticed  my  letter.  Mv  letter  was  such  indeed  as  any 
common  person  mighl  have  written,  but  the  business  was  not  a  common, 
nor  a  private,  nor  an  unimportant  one.  I  requested  that  a  justice  of  the 
peace  might  he  nominated  by  your  lordship  in  the  district  where  I  live.    I 


JET.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE   AXD   LIFE   AT   LLANTHONY.  209 

gave  my  reasons  for  the  necessity  of  the  thing  itself,  and  of  applying  to  you 
for  its  accomplishment.  The  lord-lieutenant  had  declined  it.  I  never  was 
anxious  to  obtrude  myself  on  the  notice  of  the  great  or  of  the  public  ;  but 
this  affair  is  one  m  which  the*community  is  much  interested.  The  choice 
of  justices  and  their  conduct  are  perhaps  of  greater  importance  than  any 
things  now  remaining  of  the  English  constitution.  I  thought  myself  quali- 
fied. I  have  constantly  endeavored  from  my  earliest  youth  to  acquire  and 
disseminate  knowledge.  My  property  in  the  county  is  little  short  of  £  3,000 
a  year,  and  capable  of  improvement  to  more  than  double  that  amount.  I 
have  estates  in  other  counties,  both  in  possession  and  in  reversion.  I  have 
planted  more  than  70,000  oaks,  and  300,000  other  forest  trees ;  and  I  shall 
not  leave  off  until  I  have  planted  one  million.  Fifteen  thousand  acres  of 
land  will  allow  room  enough  for  their  growth.  Yet  I  have  sought  no  medal 
or  notoriety,  and  the  mention  of  it  is  now  extorted  from  me  to  prove  that  in 
011%  instance  I  have  not  without  success  attempted  to  benefit  the  county. 
I  have  at  my  own  expense  done  more  service  to  the  roads  in  a  couple  of 
years  than  all  the  nobility  and  gentlemen  around  me  have  done  since  the 
Conquest ;  and  I  stated  my  desire  of  being  in  the  commission  of  the  peace 
to  arise  from  the  power  it  would  afford  me,  at  the  sessions,  of  presenting 
what  are  still  impassable,  and  of  repressing  those  lawless  acts  which  are 
•committed  in  all  countries  where,  from  similar  impediments,  there  is  little 
intercourse  with  mankind.  When  the  Duke  of  Beaufort  thought  proper  to 
decline  my  offer,  I  wrote  again  to  him  with  perfect  temper,  and  requested 
him  to  appoint  one  better  qualified.  He  had  no  reply  to  make.  It  may 
indeed  justly  be  said  of  me,  if  anything  shall  be  said,  Serit  arbor es  quce 
alteri  sceculo  prosint ;  and  what  honor  it  will  confer  on  the  lord-lieutenant 
to  have  rejected  the  public  and  gratuitous  services  of  such  a  man  is  worth 
his  consideration  rather  than  mine.  It  certainly  will  bestow  on  him  a  more 
lasting  celebrity  than  any  other  Duke  of  Beaufort  has  acquired.  I  did  not 
believe  him  to  have  been  so  ambitious.  But  if  it  should  appear  that  any 
lord-lieutenant  has  erred  in  pursuing  fame  by  a  track  so  unfrequented  and 
so  cheerless,  your  lordship  at  least  has  the  power  of  preventing  the  ill  conse- 
quences which  would  arise  from  his  stupid  precipitancy  or  his  unruly  pas- 
sion. You  will  not  countenance  irrational  prejudice,  will  never  support 
unmanly  resentment,  will  never  sanction  dishonorable  patronage.  It  is 
possible  that  a  lord-lieutenant  may  have  been  instructed  in  little  else  than 
in  the  worming  of  hounds,  the  entrapping  of  polecats,  the  baiting  or  worry- 
ing of  badgers  and  foxes ;  that  he  may  be  a  perverse,  and  ignorant,  and 
imbecile  man ;  that  he  may  be  the  passive  and  transferable  tool  of  every 
successive  administration  ;  and  that  he  may  consider  all  whose  occupations 
are  more  becoming,  the  gentleman  and  the  scholar  who  is  wiser  or  more 
independent  than  himself,  as  a  standing  and  living  reproach.  In  this  case, 
which  I  entreat  your  lordship  to  consider  as  merely  an  hypothetical  one, 
would  not  you  be  anxious  to  superintend  him  a  little,  and  even  to  control 
him  in  the  choice  of  those  magistrates  on  whose  information  and  on  whose 
integrity  the  basis  of  English  jurisprudence  must  repose  ?  If,  for  instance, 
he  should  reject  from  the  bench  of  justices  a  person  who,  in  estate,  under- 
standing, quiet  political  demeanor,  and  sound  constitutional  principles,  is 
rather  more  than  on  a  level  with  the  generality  of  them,  and  for  no  other 
reason  than  because  this  person,  pursuant  to  a  charge  from  the  judge  of 
assize,  gave  information  of  a  felony  committed  by  a  partisan  of  that  lord- 
lieutenant,  would  not  you  cry  out  against  such  an  abuse  of  power,  such  a 
prostitution  of  honor,  such  a  violation  of  equity,  such  a  mockery  of  the  judge, 
such  a  scandal  and  impediment  and  subversion  of  the  laws  ?    This  case  also,  for 

14 


210  BATH,  SPAIN,  AND  LLANTHONY.  ^i&^i  i"' 

obvious  reasons,  must  be  hypothetical:  but  the  answer  may  be  direct,  to  the 
person  and  to  the  point.  I  never  now  will  accept,  my  lord,  anything  whatever 
thai  can  be  given  by  ministers  or  by  chancellors,  not  even  the  dignity  of  a 

country  justice,  the  only  honor  or  office  I  evertiave  solicited.  In  t  ruth  it  was 
the  only  one  lit  for  me.  I  cannot  boast  that  high  cultivation  of  mind,  that 
knowledge  of  foreign  nations,  that  intercourse  with  men  who  have  estab- 
lished and  men  who  have  subverted  empires,  that  insight  into  human  nature, 
that  investigation  and  development  of  the  causes  why  Europe  has  diverged 
from  the  same  (original)  state  of  society  into  such  variations  of  civic  polity; 
in  short,  those  travels  abroad  and  those  studies  at  home  which  have  adapted 
the  great  statesmen  of  the  day  for  the  duties  they  so  ably  and  disinterestedly 
fulfil  Yet  somewhat  of  all  these  things  have  fallen  within  my  reach  and 
exercised  my  moderate  powers  of  mind.  Demosthenes  and  Polybiis,  Livy 
and  Tacitus,  Machiavelu,  Davila,  G-ravina,  Beccaria,  De  Thou  and  Mon- 
tesquieu, Milton  and  Sydney  and  Harrington  and  Locke,  may  consohftne 
for  the  downfall  of  my  hopes  from  that  bright  eminence  to  which  none  of 
them,  in  these  times  and  in  this  country,  would  have  attained;  and  for 
which  my  pursuits  equally  disqualify  me.  Here  I  have  only  occupied  my 
hours  with  what  lie  beneath  the  notice  of  statesmen  and  governors:  in  pur- 
suing, with  fresh  alacrity,  the  improvement  of  public  roads,  of  which  already 
I  have  completed  at  my  own  expense  more  than  a  distance  of  seven  miles 
over  mountains  and  precipices,  and  have  made  them  1  tetter  and  much  wider 
than  the  turnpike  roads  throughout  the  country  ;  in  relieving  the  wants  and 
removing  the  ignorance  of  the  poor;  and  in  repressing,  by  personal  influ- 
ence rather  than  judicial  severity,  the  excesses  to  which  misery  and  idlei 
give  rise.  These  things  appear  of  little  consequence  to  the  rich  and  prosper- 
ous, but  they  are  the  causes  why  the  rich  and  prosperous  cease  to  be  so; 
and  if  we  refuse  to  look  at  them  now  in  the  same  point  of  view  as  humanity 
and  religion  see  them  in,  they  will  have  to  be  looked  at  hereafter  liom  a 
position  not  only  incompatible  with  leisure  and  quiet,  but  far  too  close  for 
safety.     I  am,  my  lord,  Walter  Savage  Landor." 

With  this,  and  a  poetical  episjtle  in  the  same  month  to  Southey, 
the  subject  was  dismissed,  and  he  troubled  duke  and  chancellor  no 
more.  Through  the  verses,  perhaps  more  than  through  his  graver 
protests,  his  bile  had  completely  discharged  itself;  and  for  a  better 
reason  also  than  this  the  reader  will  thank  me  for  subjoining  some  of 
them.  They  were  the  first  important  example  of  a  kind  of  writing  he 
was  afterwards  very  fond  of,  and  showed  much  mastery  in :  the 
rhymed  verses  which  in  Swift's  time  were  called  "occasional,''  but  for 
which  we  now  borrow  an  epithet  from  the  French.  Swift  himself 
hardly  threw  them  off  more  successfully  than  Landor.  For  it  is  the 
Consummate  art  of  such  writing  to  seem  infinitely  easier  than  it  is, 
and  commonplace  professors  of  it  arc  slipshod  when  they  ought  to  be 
easy.  It  should  condescend  without  condescending,  combine  the 
most  perfect  finish  with  an  apparent  carelessness  of  rhyming,  and  to 
the  utmost  terseness  of  language  give  the  tone  of  mere  conversation.* 
And  hence  it  is  that  the  finest  examples  of  it  are  often  found  in  men 
who  have  also  written  poetry  of  the  highest  order. 

*  What  other  higher  qualities  it  may  I nriched  by,  I  have  expressed  in  my  Life  of 

Goldsmith,  who  wrote  it  as  well  as  any  man. 


JET.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE   AND    LIFE   AT    LLANTHONY.  211 

The  opening  couplet  in  the  letter  to  Southey  was  taken  from 
Catullus. 

"  Laugh,  honest  Southey !  prithee,  come 
With  every  laugh  thou  hast  at  home; 
But  leave  there  Virtue,  lest  she  sneer 
At  one  '  most  noble  '  British  peer, 
Who  ties  fresh  tags  upon  his  ermine 
By  crying  '  ay,'  and  catching  vermin. 
Terror  of  those,  but  most  the  foe 
Of  all  who  think,  and  all  who  know.  .  .  . 
'  Such  characters,'  methinks  you  say, 
'  We  meet  by  hundreds  every  day ; 
And  common  dolts  and  common  slaves, 
Distinguished  but  by  stars  or  staves, 
Should  glitter  and  go  out,  exempt 
From  all  but  common  men's  contempt.  .  .  . 
Ribbons  and  garters,  these  are  things 
Often  by  ministers  and  kings, 
Not  over-wise  nor  over-nice, 
Conferred  on  folly  and  on  vice. 
How  wide  the  difference,  let  them  see, 
'Twixt  these  and  immortality! ' 
Yes,  oftentimes  imperial  Seine 
Has  listened  to  my  early  strain. 
Beyond  the  Rhine,  beyond  the  Rhone, 
My  Latian  Muse  is  heard  and  known. 
On  Tiber's  bank,  in  Arno's  shade, 
I  wooed  and  won  the  classic  maid. 
When  Spain  from  base  oppression  rose, 
I  foremost  rushed  amidst  her  foes: 
Gallicia's  hardy  band  I  led, 
Inspirited,  and  clothed,  and  fed. 
Homeward  I  turn :  o'er  Hatteril's  rocks 
I  see  my  trees,  I  hear  my  flocks. 
Where  alders  mourned  their  fruitless  bed, 
Ten  thousand  cedars  raise  their  head; 
And  from  Segovia's  hills  remote 
My  sheep  enrich  my  neighbor's  cote. 
The  wide  and  easy  roadl  lead 
Where  never  paced  the  harnessed  steed; 
Where  scarcely  dared  the  goat  look  down 
Beneath  the  fearful  mountain's  frown, 
Suspended,  while  the  torrent's  spray 
Springs  o'er  the  crags  that  roll  away. 
But  Envy's  steps  too  soon  pursue 
The  man  who  hazards  schemes  so  new; 
Who,  better  fit  for  Rome  and  Greece, 
Thinks  to  be — justice  of  the  peace.' 
A  Beaufort's  timely  care  prevents 
These  wild  and  desperate  intents. 
His  grandsons,  take  my  word,  shall  show  for  't 
This  my  receipt  in  full  to  Beaufort."  * 

*  Some  of  these  lines  he  printed  with  variations  in  his  Dry  Sticks,  having  already 
admitted  them,  with  erasure  of  every  reference  to  the  duke  or  the  magistrates,  into  one 
of  his  published  poems  (  Works,  II.  635,  636),  from  which  I  borrow  these  additional 
verses :  — 

"Llanthony!  an  ungenial  clime 
And  the  broad  wing  of  restless  Time 
Have  rudely  swept  thy  massy  walls 
And  rockt  thy  abbots  in  their  palls. 
I  loved  thee  by  thy  streams  of  yore, 
By  distant  streams  I  love  thee  more; 
For  never  is  the  heart  so  true 


212  BATn,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONT.  [B,%K- 1"' 

But  though  the  affair  was  thus  finally  dismissed,  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  overstate  its  effect  on  his  temper  while  it  lasted.  He  had 
made  up  his  mind  even  to  quit  England  altogether,  and  become  a 
citizen  of  France.  He  would  live  in  some  French  town  in  retirement 
on  half  his  income,  and  give  up  the  other  half  to  a  trustworthy  agent 
who  should  employ  it  exclusively  in  improving  his  English  estates. 
I  gather  the  details  of  this  notable  scheme  from  the  letter  which  rea- 
soned and  shamed  him  out  of  it:  a  wise  and  kindly  letter  of  his 
brother  Robert's,  who  had  forgotten  it  and  the  occasion  of  writing  it, 
but  whose  permission  I  have  obtained  to  insert  it  here.  Dating  so 
long  since,  it  is  identical  in  tone  and  temper  with  those  that  have  en- 
riched this  memoir,  and  even  as  Mr.  Landor  writes  of  his  brother  now 
he  was  writing  to  that  brother  himself  fifty-five  years  ago.  It  is  dated 
from  Dawlish  in  August,  1812. 

"  Dear  Walter,  —  At  the  very  time  that  I  most  assuredly  expected  to  find 
that  you  were  become  exactly  like  other  people,  that  you  had  been  melted 
down,  in  the  matrimonial  crucible,  to  the  same  common  shape  and  quality 
■with  other  mortal  men,  you  turn  out  a  stranger  fellow  than  ever!  If  you 
will  listen  patiently  to  me,  I  will  modestly  undertake  to  prove  that  you  are 
wrong  in  every  respect.  First,  to  think  of  going  into  France  when 
there  is  a  peace.  Supposing  that  a  peace  be  possible,  —  which  it  is  not 
while  Bonaparte  lives  and  this  country  remains  unconquered,  —  who 
would  voluntarily  become  the  subjecl  of  such  a  tyrant?  Who  would 
sacrifice  the  right  —  whether  he  uses  it  or  not  —  of  speaking  what  he 
thinks?  For  my  own  part,  if  I  were  certain  that  I  should  never  feel  the 
inclination  to  speak  or  write  on  political  matters  again,  if  I  were 
ain  of  Vicing  protected  and  well  treated,  I  would  rather  live  as  a  day- 
laborer  in  England  than  as  a  prince  in  France.  I  should  feel  that  in  choos- 
ing to  live  under  an  absolute  government,  I  voluntarily  relinquished  honor 
and  liberty,  that  I  went  out  of  my  way  to  seek  a  master,  and  to  look  for 
servitude.  It  is  in  vain  to  say  that  a  man  is  not  oppressed  till  he  feels  the 
oppression.  I  think  with  Johnson  that  ninety-nine  men  out  of  a  hundred 
might  live  as  free  from  any  actual  tyranny  in  Turkey  as  in  England;  but 
the  knowledge  that  we  are  subject  to  tyranny,  that  we  axe  liable  to  caprice, 
that  we  must  abstain  from  such  and  such  particular  topics,  is  the  torment 
T<>  see  others  oppressed  without  daring  to  expostulate,  in  fact  to  be  indebted 
to  the  forbearance  of  any  absolute  authority,  is  degrading.  It  may  lie  -aid 
that  people  are  wronged  and  oppressed  even  in  England  sometimes,  and 
that  they  can  obtain  no  redress;  but  that  will  not  apply.  No  government 
can  hinder  some  injuries;  hut  the  constitution  dues  no!  authorize  them;  and 
the  laws,  however  administered,  are  in  themselves  just.  Consequently 
there  may  be  wrong,  but  there  is  no  degradation.     You  say  that  a  proof  is 

As  bidding  what  we  love  adieu. 
^  et  neither  where  we  first  drew  breath, 
Nor  where  our  fathers  Bleep  in  death, 
Nor  where  the  mystic  ring  was  given. 

The  link  from  earth  that  reaches  heaven, 

Nor  London,  Paris,  Florence,  Borne, 

In  hi-  own  heart 's  the  wise  man's  home! 
Store. 1  with  each  keener,  kinder  sense, 
Too  tinn.  too  lofty  for  offence, 
Unlittered  by  the  t""!-  of  state, 

And  greater  than  the  great  world's  great." 


,"T.  30-39.]  MARRIAGE   AXD    LIFE   AT   LLAXTHONY.  213 

wanting  that  no  personal  desire  of  gain  has  influenced  your  actions.  This 
implies  some  deference  to  opinion.  Now,  what  would  not  only  your  ene- 
mies, but  even  your  friends  say,  if  you  settled  either  in  France  or  in  any 
other  country  under  French  influence  ?  The  latter  would  say  that  '  this 
apostle  of  liberty,  who  passed  so  much  of  his  life  in  praising  it,  who  not 
only  talked  of  it  and  wrote  for  it,  but  who  gave  his  money  and  risked  his 
person  to  defend  it,  he  has  left  his  connections,  his  property,  his  country, 
and  has  chosen  to  live  under  the  most  arbitrary  government  in  Europe.' 
Tour  enemies  would  point  you  out  as  an  example  to  prove  that  extremities 
often  meet,  and  that  what  they  call  Jacobinism  is  closely  allied  to  Tyranny. 
I  do  not  say  this  to  dissuade  you  from  going  into  France  and  settling  there, 
because  I  know  that  you  will  never  be  able;  because  the  war  can  never 
terminate  till  either  this  government  or  the  French  government  is  over- 
thrown ;  but  to  dissuade  you  from  entertaining,  and  still  more  from  disclos- 
ing, a  wish  which  many  men  who  hate  your  character  and  envy  your 
understanding  will  otherwise  exult  at.  No,  sir,  everything,  so  far,  can  be 
explained  by  the  love  of  liberty.  You  will  never  do,  or  on  consideration 
wish  to  do,  what  you  talk  of  As  for  the  determination  to  give  up  society, 
and  to  spend  the  best  half  of  your  income  in  improving  your  estate,  that 
I  think  also  wrong.  Why  not  enjoj'  yourself  now  ?  Why  look  so  far  for- 
ward, and  that  for  those  who  at  present  are  not  in  existence  ?  It  is  making 
money  of  too  much  consequence,  and  time  of  too  little.  You  will  leave  as 
good  a  fortune  as  you  received,  without  anxiety  or  deprivation.  Instead  of 
shutting  myself  up  at  Llanthony.  I  would  take  a  pleasant  house  in  a  good 
neighborhood,  and  live,  after  setting  apart  a  quarter  of  my  income  for  re- 
pairs, on  the  remainder.  A  man,  and  particularly  a  married  man,  risks 
everything  by  determining  on  solitude.  Solitude  influences  the  temper  in 
one  year  more  than  society  can  in  twenty.  It  creates  habits  and  feelings 
the  most  dangerous,  particularly  to  a  warm  and  sensitive  character.  The 
melancholy  man  becomes  infinitely  more  melancholy,  and  the  proud  man 
more  proud.  That  which  was  at  first  a  rill  becomes  a  torrent.  There  is  no 
resistance,  no  hope.  I  am  both  melancholy  and  proud,  and  I  dread  soli- 
tude. The  more  I  observe,  the  more  I  am  convinced  that  everything  in  life 
which  is  singular  is  dangerous.  You  have  now  the  happiness  of  others  to 
consider ;  so  take  the  safest  road,  which  is  the  commonest.  I  have  a  right 
to  talk  to  you  in  this  way  because  you  mention  your  schemes,  and  because 
I  am  vested  with  authority  to  teach  and  preach,  though  the  hearers  may  be 
wiser  and  better  than  myself.  I  had  much  to  say  about  books,  but  my 
paper  is  filled  and  my  beef  is  growing  cold.  Let  me  hear  from  you  at  Daw- 
lish,  where  I  shall  continue  this  month.  I  have  been  told  that  notwith- 
standing your  indifference "  [in  marrying]  "  about  everything  else  besides 
good  temper,  you  have  contrived  to  get  a  great  many  other  qualities  into 
the  bargain.     Yours  affectionately,  Robert  Eyres  Landor." 

Landor  acquiesced  and  submitted.  But  it  is  to  be  added,  quite 
apart  from  any  question  of  individual  complaint,  that  his  opinion  of 
the  way  in  which  affairs  were  at  this  time  administered  in  England 
differed  materially  from  his  younger  brother's  ;  and  that  what  he  has 
been  writing  on  that  special  subject  to  Southey  *  during  the  past  two 
years  is  consistently  the  tone  of  all  his  letters,  and  has  upon  it  the 
impress  of  very  strong  convictions  unwarped  by  personal  irritation  or 
wrong.     The  reader  will  perhaps  not  be  sorry  to  have  some  of  these 

*  See  ante,  p.  145. 


214  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  [B^-ll!' 

opinions  laid  before  him.  Originality  and  interest  always,  very  fre- 
quently great  worth  and  value,  constitute  a  claim  to  preservation 
even  apart  from  their  striking  illustrations  of  character. 

X.  PUBLIC  AFFAIRS. 

Southey's  connection  with  Scott's  scheme  of  the  Edinburgh  Register, 
for  which  he  had  undertaken  to  supply  the  history  of  each  year  as 
Burke  did  for  Dodsley's,  led  to  occasional  interchange  between  the 
friends  on  the  political  questions  of  the  day  more  frank  and  outspoken 
than  his  Quarterly  lucubrations  at  anytime  afforded.  In  the  Review 
he  was  never  able  quite  to  unmuzzle  himself,  and  it  is  curious  to  observe 
bow  ill  from  the  first  he  and  Gilford  got  on  together  both  in  politics 
and  literature.  As  for  the  notice  he  wrote  of  ('mint  Julian  for  the 
Quarterly,  and  by  which  he  hoped  to  have  given  Landor  satisfaction, 
Gifford  had  so  completely  knocked  its  brains  out  before  publication 
that  no  subsequent  mention  of  it,  to  Landor  or  any  one  else,  was  ever 
made  by  the  writer. 

Sending  his  friend  in  the  summer  of  1810  the  first  volume  of  his 
Edinburgh  history,  he  tells  him  of  the  second  he  is  already  working 
at ;  inquires  as  to  places  visited  by  Landor  in  Spain,  of  which  he 
wishes  to  give  good  descriptions;  and,  declaring  his  opinion  that  that 
country  is  not  to  be  subdued,  says  he  means  to  burst  out  upon  the 
subject  on  all  fit  occasions.  The  French  emperor,  he  believes,  will 
find  the  grave  of  his  power  in  the  Peninsula  ;  and  he  takes  pride  in 
the  opportunity  this  history-writing  for  the  Register  is  giving  him,  to 
denounce  all  incapable  half-hearted  contemporaries,  and  to  "  speak  of 
Bonaparte  as  befits  a  republican."*  Not  backward  of  course  is  Lan- 
dor's  sympathy  here  ;  and  finding  his  friend's  history  much  to  his 
liking,  he  praises  loudly  its  manliness  and  spirit. t 

The  next  prominent  subject  in  their  letters  is  Southey's  increasing 
work  for  the  Quarterly,  with  which  his  grumbling  at  the  editor  con- 
tinues to  keep  pace  ;  but  he  has  good  hope  that  be  will  not  meddle 
with  a  forthcoming  article  on  Methodism  which  he  has  written  in  re- 
ply to  Sydney  Smith's  in  the  Edinburgh,  and  which  he  shall  follow  up 
in' the  number  following  with  a  mortal  blow  at  Malthus,  the  especial 
object  of  his  contempt  and  abhorrence.  Then,  after  several  months, 
while  yet  he  is  in  pains  of  labor  with  his  second  product  of  history 

*  Another  passage  in  this  letter  (suppressed  in  tlie  printed  copy.  Letters,  11.203) 
Bays  that  he  gets  £  400  a  vein-  from  this  undertaking  of  Scott  and  the  Ballantynes,  and 
that  he  has  vested  £209  of  his  first  year"-  payment  in  a  twelfth  share  of  the  concern, 
which  is  to  bring  him  in  forty  per  cent.  Poor  Landor  himself  conld  not  have  taken  a 
simpler  or  more  Bangnine  view  of  the  transaction.  Alas!  we  find  Southey  soon  in 
trouble  arising  from  tin-  over-confident  calculation,  and  glad  to  put  off  further  respon- 
sibility by  sacrificing  aD  he  had  invested. 

t  One  exception  only  he  makes,  in  highly  characteristic  phrase.  Why  should 
Bonthev  have  thrown  bo  romantic  a  cast  over  the  valor  of  a  certain  general,  "  .'is  great 
a  rascal  as  any  of  his  family,  which  has  been  rascally  for  many  generations  "  ?  He 
was  a  Welshman. 


,ET.  30-39.]  PUBLIC   AFFAIRS.  215 

for  the  Register,  his  article  on  Methodism  has  appeared  and  given 
such  delight  to  Perceval  that  Southey  feels  he  has  lost  a  rich  benefice 
by  not  going  into  the  church.*  There  are,  however,  subjects  less 
pleasant.  Had  Landor  seen  Jeffrey's  criticism  on  Kehama,  as  original 
as  the  poem  and  altogether  matchless  for  impertinence  1  And  had 
he  not,  seeing  what  the  Portuguese  had  just  done  (it  is  now  May, 
1811),  repented  of  his  unkind  words  about  them  in  his  letters  to 
Riguelme?  Characteristic  in  every  point  was  Landor's  reply,  in 
which  the  reader  will  not  now  care  to  criticise  closely  words  out  of 
which  the  heat  and  venom  have  long  since  departed.  Jeffrey  himself 
gave  hard  words  in  those  days,  and  was  prepared  to  receive  them ; 
but,  though  a  greatly  overrated  literary  critic,  he  was  a  man  of  prodi- 
gious ability  in  various  ways,  of  an  unequalled  quickness  and  keen- 
ness of  intellect,  and  with  a  power  of  inspiring  attachment  possessed 
only  by  sincere  fine  natures. 

"  I  was  shamefully  wrong  in  speaking  as  I  did  of  the  Portuguese,  and  I 
am  very  glad  they  have  acquitted  themselves,  and  punished  me,  in  the 
manner  they  have  done.  Men  are  brave  until  bad  governments  have  made 
them  forget  the  use  of  bravery.  Then  the  very  breed  degenerates  for  want 
of  action.     Look  at  the  Chinese  for  an  example. 

"  Your  review  of  Methodism  is  admirable.  It  is  impossible  to  mistake 
the  author.     This  is  not  my  observation :  it  is  Mrs.  Carrick's. 

"  Jeffrey  is  called  a  clever  man,  I  hear.  If  so,  people  may  be  clever  men 
without  knowing  the  nature  of  a  lie,  or  the  distinction  between  virtue  and 
vice.  No  species  of  dishonesty  is  surely  so  unpardonable  as  Jeffrey's,  no 
profligacy  so  flagitious.  Thievery  may  arise  from  early  example  or  from 
urgent  want.  It  may  have  grown  into  an  incurable  habit,  or  have  been 
pushed  on  by  the  necessities  of  nature.  A  man  may  commit  even  murder 
itself  from  the  sudden  and  incontrollable  impulse  of  a  heart  still  uncorrupted ; 
but  he  must  possess  one  of  a  very  different  kind  who  can  air  and  exercise 
his  faculties  on  no  other  ground  than  the  destruction  of  fame  and  the  mor- 
tilication  of  genius.  I  was  once  asked  whether  I  would  be  introduced  to 
this  gentleman.  My  reply  was,  No,  nor  to  any  other  rascal  whatsoever.  I 
like  to  speak  plainly,  and  particularly  so  when  the  person  of  whom  I  speak 
may  profit  by  it." 

That  was  in  May,  1811  ;  and  Jeffrey,  if  he  could  have  read  it  and 
the  letter  which  followed  it  in  July,  would  doubtless  have  smiled  at 
the  worshipful  society  of  rascals  in  which  he  found  himself.  Landor 
was  then  expecting  his  friend  at  Llanthony,  and  after  telling  him  of 
the  copy  of  Drayton's  Polyolbion  he  had  bought  at  Rugby,  f  thus 
continues  :  — 

*  This  I  need  hardly  say  was  Southey's  destination  originally,  if  he  had  found  him- 
self able  to  accept  the  Articles  I  possess  a  curious  little  note  'of  Coleridge's  to  Cottle 
in  1796,  consisting  simply  of  these  words:  "Dear  Cottle,  I  congratulate  Virtue  and 
her  friends  that  Robert  Southey  has  relinquished  all  intentions  of" taking  Orders  He 
leaves  our  party,  however,  and  means,  he  thinks,  to  study  the  law.  Yours,  S.  T.  Cole- 
ridge."    "  Our  party"  was  the  Pantisocratic  expedition. 

t  See  ante,  p.  13.  He  cannot  tell  how  to  direct  that  letter,  "  and  the  worst  is,  I  never 
was  right  in  my  life  if  I  hesitated."  Alas!  it  was  his  habit  of  not  hesitating  oftener, 
nil  i-pflecting  more,  that  led  him  into  all  kinds  of  intemperances  of  act  as  well  as 
speech. 


21G  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTUOXY.  ,:  nr- 

"  What  a  series  *of  fools  and  scoundrels  have  managed  this  country ! 
Surely  such  fellows  as  Pitt  and  Fox  should  never  have  gone  further  than 
the  vestry-room.  A  parish  workhouse  had  been  too  much  for  their  manage- 
ment, and  they  have  been  making  a  national  one !  " 

It  must  at  the  same  time  be  admitted  that  this  sort  of  thing  was 
more  harmless  than  Southey's  occasional  outbreaks.  A  few  months 
later  there  is  a  letter  of  his,  a  strange  medley  of  shrewdness  and 
violence,  criticising  affairs  in  Spain,  hopeful  of  Wellington,  giving 
Bonaparte  a  lease  of  less  than  seven  years,  confident  of  seeing  a 
peace  dictated  under  the  walls  of  Paris,  and  condemning  the  Spanish 
soldier  Blake  as  a  general,  which  ends  by  his  declaring  it  humiliating 
that  Spain  should  have  produced  two  centuries  ago  half  a  dozen  men 
resolute  in  a  mistaken  cause  to  slay  the  Prince  of  Orange  at  the  sac- 
rifice of  their  own  lives,  "  and  that  now  she  has  not  found  one  to  aim 
a  dagger  at  the  heart  of  Bonaparte  !  "  Southey  was  more  scrupulous 
than  his  friend  as  to  flinging  about  reckless  epithets  ;  but  where  he 
felt  very  strongly,  the  flame  of  his  anger  burnt  with  a  fiercer  as  well 
as  a  more  intense  glow. 

Replying  at  the  opening  of  1812  from  Bath,  whither  he  had  gone 
to  meet  his  wife's  father,  Landor  says  :  — 

"  Mr.  Thuillier  has  just  left  Cadiz.  He  represents  the  government  as 
fools  ami  traitors,  every  individual  intent  on  making  his  fortune.  It  grieves 
me  to  hear  that  Blake  also  was  accused  of  the  same  unworthy  propensity, 
and  that  not  a  doubt  was  entertained  that  .all  his  principal  officers  were 
latterly  in  the  French  interest.  Zayas  is  not  exempt.  Mr.  Thuillier  knows 
many  members  both  of  the  government  now  existing  and  of  the  last.  All  the 
old  ones  hold  office  under  the  present,  in  one  form  or  other.  It  certainly 
was  intended  to  sacrifice  the  English  at  Barrosa,  where  he  also  was,  and 
where  that  silly  fellow  Whittington  was  acting  under  La  Pena.  Had  he 
marched  with  two  thousand  men  under  his  command,  the  French  might 
easily  have  been  out  off  from  their  retreat,  for  retreal  they  mosl  certainly 
did.  It  is  terrible  to  think  that,  such  is  the  state  of  Europe,  no  nation  ran 
go  on  tolerably  well  without  an  usurper.  France  would  have  fallen  with- 
out #Bonaparte.  If  Palafox  had  retired  from  Zaragoza,  he  might  have 
rescued  Spain.  The  world  is  ruined  by  stupidity,  and  not  by  knavery  or 
cruelty.  I  heard  it  reported,  for  I  never  read  any  newspaper  or  new  book, 
that  Lord  Cochrane  is  appointed   to  a  command  of  ten  thousand  men  in 

Catalonia.  This  is  SO  wise  a  thing  thai  I  cannot  believe  it.  He  would  do 
more  with  ten  thousand  than  any  other  English  officer  with  thirty  thousand. 
If  he  really  has  the  appointment,  I  will  lay  a  thousand  guineas  to  three 
farthings  that  the  ministry  act  in  such  a  manner  as  will  force  him  to  resign 

in  ,-ix  months.  If  I  were  unmarried,  I  would  join  him;  and  I  think,  with 
my  fortune.  I    could    show   a  way    in    which    ten    thousand    men    might    do 

iter  things  than  these  are  destined  for.  Periculosre  plenum  opus  alete. 
It  would  be  easy  with  such  means  to  draw  round  them  twice  as  many 
Spaniards  who  would  laugh  at  nation  and  party.  In  fact  there  is  not  a 
government    in   Europe  that  might  not   be  and  should  not   be  destroyed. 

The  French  is  unquestionably  the  best,  1 ause  it  is  in  the  hands  of  the 

wisest  :  as  for  virtue  or  vice,  the  shades  of  difference  are  utterly  undis- 
cernible." 


>ET. 


59.]  PUBLIC   AFFAIRS.  21' 


This  was  written  a  few  months  before  his  scheme  of  finding  a  home 
for  himself  in  France,  so  wisely  rebuked  by  his  brother  Robert ;  but 
it  was  not  to  his  discredit  at  this  time  that  while  denouncing  as 
loudly  as  Southey  the  misdeeds  of  Bonaparte,  he  recognized  not  only 
his  genius,  which  the  other  never  did,  but,  in  the  fact  of  his  being 
by  far  the  ablest  of  living  Frenchmen,  some  sort  of  reason  for  putting 
Mm  at  the  head  of  France.  There  was  small  comfort  of  that  kind 
to  be  got  out  of  a  survey  of  the  existing  English  government,  what- 
ever its  other  merits  might  be  ;  and  if  the  genius  "for  statesmanship 
possessed  by  Pitt  and  Fox  were  to  be  measured  by  the  England  they 
had  left  behind  them,  by  ministerial  purity,  party  fidelity,  or  national 
prosperity  and  honor,  Landor  had  some  excuse  for  pitching  it  so 
low.  It  was  a  time  when  disasters  were  certain  and  victories  yet 
doubtful,  and  when  the  people  were  as  unfairly  restricted  in  their 
liberties  as  in  their  energies,  industry,  and  enterprise.  With  the  re- 
gency had  begun  the  undisputed  reign  of  the  mediocrities,  Mr.  Per- 
ceval entering  with  the  new  year  as  Lords  Grey  and  Grenville  were 
finally  bowed  out ;  and  England  had  become  chiefly  famous  for  Wal- 
cheren  defeats  abroad,  for  machinery  riots  and  bread  riots  at  home, 
and  for  every  kind  of  revolting  variety  of  ex-officio  informations  and 
furious  attacks  on  the  press.  So  great  was  the  misery  about  Llan- 
thony,  Landor  proceeds  to  say  in  his  letter,  that  not  only  had  his 
people  ceased  to  be  mischievous,  but  had  even  lost  the  spirit  to  exult 
in  their  landlord's  losses  and  misfortunes.  He  puts  the  matter  with 
a  whimsical  sense  of  humor  that  we  cannot  but  smile  at  still. 

"  What  think  you  of  our  detestable  villains  of  the  House  ?  While  the 
people  are  starving  for  want  of  food  and  employment,  those  infamous 
scoundrels  reject  an  act  for  the  enclosure  of  waste  lands.  So  the  attorneys 
and  the  commissioners  will  eat  up  two  thirds  of  the  scanty  allotments  which 
would  otherwise  be  the  portion  of  the^poor.  If  they  suffer  this,  they  will 
deserve  their  sufferings.  Three  pounds  of  miserable'  bread  costs  two  shil- 
lings at  Abergavenny.  The  poor  barbarous  creatures  in  my  parish  have 
actually  ceased  to  be  mischievous,  they  are  so  miserable.  We  can  find  them 
employment  at  present,  and  four-and-sixpence  a  day;  yet  nothing  can 
solace  them  for  their  difficulty  in  procuring  bread.  All  my  hay  is  spoilt. 
This  is  always  worth  a  day's  meal  to  them,  but  it  can  happen  only  once  in- 
the  season.  The  poor  devils  are  much  to  be  pitied,  for  they  really  look  now 
as  if  they  hardly  enjoyed  it.  It  is  their  moulting  time,  and  they  cannot 
crow." 

That  letter  was  dated  the  12th  of  February,  and  was  crossed  by  a 
letter  from  Southey  of  two  days  earlier  date,  written  in  much  alarm. 
"  Trotter's  book  "  was  the  life  of  Fox  lately  published  by  his  secre- 
tary ;  and  with  Mr.  Murray,  the  reader  will  remember,  Landor  had 
been  placed  in  communication  by  the  printing  of  his  tragedy. 

"  About  an  hour  ago  came  a  parcel  to  me  from  Murray,  containing  among 
other  things  an  unfinished  commentary  upon  Trotter's  book.  Aut  Landor, 
aut  Diabolus.  From  the  manner,  from  the  force,,  from  the  vehemence,  I 
concluded  it  must  be  yours,  even  before  I  fell  upon  the  passage  respect- 


218  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  "^o*- 1"' 

ing  Spain,  which  proves  that  it  was  yours.  I  could  not  lie  down  this 
night  with  an  easy  conscience  if  I  did  not  beseech  you  to  suspend  the  pub- 
lication till  you  have  cancelled  some  passages:  that  attack  upon  Fellowes 
might  bring  you  into  a  court  of  justice;  and  there  are  pome  others  which 
would  have  the  more  painful  effect  of  making  you  regret  that  you  had 
written  them.  ...  I  have  but  looked  into  the  leaves  as  I  opened  them,  and 
will  not  delay  this  entreaty  a  single  post:  but  to-morrow  1  will  point  out 
every  passage  which  is  likely  to  inflict  undeserved  pain  upon  others,  and 
therefore  to  recoil  upon  yourself.  It  would  equally  grieve  me  to  have  tha 
book  supprest,  or  to  have  it  appear  as  it  is.  It  is  yours  and  yours  all  over, 
—  the  nou  imitabile  fulmen." 

On  the  15th  Landor  replied,  telling  what  the  thing  was,  how  it 
originated,  and  the  objection  Murray  had  himself  made  to  a  projjoscd 
dedication  of  it  to  the  President  of  America,  against  whom  England 
was  then  on  the  eve  of  a  declaration  of  war.  This,  the  rejoinder  of 
Southey,  and  the  letters  that  followed,  besides  being  highly  charac- 
teristic, have  a  special  value  for  the  completeness  of  the  description 
they  give,  not  only  of  the  Commentary,  of  which  a  few  copies  got 
into  subsequent  circulation  as  "  Observations  on  Trotter's  Life  of 
Fox,"*  but  of  a  suppressed  companion  tract  called  the  Parallel,  and 
of  the  suppressed  Dedication.  All  that  Landor  intended  by  them, 
the  startling  paradoxes  put  forth  in  them,  the  personal  attacks  they 
contained,  and  the  strange  combination  throughout  them  of  large- 
ness and  wisdom  of  view  with  proposals  worthy  of  Laputa  and  an 
absurd  intemperance  of  expression,  we  see  in  these  letter  so  vividly 
depicted  that  any  further  allusion  or  quotation  will  not  Le  necessary. 

"  Did  I  never  mention  that  I  was  writing  the  Commentary?  In  truth  I 
seldom  can  tell  whether  I  have  communicated  any  thought  or  intention  of 
mine,  so  that  often  I  must  appear  the  most  barren  of  tautologists,  and  often 
more  reserved  than  a  Quaker  or  a  Jesuit,  How  egregiously  mistaken  are 
those  who  judge  of  people  by  their  letters,  or  indeed  by  anything  they 
write!  Not  twenty  men  know  that  Addison  and  Pope  abounded  in  the 
worst  basenesses,  or  that  Swift  was  anything  better  than  a  satirist  and  mis- 
anthropist. 

"  I  will  do  precisely  as  you  recommend,  and  request  you  particularly  to 
mention  such  other  passages  as  should  be  cancelled.  If  there  is  any  elo- 
quence in  the  Commentary,  I  will  give  you  the  reason.  I  was  determined 
to  try  whether  an  oration  could  not  he  written  more  like  what  the  Athe- 
nians were  accustomed  to  commend  than  any  such  speeches  as  we  have 
heard  in  Parliament,  or  than  any  which  were  delivered  in  the  French 
Academy.     I  first  apologized  for  praising  the  living  instead  of  the  dead,  and 

*  A  reference  to  this  i*  in  one  of  the  letters  of  an  old  country  gentleman  of  Stafford- 
shire, Mr.  Whitby  of  Creswell,  whose  Bon,  the  captain  of  the  frigate  Cerberus,  which 
formed  part  of  the  squadron  in  the  Adriatic,  was  hero  of  one  of  the  most  daring  indi- 
vidual  exploits  in  the  war,  often  referred  to  in  exalted  strain  by  Landor.  Returning 
thank-;  for  a  copy  of  Count  Julian,  which  Murray  had  just  published,  Mr.  Whitby  tells 
its  author  that  his  brother,  the  rector  of  Colton,  had  called  and  told  him  of  the  publica- 
tion of  some  Obtervaiiont  mi  Trotter1 1  life  of  Fox,  which  he  was  extremely  anxious  to 
Bee,  because  with  no  one  upon  politics  did  he  so  entirely  agree  as  with  Landor,  and  his 
Independence  of  all  party.  In  another  letter  he  tells  him  he  has  read  the  Observations, 
and  found  them  filled  to  overflowing  with  original  and  bold  remark. 


/ET.  30-39.]  PUBLIC   AFFAIRS.  219 

argued  that  although  some  might  pervert  the  practice,  yet  with  others  it 
would  undoubtedly  have  the  effect  of  preserving  them  from  subserviency 
and  corruption ;  that,  to  give  themselves  the  importance  which  they  claimed 
on  the  assumption  of  such  an  office,  they  must  preserve  a  perfect  and  most 
absolute  independence,  and  cherish  in  their  own  hearts  those  virtues  whose 
features  they  were  desirous  of  transmitting  to  posterity.  I  praised  Hast- 
ings, and  drew  a  comparison  between  him  and  Fox ;  but,  said  I,  possibly 
this  great  rider  may  have  been  deaf  to  the  voice  of  misery  and  of  justice. 
\  drew  a  comparison  also  between  Lord  Peterboro'  and  Lord  Wellington, 
in  which  I  proved  the  latter  to  be  equal  to  the  other.  In  short,  with  refer- 
ence to  the  military  administration,  I  preferred  the  present  to  every  other 
in  this  reign  except  Lord  Chatham's.  But  I  asked  myself  what  source  of 
corruption  these  Percevals  and  people  had  cut  off?  What  protection  they 
had  given  to  freedom  or  to  literature  ? 

"  After  all,  who  will  read  anything  I  write  ?  One  enemy,  an  adept  in 
bookery  and  reviewship,  can  without  talents  and  without  industry  suppress 
in  a  great  degree  all  my  labors,  as  easily  as  a  mischievous  boy  could  crush 
with  a  roller  a  whole  bed  of  crocuses.  Yet  I  would  not  destroy  what  I  had 
written.  It  filled  indeed  but  eight  or  nine  sheets,  interlined,  it  is  true,  in  a 
thousand  places  and  everywhere  close.  I  transferred,  then,  whatever  I  could 
conveniently,  with  some  observations  I  had  written  on  Trotter's  silly  book, 
and  preserved  nearly  half,  I  think,  by  adopting  this  plan. 

"  I  am  surprised  that  Murray  should  object  to  publish  my  dedication  to 
the  President  of  the  United  States.  It  is  very  temperate,  and,  I  believe, 
not  ineloquent.  War  is  not  declared ;  and  I  earnestly  point  out  the  mis- 
chief it  would  do  America,  —  how  deplorable  that  freemen  should  contend 
with  freemen,  and  diminish  a  number  already  so  reduced !  I  never  wrote 
anything  better.  It  contains  the  best  sentences  of  my  oration.  I  will 
desire  Murray  to  send  it  you,  together  with  a  piece  aimed  at  the  attor- 
ney-general of  Ireland,  but  not  mentioning  him,  nor  subject  to  the  cogni- 
zance of  even  an  attorney-general's  law." 

In  his  allusions  to  America  Landor  had  greatly  the  advantage  of 
his  friend,  who  had  no  indisposition  to  the  war  then  imminent,  was 
ready  to  give  credit  to  any  absurdity  that  might  help  to  put  a  wider 
breach  between  us  and  our  transatlantic  kinsmen,  and  was  as  eager 
as  many  people  since  have  been  to  believe  in  a  disruption  of  the 
United  States  Republic  as  both  desirable  and  likely.  What  he  says, 
on  the  other  hand,  of  George  Rose  is  not  a  bad  comment  on  what 
Lord  Shelbume  is  reported  to  have  said  to  him,  "  Good  God,  Mr. 
Rose,  why  have  you  not  more  ambition  !  "  Rose  had  been  twenty 
years  Pitt's  secretary  to  the  treasury,  and  was  everybody's  factotum 
in  those  days  ;  but  we  may  easily  understand  Landor's  slowness  to 
recognize  abilities  of  which  only  the  most  meagre  memorials  have 
even  yet  come  to  light,  though  he  has  been  dead  half  a  century.  In 
the  recent  changes  Rose  had  stuck  to  Perceval,  in  spite  of  all  Can- 
ning's attempts  to  draw  him  off ;  and  his  appointment  as  treasurer  to 
the  navy,  with  Croker  for  secretary,  a  selection  he  was  supposed  to 
have  suggested  biit  which  in  reality  he  very  strongly  disapproved, 
had  greatly  moved  Landor's  wrath.  The  whole  of  Southey's  letter, 
which  is  dated  February  21,  1812,  is  worth  preserving;  and  among 


220  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^g™  '"' 

the  personal  bitternesses  in  the  Commentary,  the  reader  will  not  be 
unamused  to  see,  Fellowes  and  Kett  *  had  not  been  forgotten  ! 

"I  have  re-read  and  re-re-read  the  Commentary.  The  dedication  and 
the  postcript  are  so  lull  of  perilous  matter  that  it  will  be  dillicult  to  weed 
tin  in  clean.  And  there  is  this  objection  to  both,  that  they,  far  more  than 
the  Commentary  itself,  tend  to  produce  that  state  of  feeling  which  such 
wretches  as  Cobbett  are  continually  laboring  to  excite  and  inflame  for  the 
worst  purposes.  We  are  suffering  for  the  Anti-Jacobin  war,  —  the  sins  of 
the  fathers  are  visited  upon  the  children,  —  now  it  seems  as  if  you  designed 
to  represent  that  the  sins  were  our  own.  That  Ave  are  not  in  peace  and 
abundance  and  security  is  the  effect  of  that  war,  —  this  is  unavoidable,  and 
so  are  the  expenses  which  it  necessitates. 

"We  rivet  the  chain  in  Sicily,  and  we  do  not  break  it  in  Portugal;  but 
certain  it  is  that  in  Spain  we  have  pressed  upon  the  government  the  neces- 
sity of  liberal  measures  and  popular  reform.  Towards  the  Spanish  colonies 
this  country  has  not  acted  ill;  all  that  it  could  do  was  to  endeavor  to 
mediate.  Those  colonies  offer  a  wretched  prospect ;  they  are  even  more 
unfit  for  independence  than  the  Americans  were,  who  have  become  inde- 
pendent (by  our  fault  most  assuredly)  a  full  century  before  they  were  of  age. 
See  what  it  is  to  have  a  nation  to  take  its  place  among  civilized  states 
before  it  has  either  gentlemen  or  scholars !  They  have  in  the  course  of 
twenty  years  acquired  a  distinct  national  character  for  low  and  lying 
knavery  ;  and  so  well  do  they  deserve  it  that  no  man  ever  had  any  dealings 
with  them  without  having  proofs  of  its  truth. 

"There  is  now  a  probability  that  the  damned  junta  of  Cadiz  will  be 
crushed,  and  the  colonial  trade  thrown  open.  I  have  no  doubt  that  what 
you  recommend  America  is  looking  to;  but  I  have  as  little  doubt  that  it  is 
under  the  direction  of  Bonaparte,  who  keeps  the  American  government  in 
pay.  They  dream  of  conquering  Canada  on  the  one  hand,  and  Mexico  on 
the  other;  and  happy  would  Bonaparte  be  if  he  could  see  them  doing  his 
work.  But  the  more  probable  consequences  of  that  war  with  this  country 
into  which  he  is  bribing  them  would  be  the  separation  of  the  Northern 
States,  and  the  loss  of  New  Orleans,  which  it  would  be  our  first  business  to 
secure,  and  thus  seal  up  the  produce  of  the  whole  Western  territory. 

"  You  have  plucked  George  Rose  most  unmercifully.  Yet  if  I  were 
asked  what  man  in  the  House  of  Commons  had  done  most  good  there,  I 
should  name  this  very  hero,  who,  according  to  a  song  sung  by  his  company 
of  Christchurch  volunteers  to  his  praise,  while  he  used  to  get  drunk  with 
them  drinking  alternately  his  own  health  and  his  wife's,  is  'as  brave  as 
Alexander.'  The  encouragment  of  the  benefit  societies,  the  population  and 
poor  ret  urns,  and  the  naval  schools,  we  owe  to  G-.  Rose.  He  has  actually 
done  more  good  than  the  whole  gaug  of  reformers  have  even  proposed  to 
do.  The  worst  I  know  or  think  of  Canning  is  that  he  seems  to  be  laying 
out  for  popularity  by  showing  symptoms  of  falling  in  with  that  party  whose 
economy  is  injustice,  and  who  never  hold  out  any  nobler  object  to  the 
people  than  that  of  saving  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence. 

••  But  I  meant  to  confine  myself  merely  to  those  passages  which  are  cither 
directly  actionable,  or  which  after  a  while  you  would  yourself  be  sorry  to 
have  published.  They  are  that  about  Croker,  the  recommendation  to  with- 
hold supplies,  the  mention  of  Lord  Chatham  and  Lord  Riverdale,  of  Fel- 
lowes and  Kett,  and  what  is  said  of  the  Irish  attorney-general.  About 
Irish  affairs  the  English  can  never  be  made  to  take  any  strong  interest.     I 

*  See  ante,  pp.  35,  36;  and  pp.  67,  68. 


AT.  30-39.]  PUBLIC    AFFAIRS.  221 

should  retain  your  parallel  of  Wellington  with  Peterborough  to  substitute 
as  appendix.  It  would  do  good :  for  the  great  good  which  is  now  to  be 
done  is  to  keep  up  the  spirit  of  the  country.  Thank  God,  England  is  not 
upon  her  stumps  like  Witherington ;  but  we  must  fight  on  till  we  bring 
France  into  that  condition. 

"  Your  prose  is  as  much  your  own  as  your  poetry.  There  is  a  life  and 
vio'or  in  it  to  which  I  know  no  parallel.  It  has  the  poignancy  of  cham- 
pagne, and  the  body  of  English  October.  Neither  you  nor  Murray  gave 
me  any  hint  that  the  Commentary  was  yours,  but  I  could  not  look  into 
these  pages  without  knowing  that  it  could  not  be  the  work  of  any  other 
man.     God  bless  you.     R.  S." 

How  much  wiser,  of  how  much  more  prophetic  view  and  with  what 
unmistakable  earnestness  expressed,  are  the  striking  passages  having 
relation  to  America  in  Landor's  rejoinder,  dated  ten  days  later  ! 

"  I  perceive  that  Murray  is  disposed  to  suppress  the  Commentary ; 
whether  for  pay,  or  prejudice,  or  fear,  I  cannot  tell.  He  did  not  advertise  it 
in  his  catalogue  as  about  to  be  published,  though  he  received  it  in  Decem- 
ber, and  the  date  of  the  catalogue  is  February. 

"  I  never  can  be  induced  to  believe  that  Madison  is  in  the  pay  of  Bona- 
parte, or  that  an  American  wants  any  pay  to  make  him  resent  the  indignities 
and  privations  he  endures  from  our  maritime  laws.  All  parties  are  against  us 
now.  So  tyrannical  a  system  never  existed ;  nor  one  which  would  so  certainly 
throw  America  into  a  confederacy  with  France.  Why  could  we  not  have  re- 
voked our  orders  in  council,  and  left  nothing  to  the  French  but  her  hatred  and 
vengeance  ?  On  the  contrary,  we  resolve  to  seize  American  vessels  so  long 
as  Napoleon  perseveres  in  his  system  ;  as  if  the  Americans  could  alter  it,  as  if 
they  could  hinder  him  from  doing  what  he  chooses  to  do  on  the  Continent, 
or  indeed  had  any  right,  if  they  could,  provided  he  did  renounce,  which  he 
has  done  publicly  and  effectually,  all  right  to  seize  their  property,  even 
though  searched  by  English  ships,  and  even  after  many  of  their  crews  have 
been  in  English  ports,  and  some  on  board  of  English  ships  of  war.  Which- 
ever power  was  inclined  to  relax  first  from  its  pretensions  was  certain  of 
conciliating  the  Americans,  and  of  directing  all  their  animosities  against  the 
power  that  persevered  in  its  injustice.  Napoleon  saw  this,  and  his  pride 
and  hatred  yielded  to  his  policy.  I  pray  fervently  to  God  that  no  part  of 
America  may  be  desolated ;  that  her  wildernesses  may  be  the  bowers  and 
arbors  of  liberty  ;  that  the  present  restrictions  on  her  commerce  may  have 
no  other  effect  than  to  destroy  the  cursed  trafficking  and  tricking  which 
debases  the  brood  worse  than  felonies  and  larcenies  ;  and  that  nothing  may 
divert  their  attention  from  their  own  immense  neighborhood,  or  from  the 
determination  of  helping  to  set  free  eyery  town  and  village  of  their  conti- 
nent !  To  accomplish  this  end  I  would  throw  myself  at  the  feet  of  Madison, 
and  implore  till  I  were  hoarse  with  imploring  him.  I  detest  the  American 
character  as  much  as  you  do,  and  commerce  as  much  as  Bonaparte  does ; 
but  a  civil  war  (and  ours  would  be  one)  is  so  detestable  a  thing  as  never  to 
be  countenanced  or  pardoned,  unless  as  the  only  means  of  bringing  a  fero- 
cious and  perfidious  tyrant  to  public  justice.  Nothing  can  be  more  animat- 
ing than  such  a  tiger-hunt  as  this,  and  even  the  peril  itself  is  salutary.  But 
the  Americans  speak  our  language  ;  they  read  Paradise  Lost ;  and  their 
children,  if  fire  and  sword  should  not  consume  them,  will  indulge  their  mild 
and  generous  affections  in  Kehama.  Surely  there  must  be  many  still 
amongst  them  who  retain,  in  all  their  purity,  the  principles  that  drove  their 


222  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONT.  ^Sos*™' 

ancestors  from  this  country.  In  my  opinion  one  such  family  is  worth  all  the 
turbulent  slaves  and  nobles  in  the  wilds  of  Poland,  and  all  the  thoughtless 
heads  that  are  devoted  for  Fernando  Settimo. 

"  I  do  believe  with  you  that  Franklin  formed  the  American  character  as 
we  now  see  it;  but  without  him  the  people  would  never  have  been  inde- 
pendent, at  least  not  for  many  years.  To  destroy  the  power  of  one  people 
over  another  is  enough  of  itself  to  constitute  a  great  man.  I  have  heard, 
and  give  lull  credit  to  it,  that  an  immense  bribe  was  offered  him  by  General 
Howe  to  use  his  influence  in  bringing  back  the  people  to  merely  their  own 
proposals.     I  believe  he  sent  the  letter  to  Congress. 

"  Whatever  you  do,  do  not  despise  Locke.  Remember  he  refused  a  par- 
don, because  acceptance  of  pardon  would  appear  as  an  acknowledgment  of 
guilt.  It  must  be  a  glorious  principle  which  could  make  a  man  resolve  to 
live  in  Holland  when  he  might  live  in  England.  There  are  some  errors  in 
his  reasoning;  but  he  cleared  away  much  lumber  from  philosophy,  and  his 
writings  tend  to  promote  the  interests  of  genuine  freedom  and  sound  think- 
ing. 

"  I  am  heartily  glad  that  the  prince  has  shaken  off  Grey  and  broken  up 
the  Foxite  pack  ;  but  I  could  wish  that  Mr.  Perceval  would  allow  forty 
thousand  Englishmen  to  fight  for  religion  and  loyalty  in  Spain,  though 
neither  the  loyalty  nor  the  religion  is  perfectly  to  my  taste.  The  capitulation 
of  Blake  is  detestable  and  most  infamous.  Twenty  thousand  could  cut  their 
way  through  any  army  on  earth,  provided  that  army  was  surrounding  a 
vast  city.  But  it  appears  that  at  first  Suchet  had  not  thirty  thousand  under 
him,  so  that  the  Spaniards  could  bring  against  him  in  any  one  point  a  much 
greater  force  than  he  could  oppose.  After  all,  the  most  advantageous  way 
would  perhaps  be  to  fight  from  the  houses  and  squares,  where  cavalry  could 
not  act,  and  where  women  and  children,  by  throwing  tiles  from  the  roofs. 
would  be  as  formidable  as  veterans.  In  Tarragona  and  Valencia,  the  Span- 
iards lost  greatly  more  than  two  thirds  of  their  effective  force.  Suchet  in  the 
capture  of  these  two  places  has  done  more  against  them  than  all  the  other 
generals  since  the  commencement  of  the  war  in  the  Peninsula.  Bonaparte 
is  the  only  general  who  has  performed  such  signal  exploits.  I  saw  Carrol 
here  (Bath).  I  believe  he  is  now  in  London.  I  did  not  ask  him  what  he 
came  for ;  yet  1  thought  he  would  be  more  useful  in  Spain.  He  is  an  active 
and  good  officer,  but  should  abstain  from  other  views  and  projects." 

But  before  that  letter  was  even  posted  Southey  had  been  writing 
to  confirm  the  suspicion  with  which  it  opened,  that  Mr.  Murray  had 
taken  fright  at  the  Commentary,  and  was  anxious  to  be  relieved  from 
going  on  with  it.  Not  having  read  it  when  he  undertook  its  publi- 
cation, he  has  since  been  reading  it  in  the  proofs,  and  now  finds  that 
its  remarks  on  Mr.  Canning  would  put  him  in  so  painful  a  position 
that  he  has  appealed  to  Southey  to  get  him  out  of  the  scrape. 

"  I  have  a  letter  this  evening  from  Murray,  which  I  would  enclose  to  you 
if  it  were  not  for  the  time  which  would  be  lost  in  sending  it  round  for  a 
frank.  The  sum  of  it  is  that  it  would  relieve  his  mind  from  some  very  nat- 
ural and  very  unpleasant  feelings  if  you  would  allow  him  to  procure  another 
publisher  for  this  Commentary^  into  whose  hands  he  will  deliver  it  ready  for 
publication,  and  with  whom  he  will  settle  for  you.  This  is  purely  a  matter 
of  reeling  and  not  of  fear.  He  is,  on  the  score  of  the  Quarterly  Review, 
under  obligations  to  Canning,  and  would  on  that  account  have  refused  to 
publish  any  personal  attack  upon  him.     The  manuscript  he  never  read,  look- 


MT.  30-39.]  PUBLIC    AFFAIRS.  223 

ing  forward  to  the  perusal  of  the  book  as  a  pleasure.  "What  he  wishes  will 
be  no  inconvenience  to  you,  and  no  doubt  you  will  readily  assent  to  it.  '  I 
confess,'  he  says,  '  I  hesitatingly  propose  this,  for  I  fear  even  you  could  not 
now  speak  of  this  to  the  author  in  any  way  that  would  not  offend  him.  I 
will,  however,  leave  it  entirely  to  you ;  and  if  you  say  nothing  about  it,  I 
will  publish  it  without  any  further  trouble  to  you  or  Mr.  L.,  however  pain- 
ful, from  my  peculiar  situation,  it  will  prove  to  me.'  These  are  his  words. 
For  my  own  part  I  should  feel  any  tear  of  giving  offence  as  the  only  thing 
which  could  occasion  it.  It  is  but  for  you  to  signify  your  assent  to  Murray 
in  a  single  line,  and  the  business  is  settled  without  any  injury  to  any  person's 
feelings.  That  it  is  purely  a  matter  of  feeling  with  him  I  verily  believe. 
The  not  reading  the  manuscript  was  a  compliment  to  the  author,  and  a  mark 
of  confidence  in  him." 

Landor's  reply  deals  not  alone  with  the  Commentary  but  with  the 
Parallel  (in  which  comparison  of  Wellington  and  Peterborough  was 
made),  and  is  a  wonderfully  characteristic  production.  Its  date  is 
March,  1812.  "A  plague  on  both  your  houses  !  "  He  is  so  disgusted 
with  both  factions,  that,  by  way  of  grinding  both  into  the  dust,  he 
means  to  lay  out  five  thousand  (borrowed)  pounds  in  establishing  a 
printing  press  at  Llanthony  !  His  other  scheme  of  establishing 
Lord  Wellington  on  the  throne  of  Portugal  one  might  suppose'  to 
have  involved  yet  greater  difficulty  for  so  stanch  a  republican.  But 
for  the  time  no  doubt  he  was  hotly  bent  on  both,  and  equally  ready 
when  the  cool  fit  came  to  surrender  either.  Observe  at  the  same 
time  how  large  and  just  were  his  views  on  leading  questions  of  civil 
liberty. 

"  My  Parallel  lies  unfinished.  It  covers  a  good  number  of  sheets ;  so  many 
that  I  never  shall  have  the  heart  to  transcribe  them ;  for  I  write  not  only 
on  sands,  but  on  such  sands  as  are  exposed  to  storms  and  tempests,  from 
every  quarter  of  the  heavens.  When  you  come  to  Llanthony,  which  I  hope 
and  entreat  you  will  this  summer,  I  will  show  you  what  I  have  done,  and 
help  you  to  read  the  manuscript.  I  have  lost  one  sheet  or  half-sheet,  I  can- 
not remember  which ;  but  it  grieved  me  at  the  time,  because  it  contained 
some  very  labored  passages.  I  believe  I  threw  it  into  the  fire,  thinking  I 
had  transcribed  it  afresh,  as  I  had  done  Avith  another  page  or  two. 

"  My  Commentary  is  condemned  to  eternal  night.  I  have  just  written  to 
Murray.     One  sentence  in  my  letter  to  him  will  explain  the  whole. 

"  '  Deceived  or  not  deceived,  the  fault  was  not  mine  that  you  first  under- 
took it  yourself ;  that  you  next  proposed  to  find  another  who  would  under- 
take it ;  and  that  at  last  you  relapsed  even  from  this  alternative.  I  am  not 
surprised  that,  in  these  circumstances,  you  find  some  vexation.  Had  you, 
in  the  beginning,  pointed  out  such  passages  as  you  considered  dangerous  to 
publish  (although  this  very  danger  would  have  shown  the  necessity  of 
them),  I  would  have  given  them  another  appearance  and  stationed  them  in 
another  place.' 

"  I  am  convinced  he  has  been  persuaded,  either  by  Canning  or  some 
other  scoundrel  whom  I  have  piquetted  in  the  work,  to  withdraw  from  the 
publication  of  it;  although  I  have  soaped  all  the  bristles  that  could  have 
been  clutched  by  the  foul  hand  of  our  attorney-general. 

"At  this  time  I  am  reading  the  Correspondence  of  Erasmus,  2,146  pages! 
How  infinitely  more  freedom,  as  well  as  more  learning,  was  there  in  those 


224  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTIIOXY.  :.|[L 

days  than  in  ours!  yet  establishments  of  every  kind  were  in  much  greater 
danger  of  innovation. 

■■  Two  things  are  wanting.  Perfect  equality  in  .ill  religionists  as  to  their 
competency  in  civil  employments,  and  an  acknowledgment  of  the  principle, 
ne  quid  falsi  dieere  audeat,  ue  quid  veri  nun  audeat.  In  fact,  that  there  is  no 
libel  without  falsehood.  Unless  these  rights  are'  admitted  and  established,  I 
think  it  a  matter  of  utter  indifference  who  governs.  I  confess  I  care  aol 
how  fast  that  system  runs  to  ruin  which  opposes  them. 

"it  is  delightful  to  see  how  the  Foxites  have  disabled  themselves  from 
serving  the  Regent  The  people  will  he  able  to  pay  taxes  two  years  more, 
and  those  fellows  will  then  excite  them  to  some  expression  of  their  discon- 
tent; they  will  force  themselves  into  the  places  of  government;  they  will 
govern  with  as  much  corruption  and  fraudulence  as  their  predecessors;  and 
as  much  timber  will  be  wanted  lor  gibbets  as  for  fleets. 

"I  think  we  have  thrown  away  a  greater  sum  of  money  in  vain  than 
ever  was  expended  before  for  any  possible  good.  We  have  gained  nothing 
but  what  it  would  have  been  better  not  to  have  gained,  and  the  last  vestiges 
of  the  constitution  have  totally  disappeared.  The  senate  of  Rome  did  not 
impose  so  heavy  a  contribution  on  conquered  Carthage  as  we  pay  every  two 
years  to  our  own  senate,  which  strips  us  of  everything  that  can  make  such 
subjection  tolerable,  and  adds  the  grossest  insult  to  the  most  insatiable  ex- 
tortion. The  fear  of  Bonaparte  keeps  people  quiet,  as  children  are  kept 
quiet  by  the  name  of  some  giant.  1  think  of  employing  my  time  in  prov- 
ing that  neither  war  nor  ministers  are  formidable;  that  nothing  is  very 
much  so  but  poverty,  which  strips  us  of  all  resistance  when  the  enemy 
comes  to  close  quarters;  that  this  is  the  nearest  and  most  urgenl  mischief; 
and  that  those  who  demand  our  money  in  every  by-road  and  high-road  of 
our  lives  are  to  be  crushed  at  any  peril,  if  we  hope  at  any  future  time  for  c<  >m- 
fort  or  security  or  peace. 

'•  I  am  about  to  borrow  five  thousand  pounds  that  I  may  establish  a  press 
for  this  purpose,  and  may  have  the  glory,  at  much  private  loss,  disquiet,  and 
danger,  of  setting  the  public  mind  more  erect,  and  throwing  the  two  fac- 
tions into  the  dust. 

"  I  shall  not  cease  to  uphold  the  cause  of  Lord  Wellington,  and  to  recom- 
mend his  establishment  on  the  throne  of  Portugal ;  to  revolutionize  South 
America,  which  is  a  far  more  civilized  country  than  any  in  Europe  (as  I 
myself  know  from  conversing  with  both  officers  and  soldiers  who  were 
natives),  and  which  will  otherwise  be  under  the  power  of  Bonaparte  in 
another  year.  The  people  of  South  America  are  of  a  military  origin,  the 
descendants  of  brave  and  honorable  men;  they  are  uncontaminated  by 
blackguard  religions,  and  neither  befooled  by  kings  nor  cowed  by  inquisi- 
tions. Their  religion  and  all  their  other  habits  must  perpetually  remind 
them  of  their  ancestors;  and  those  men  are  always  the  best  between  whom 
and  their  forefathers  no  cloud  or  indistinctness  intervenes.  A  North-Ameri- 
can can  see  his  only  through  the  pillory:  this  is  a  xrry  different  view  from 
that  which  is  presented   under   the   banners  of  Pizarro  and  Cortes.      It  must 

also  he  conceded  that  an  Englishman  does  not  lift  his  foot  so  high  above  the 

dirt  as  a  Spaniard,  and  that  he  degenerates  much  sooner  and  much  more." 

To  that  letter  Sauthey  had  much  to  say,  and  said  it  witli  the 
Strangest  possible  mixture  of  his  former  and  his  present  self,  Jacobin 
and  Anti-Jacobin,  He  has  a  view  of  the  libel-law  that  might  have  sat- 
isfied Eldon  himself :  with  a  faith  in  republicanism  (everywhere  but 
in  America)  and   a   theory   of   colonial  independence  that  the  same 


^ET.  30-39.]  PUBLIC   AFFAIRS.  225 

learned  "  Old  Bags  "  would  have  treated  as  insanity.  At  the  notion 
of  setting  up  a  printer's  press,  he  is  terrified  in  the  extreme. 
Heaven  forbid  that  Landor  should  draw  on  himself  such  vexations  ! 
Cold  lead  was  more  perilous  than  cold  iron.  ''  If  he  woidd  but  bear 
in  mind  what  the  laws  of  libel  were,  he  might  say  what  he  liked  to 
the  public  with  safety.  "  Of  individuals  all  that  ought  to  be  might  be 
said  ;  of  the  state  anything  that  did  not  evidently  show  the  wish  to 
overthrow  it ;  and  if  he  would  but  always  be  careful  that  the  vehe- 
mence of  his  manner  did  not  belie  his  intentions."  One  cannot  but 
now  remember  nevertheless,  that  within  a  few  months  of  this  date 
Mr.  Perry  of  the  Chronicle  had  been  dragged  before  the  courts  for 
copying  a  gentle  sarcasm  about  the  Prince  of  Wales  becoming  "  nobly 
popular,"  and  that  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  and  his  brother  were  sent  to 
Horsemonger  Lane  Jail  exactly  seven  months  later  for  calling  the  same 
high  personage  an  Adonis  of  fifty. 

Southey  went  on  to  say  that  he  and  Landor  had  the  same  end  in 
view  ;  they  only  differed  as  to  means.  He  woidd  on  no  account  have 
Wellington  king  of  Portugal ;  the  good  powers  forefend  he  should 
wish  it  !  What  he  of  all  things  desired  was  that  the  tide  of  opinion 
should  take  a  republican  direction,  "  and  the  whole  Peninsula  form 
itself  into  a  great  federal  commonwealth  ;  the  form  of  polity  which 
seems  the  best  attainable  in  our  present  state."  Then  very  wisely  he 
sums  up  his  colonial  policy  thus  :  You  must  send  out  colonies,  as  a 
hive  sends  out  swarms.  Let  them  govern  themselves.  Protect  them 
as  long  as  they  need  protection.  When  that  is  necessary  no  longer, 
though  the  countries  be  then  each  different  and  independent,  let  the 
policy  never  be  lost  of  remaining  one  people.  Give  the  Briton  who 
goes  to  you  all  privileges  of  a  nation  ;  let  the  colonist  here  be  an 
Englishman  when  he  lands.  "  In  fifty  years  America  would  petition 
to  be  received  back  into  the  family." 

Absurdly  wrong  as  to  that  latter  point,  it  is  yet  plain  from  the 
frequent  recurrence  of  such  passages  in  his  letters  that  Southey  had 
in  his  heart  a  more  genuine  republicanism  than  Landor,  with  whom 
it  was  often  little  more  than  an  unreasoning  hatred  of  kings.  The 
illustration  we  have  just  seen  the  latter  employ,  that  those  men  are 
always  the  best  between  whom  and  their  forefathers  no  cloud  or  in- 
distinctness intervenes,  and  that  a  North- American  could  see  his  only 
through  the  pillory,  is  not  one  that  Southey  would  have  used.  He 
puts  the  matter  in  another  way.  In  his  opinion,  the  present  letter 
went  on  to  say,  Landor  rated  the  American  Spaniards  too  highly, 
just  as  he  overrated  the  Americans  themselves.  He  asks  his 
friend  to  read  Cotton  Mather's  History  of  Neiv  England,  of  which  the 
annals  were  told  by  succession,  not  of  princes  but  preachers.  Half 
the  Anglo-Americans,  in  Southey's  view,  went  over  red-hot  from  the 
conventicle,  the  other  half  flagrant  from  Bridewell ;  and  the  tertium 
quid  had  the  roguery  of  the  one  superinduced  upon  the  hard  vulgar- 
ity of  the  other  ! 

15 


226  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^rf^i"1 

After  this,  for  two  or  three  months,  other  than  public  subjects 
occupy  the  letters  of  both,  and  not  until  October  are  politics  re- 
sumed. The  interval  had  been  marked  by  stirring  events,  of  which 
the  latest  were  Borodino  and  Moscow  ;  and  at  the  reverses  of  Napo- 
leon's fortune  Southey's  exultation  knew  no  bounds. 

"  Will  Bonaparte  leave  his  army  as  he  did  in  Egypt,  or  stay  with  them 
and  keep  his  Christmas  at  Moscow?  A  Lenten  sort  of  Christmas  it  will 
prove.  The  Russians,  like  the  Turks,  are  in  a  very  insubduable  slate  ;  their 
beards  and  their  idolatry  are  in  their  favor.  It  is  of  prodigious  consequence 
that  they  don't  understand  parlez-vou-ing ;  and  it  will  take  a  Frenchman, 
popinjays  as  they  all  are,  a  long  time  before  he  can  gabble  in  Russ.  Huzza ! 
light  on,  my  merry  men  all,  must  be  our  tune ;  and  as  long  as  we  can  keep 
out  the  white-livered  Foxites  at  home,  the  cause  of  Europe  will  never  be 
to  be  despaired  of.  Should  they  get  the  ascendancy,  it  would  then  indeed 
be  time  to  turn  Turk  in  despair." 

Landor's  reply  is  less  exultant ;  his  toleration  of  the  English  gov- 
ernment, to  the  direction  of  which  Lord  Liverpool  had  succeeded  on 
the  murder  of  Perceval,  and  of  which  Castlereagh  and  Sidmouth  were 
now  the  animating  spirits,  is  very  naturally  not  on  the  increase  ;  and 
as  to  Bonaparte  the  view  here  expressed  by  him  is  in  effect  that  which 
Hazlitt  supported  in  later  years  with  the  same  abuse  of  power  arising 
from  personal  passion. 

"  I  do  not  think  with  you  about  Bonaparte.  I  hate  him  ;  I  execrate  him ; 
but  I  detest  our  own  government  worse.  Genius,  in  a  political  sense,  is  the 
Salvator  or  the  Redemptor  mundi.  Corruption  is  the  Devil,  —  not  the  Satan 
of  Milton,  but  the  sheer  mean-spirited  creature  of  the  Evangelists.  As  for 
the  cause  of  Europe,  which  you  say  is  never  to  be  despaired  of,  the  kings 
and  governments  are  such  fools  and  rascals  that  I  wish  from  my  soul  Bona- 
parte may  utterly  extinguish  all  of  them.  I  want  to  see  some  paring  and 
burning.  I  can  wait  patiently  for  the  fresh  vegetation  that  will  follow.  I 
want  to  see  Finland  liberated.  That  remote  people  had  made  a  greater 
progress  in  agriculture  and  civilization  in  thirty  years  than  any  in  Europe, 
if,  perhaps,  we  except  the  Scotch.  Bonaparte  will  do  an  infinity  of  good; 
but  I  wish,  when  he  has  done  it,  he  may  be  impaled.  lie  (breed  the  Em- 
peror of  Austria  to  act  infamously  towards  Prussia;  the  King  of  Prussia  to 
act  infamously  towards  Austria ;  and  the  Emperor  of  Russia  to  act  infa- 
mously to  every  power  in  Europe.  Willingly  should  I  sacrifice  my  fortune, 
my  life,  everything  but  my  soul,  to  abolish  kingship  throughout  the  world. 
Men  never  can  be  honest  or  peaceable,  God  will  never  permit  it,  while  they 
live  under  this  most  cursed  idolatry. 

"  I  am  more  and  more  convinced  that  Lord  Wellington  alone  is  able  to 
unite  such  discordant  nations  as  the  Portuguese  and  Spanish.  It  requires 
but  very  little  wisdom  to  govern  well  when  a  people  knows  that  he  who 
governs  can  enforce  obedience.  He  would  not  permit  any  great  demand 
fur  it.  I  have  finished  my  book  on  this  subject,  and  a  pari  of  it  will  prob- 
ably light  the  candle  when  I  seal  this  letter.  It  was  at  least  as  well  written 
BS  anything  of  mine,  and  was  enough  to  have  raised  me  a  host  of  enemies 
if  I  could  have  performed  but  the  mere  mechanical  part  of  forcing  it  into 
day." 

Immediately  upon  this  followed  the  general  election  in  which  Lan- 


JKT.  3O-39.]  PUBLIC   AFFAIRS.  227 

dor  so  far  took  part  as  to  issue  an  address  to  the  freeholders  of  Mon- 
mouthshire. He  had  declined,  he  said,  himself  to  come  forward ;  but 
he  hoped  they  would  choose  a  better  colleague  for  their  old  member 
than  the  brother  of  the  lord-lieutenant,  to  whose  family  pretensions 
in  the  point  of  intellect  he  was  the  reverse  of  complimentary.  "  We  of- 
ten find  throughout  whole  families,"  he  wrote,  "  as  lifeless  an  equality 
of  mind  and  soul  as  the  revolutionists  of  France  would  have  estab- 
lished in  rank  and  property.  I  trust  we  should  be  as  unwilling  to 
countenance  the  one  as  the  other.  Let  us  compassionate  the  evils  we 
cannot  alter,  and  remove  the  evils  we  can.  Let  us  prove  that  the 
race  of  country  gentlemen  is  not  yet  •  extinct,  and  that  some  one  of 
this  order  can  be  found  in  the  county  of  Monmouth  whose  character 
for  probity  and  intelligence  renders  him  worthy  to  be  the  colleague  of 
Sir  Charles  Morgan."  Another  passage' will  show  the  view  he  took 
generally  of  public  affairs,  how  closely  he  went  to  some  of  the  main 
grievances,  and  how  narrowly  he  missed  the  proper  remedy.  His 
strong  opinion  of  the  duty  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  deal  with  the 
question  of  waste  lands  has  already  been  seen ;  and  other  allusions 
made  by  him  may  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  he  was  writing  with- 
in a  few  weeks  of  the  execution  at  York,  in  one  day,  of  fourteen  mis- 
erable men  who  had  taken  part  in  Luddite  riots. 

"  We  have  seen  a  great  number  of  prime-ministers  since  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  and,  as  far  as  the  constitution  is  concerned,  very  little  if  any 
difference  in  their  method,  whatever  there  may  have  been  in  their  maxims, 
of  government.  This  consideration  should  reconcile  all  parties.  Since  we 
are  engaged  in  a  contest,  which  could  not  have  been  avoided  with  honor 
nor  terminated  with  safety,  I  have  always  thought  the  most  favorably  of 
those  who  have  acted  with  most  firmness  and  energy.  To  support  us  in 
the  expenditure  that  is  necessary,  two  other  things  are  necessary  also  :  first, 
the  abolition  of  useless  offices  and  unmerited  pensions ;  secondly,  the  en- 
couragement of  agriculture  and  commerce.  Englishmen  will  endure  any 
privations  for  the  glory  of  their  country  and  the  preservation  of  their  liber- 
ties ;  but  they  never  will  endure  that  the  pittance  of  the  brave  should  be 
thrown  into  the  lap  of  the  slothful.  There  are  pensioners,  each  of  whom 
receives  from  the  country  they  never  have  benefited  as  large  a  sum  annu- 
ally as  would  raise  a  thousand  industrious  mechanics  from  want  and  de- 
spondency to  competence  and  comfort.  Yet  it  is  from  these  mechanics  that 
the  country  ivas  rich  and  powerful ;  and  it  is  from  these  pensioners  that 
she  is  exhausted  and  distressed.  If  their  pension-money  had  been  applied 
to  the  sustenance  of  our  starving  manufacturers  by  wise  and  liberal  en- 
couragements, what  violations  of  peace  and  security,  of  law,  of  order,  of 
the  British  character,  what  miseries  and  crimes,  what  oaths  and  perjuries, 
what  robberies  and  murders,  what  imprisonments  and  chains  and  execu- 
tions, might  have  been  spared  forever !  You  will  remember  not  many 
months  since,  at  a  time  when  among  the  laboring  classes  there  was  a  wide 
scarcity  and  universal  discontent,  that  a  general  act  of  enclosure  was  recom- 
mended by  the  united  voice  of  several  counties.  Although  the  scarcity 
could  not  have  been  relieved  by  an  act  of  which  the  effects  were  not  imme- 
diate, yet  many  of  its  painful  feelings  would  have  been  removed  by  a  dis- 
position  to   prevent  its   recurrence.     Such   an   act  would  not   only  have 


228  BATH,    SPAIN,    AXD    LLANTHONT,  [n?£*  ,m- 

excited  the  industry  of  those  useful  men  who  wanted,  in  a  greater  degree 
than  was  ever  known  before,  employment  and  subsistence,  but  it  would 
have  separated  and  diverted  from  mischief  those  turbulent  spirits  which 
were  rising  in  the  north.  The  only  person  in  your  grand  jury  who  opposed 
a  general  ac1  of  enclosure,  however,  with  the  exception  of  the  duke's  stew- 
ard, was  the  duke's  brother.  And  though  certain  it  is  that  the  opinions  of 
men  so  little  distinguished  for  abilities  or  information  must  have  propor- 
tionately little  weight  with  the  wise,  yet  equally  certain  is  it  that  the  Aviso 
do  not  constitute  the  majority  of  mankind,  and  that  wealth  and  rank  have  a 
greater  influence  on  the  affairs  of  this  world  than  knowledge  or  integrity." 

The  date  of  that  address  was  October,  1812  ;  the  new  Parliament, 
from  which  it  had  failed  to  exclude  Lord  Arthur  Somerset,  assembled 
in  November ;  and  two  months  later  Landor  was  eagerly  intent  on 
bringing  before  it  an  enclosure  bill  of  his  own.  Writing  to  Southey 
from  Llanthony  in  the  last  days  of  January,  1813,  he  thus  refers 
to  it :  — 

"  I  remain  here,  not  so  much  for  pleasure  as  for  business.  I  am  bringing 
into  Parliament  a  bill  for  enclosing  these  commons,  which  are  now  depas- 
tured by  the  sheep  of  no  less  than  nine  other  parishes.  Mine  is  perhaps  the 
only  manor  in  the  world  that  is  surrounded  by  so  many.  Persons  of  all 
descriptions  have  assumed  to  themselves  the  liberty  of  turning  out  their 
cattle  here.  Among  the  rest  is  one  who  has  a  peculiar  enmity  against  me, 
both  as  an  Englishman  and  a  gentleman,  though  we  never  met  ;  and  this 
enmity  is  increased  and  exasperated  by  the  necessity  which  he  is  aware 
that  he  lies  under  of  showing  his  right,  such  as  he  has,  of  turning  out  cattle 
in  a  manor  where  he  has  no  property.  He  has  given  notice  that  he  intends 
to  oppose  my  bill  in  Parliament,  although  I  possess  95  in  112  of  the  land- 
tax  ;  and  he  has  raised  the  common  people  of  other  parishes  against  me. 
If  you  can  procure  me  any  assistance  in  Parliament,  you  will  render  me  the 
greatesl  service,  as  all  opposition  is  attended  by  grievous  expense.  If  the 
public  good  were  not  about  to  be  promoted,  as  well  as  my  Own,  T  would 
not  ask  one  earthly  being  for  support ;  but  in  the  present  state  of  things  a 
few  miserable  sheep  are  infected  l>v  the  scab,  all  improvement  in  the  breed 
is  discouraged,  and  the  large  half-starving  flocks  break  into  the  enclosures 
and  destroy  the  grass  and  corn  of  the  farmer,  and  the  garden  and  croft  of 
the  cottager.  In  case  of  enclosure,  I  shall  plant  above  a  million  of  trees  on 
land  which  is  now  unproductive,  and  raise  a  very  large  tlock  of  Spanish 
sheep,  which  at  present  can  with  great  difficulty  he  kept  from  the  contagion 
that  eternally  prevails  here.  The  landlord  1  have  mentioned  is  so  base  a 
man  that  he  bought  the  cottage  of  a  woman  bowed  down  by  poverty  and 
age,  for  one  guinea.     It  was  worth  thirty." 

Southey  did  all  he  could  for  the  hill,  and  there  is  a  mention  in  his 
letter  of  the  members  he  had  written  to  about  it  ;*  but,  the  opinion 
of  his  own  comity  representatives  being  adverse,  Landor  had  to  aban- 

*  One  "f  Parr's  letters  has  reference  to  the  subject.  "  Pear  Walter.  —  I  will  give 
you  all  tin'  assistance  in  my  i^wit,  when  I  have  received  your  hill,  ami  am  informed 
by  jour  solicitor  about  the  time  at  which  it  is  to  be  debated  in  the  House,  tie  must 
get  the  hill  -cut,  a-  if  to  Borne  member  of  Parliament  at  my  house.  I  am  very  much 
pleased  with  your  brother  Charles.  I  tried  to  get  him  over  to  dinner,  when  I  had  two 
very  learned  visitors.  Hut  lie  could  not  come.  I  shall  very  soon  ask  him  again,  for  he 
is  a  very  sensible  and  a  very  well-mannered  clergyman.  Pray  give  my  best  compli- 
ments and  best  wishes  to  your  lady,  and  believe  me  truly  your  friend,  S.  Pakr." 


JET.  30-39.]  PUBLIC   AFFAIRS.  229 

don  it  early  in  the  session.  Even  by  that  time,  however,  subjects  of 
more  engrossing  interest  had  supervened;  and  what  with  his  own 
troubles  and  Bonaparte's  troubles  he  had  more  than  enough  to  occu- 
py him.  The  private  disputes  are  reserved  to  another  section ;  but 
what  passed  between  Southey  and  himself  during  the  eventful  months 
that  preceded  the  abdication  at  Fontainebleau  will  properly  be  added 
here. 

In  April,  1813,  Landor  notices  a  newspaper  report  of  Austria  joining 
the  coalition  against  France.  "  Kings  and  emperors  are  such  a  de- 
testable race  of  rascals,  I  mean  the  present  families  of  them,  that  I 
can  hope  nothing  from  their  coalition  at  all  favorable  to  the  happiness 
of  mankind.  Alexander  seems  beneficent  by  nature.  At  all  events, 
the  fewer  Frenchmen  there  are  in  the  world,  the  happier  will  the  world 
be.  There  is  no  comfort  or  quiet  for  these  gnats."  In  something  of 
the  same  spirit  Southey  replies  ;  *  saddened  by  private  as  well  as  pub- 
lic occurrences,  and  less  eager  than  he  had  been  a  few  months  before 
for  continuance  of  war  with  America.  He  was  full  of  fear  that  the 
German  campaigns  might  lead  to  a  peace,  being  convinced  that  a 
peace  leaving  Bonaparte  alive  would  be  worse  than  war.  Still,  there- 
fore, he  hoped  to  see  his  destruction,  and  then  peace  might  be  lasting. 
But  how  disastrous  was  the  outlook  at  home !  His  friend  had  been 
too  true  a  prophet.  "  Our  naval  superiority  stricken,  the  foundations 
of  every  establishment  undermined,  and  the  dragon's  teeth  sown  all 
around  us." 

"  I  suspected  that  the  Americans  must  have  made  some  improvements  in 
gunnery,  and  it  was  a  relief  to  my  heart  when  I  learnt  that  this  was  actually 
the  case.  They  stuff  their  wadding  with  bullets,  —  which  accounts  for  the 
carnage  on  board  our  ships,  —  and  they  make  their  cartridges  of  very  fine 
sheet-lead,  so  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  sponge  the  guns ;  thus  they  fire 
nearly  two  to  one,  almost  doubling  their  force.  I  fear  I  shall  not  see  you 
this  year.     Remember  me  to  Mrs.  Landor.     God  bless  you." 

Happily  for  himself,  however,  he  recovered  spirits  as  the  year  went 
on ;  for  the  laureateship  fell  to  him  in  the  autumn,  and  it  would  never 
have  done  to  open  in  less  cheery  strain  than  he  did,  rejoicing  in  the 
gift  and  exulting  in  the  return  he  was  able  to  make  for  it. 

"  In  happy  hour  doth  he  receive 
The  Laurel,  meed  of  famous  bards  of  yore, 
Which  Dryden  and  diviner  Spenser  wore,  — 
In  happy  hour;  and  well  may  he  rejoice, 

Whose  earliest  task  must  be 
To  raise  the  exultant  hymn  for  Victory !  " 

The  letter  in  which  Southey  told  his  friend  all  about  his  appoint- 
ment—  how  Croker  had  applied  on  his  behalf  to  the  prince,  who 
promised  it  to  him  ;  how  Lords  Liverpool  and  Hertford  had  meanwhile 
offered  it  to  Scott,  who  waived  it  handsomely  in  his  favor  ;  and  how,  in 

*  In  the  same  letter,  I  may  mention,  he  tells  him  of  the  failure  and  collapse  of  the 
scheme  of  the  Edinburgh  Register,  from  which  he  had  expected  so  much.  See  ante, 
pp.  145,  214. 


230  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  "^2§i3?" 

taking  it,  he  had  neither  fear  of  the  newspaper  jokesmiths  nor  distrust 
of  his  own  power  to  make  the  office  respectable  - —  was  written  immedi- 
ately upon  his  return  to  Keswick,  after  a  five-and-forty  hours'  mail- 
coach  journey  from  London  in  the  middle  of  November,  1813  ;  and  was 
acknowledged  by  Landor  in  the  same  month  from  Swansea,  with  hear- 
ty congratulations  on  finding  at  the  least  so  much  honesty  and  discern- 
ment displayed  by  the  men  in  power.  "  I  never  thought  that  a  place 
gave  honor  to  any  one,  or  that  any  one  gave  honor  to  a  place ;  but 
there  is  something  equally  agreeable  both  to  the  reasonable  and  the 
romantic  mind  in  reflecting  that  in  war  and  in  poetry,  the  elements 
of  ardent  souls,  the  first  men  of  our  country  fill  the  first  station." 

The  interest  in  the  great  war  tragedy  was  meanwhile  thickening 
fast,  and  the  catastrophe  was  rapidly  approaching.  The  battle  of 
Leipsic  had  been  fought  in  October,  and  before  the  end  of  the  year 
Germany  was  free.  Then,  at  the  opening  of  the  next  momentous 
year,  came  out  Southey's  first  laureate  effort,  the  Carmen  Triumpkale ; 
and  Landor,  whom  business  had  taken  to  London  at  the  time,  was 
hoping  also  to  sustain  the  feeling  against  France  by  a  series  of  letters  in 
the  Courier  with  the  signature  of  Calvus.  "You  have  seen,"  Southey 
writes  to  his  brother,*  "  Calvus's  last  letter  in  the  Courier.  Landor 
is  the  writer.  I  entirely  agree  with  him  that  this  is  the  time  for  un- 
doing the  mischief  done  by  the  peace  of  Utrecht.  France  was  then 
made  too  strong  for  the  repose  of  Europe,  and  she  ought  now  to  be 
stript  of  Alsace,  Lorraine,  and  Franche-Comte." 

Of  these  letters  Landor  had  told  Southey  immediately  on  his  return 
from  London  in  the  first  days  of  February,  1814  :  — 

"  The  Carmen  Triumphale  was  sounding  in  my  ears  all  the  way  as  I  re- 
turned. I  wish  from  my  soul  that  this  most  admirable  ode  could  (but  too 
surely  it  cannot)  be  translated  into  every  language,  and  chanted  in  every 
church,  of  Christendom,  and  that  the  notes  were  affixed  to  the  door  of  every 
town  hall.     I  too  had  been  employing  some  midnight  hours  to  prove  that 

'  Justice  must  go  before, 
And  Retribution  must  make  plain  the  way';t 

but  the  evil  genius  to  whom  I  committed  the  manuscript  has  printed  what 
he  chose  and  omitted  all  the  best.     I  hope  he  has,  however,  executed  one 

*  Letters,  II.  351. 

t  These  lines  are  from  the  last  stanza  of  the  Ode:  a  spirit-stirring  one  undoubtedly, 
and  such  as  might  justify  still  the  uses  of  a  poet-laureateship,  if  anything,  even  Tenny- 
son's genius,  could  do  it. 

•'  When  shall  the  dove  go  forth?     0,  when 
Shall  peace  return  among  the  sons  of  men? 
Hasten,  benignant  Heaven,  the  blessed  day! 

Justice  mu<t  go  before, 
And  Retribution  must  make  plain  the  way; 
Force  must  he  crashed  by  Force, 
The  power  of  evil  by  the  power  of  good, 
Ere  order  Uless  the  Buffering  world  once  more, 

Or  peace  return  again. 
Hold  then  ri<_'ht  on  in  your  auspicious  course. 
Ye  princes  ami  ye  people,  hold  right  on! 

YoUT  t:i<k  not  yet  i-  done  : 
Pursue  the   blow  —  ye  know  your  foe  — 
Complete  the  happy  work  so  well  begun." 


JET.  30-39]  PUBLIC    AFFAIRS.  231 

order  of  mine,  in  sending  to  your  bookseller  the  Letters  of  Calvus.  The 
best  he  declines  to  print.  I  have  written  a  most  complete  refutation  of  Sir 
James  Mackintosh's  speech.  Scorn  forbids  me  to  ask  the  fellow  whether  he 
has  received  it.  Let  it  perish.  What  think  you  of  Lord  Castlereagh  visit- 
ing the  scoundrel  Caulincourt  ?  The  Courier  published  one  out  of  three 
parts  of  my  reply  to  the  impudent  paper  of  Bonaparte." 

But  already  Southey  had  heard  of  the  Calvus  through  Coleridge, 
then  also  writing  in  the  Courier ;  and  in  his  next  letter,  everyway  a 
characteristic  one,  asks  if  Landor  had  seen  what  he  had  himself  been 
writing  in  the  same  paper,  Who  calls  for  peace  at  this  momentous  hour  ? 
an  ode  that  had  grown  out  of  the  castrations  of  the  Carmen  Trium' 
phale,  whose  official  character  had  precluded  entire  freedom  of 
speech.  For  five  years,  Southey  continued,  he  had  been  preaching 
the  necessity  of  declaring  Bonaparte  under  the  ban  of  human  na- 
ture ;  and  if  this  had  been  done  in  1805,  even  the  Emperor  of  Aus- 
tria, "  wretch  as  he  is,"  could  never  have  given  him  his  daughter  in 
marriage.  Now  his  hope  was  that  the  other  "  wretch  "  might  require 
terms  of  peace  that  the  allies  would  not  consent  to.  Not  that  he 
wanted  the  Bourbons  restored.  Except  when  expulsions  had  been 
effected  by  foreign  force,  restorations  were  bad  things.  The  Bour- 
bons had  been  a  detestable  race,  and  adversity  had  failed  to  restore 
in  them  the  virtues  royalty  had  stifled.  It  was  an  old  notion  of  his 
that  the  Revolution  would  not  have  done  its  work  till  the  houses 
both  of  Austria  and  Bourbon  were  destroyed ;  and  he  proceeds  to  tell 
Landor  a  story  of  Hofer,  which  he  had  himself  heard  from  Adair  to 
whom  the  facts  were  known,  to  the  effect  that  when  that  gallant 
man  had  actually  succeeded  in  getting  himself  into  an  Austrian  pris- 
on for  safety,  he  was  deliberately  turned  out  of  his  asylum  by  the 
Austrian  government.  If  any  member  of  that  government,  there- 
fore, escaped  the  sword  or  the  halter,  there  would  be  a  lack  of  justice 
in  this  world,  "  which  will  require  some  expense  of  brimstone  in  the 
next  to  balance  the  account.  The  fact  is  one  of  the  most  damnable 
in  human  history." 

Eager  and  prompt  was  Landor's  reply  :  — 

"  I  have  indeed  seen,  or  rather  heard,  that  trumpet-tongued  ode,  begin- 
ning, 

'  Who  calls  for  peace  at  this  momentous  hour'; 

and  I  smile  at  this  moment  when  I  find  you  calling  it  '  from  the  castrations ' 
of  the  Carmen  Ti'iumphale.  Those  of  old  Saturn,  falling  on  the  sea,  pro- 
duced a  Venus.  These,  falling  on  an  island,  will,  I  hope,  produce  a  Minerva. 
I,  and  my  friends  the  dogs,  can  never  forget  the  honors  you  have  bestowed 
on  Whitefoot ;  *  but  I  am  afraid  they  will  be  followed  up  by  some  irrever- 
ence from  our  critics.     They  like  to  pick  a  bone  with  their  betters. 

"  I  often  wonder  at  myself,  and  it  is  the  only  occasion  on  which  self- 
complacency  falls  in  with  my  wonder,  to  find  your  sentiments  and  mine  so 
very  similar  both  in  poetry  and  politics.  On  Spenser  alone  we  differ  totally. 
You  will  find  in  the  letters  of  Calvus  as  deep  a  hatred  of  the  Austrian  court 

*  See  ante,  p.  161. 


232  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^is^i"1' 

as  could  be  expressed  in  them ;  and  your  anecdote  of  its  conduct  to  the 
excellent  Hofer  makes  me  yearn  from  my  soul  for  its  destruction.  No  family 
that  ever  existed  in  the  world  was  ever  so  ungrateful,  not  even  the  Stuarts. 
A  scoundrel  of  an  emperor  held  a  long  debate  in  what  manner  he  should 
receive  John  Sobieski,  who  had  just  saved  him  from  being  an  assistant  to  the 
black  eunuch,  after  the  proper  initiation.  It  was  determined  that  he  could 
not,  according  to  etiquette,  shake  hands  with  him,  much  less  embrace  him. 
Instead  of  returning  any  thanks  for  the  salvation  of  the  capital,  he  enlarged 
on  the  benefits  his  ancestors  had  conferred  on  Poland.  Sobieski  said  he 
felt  happy  that  Poland  had  been  able  in  some  measure  to  return  them.  How 
scandalously  was  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  stripped  of  his  petty  principality 
of  Mendelheim !  and  what  an  ungrateful was  Maria  Theresa  !  Bona- 
parte now  sees  that  his  vanity  alone  has  been  his  ruin.  As  a  politician  he 
should  have  left  no  king  or  emperor  of  the  old  race,  except  in  Russia.  If  he 
had  only  destroyed  the  house  of  Austria,  he  might  have  soon,  but  not  imme- 
diately, restored  the  kingdom  of  Poland  in  his  own  family,  with  all  Prussia 
Proper.  He  might  then  have  played  off  the  Russians  against  the  Turks,  or 
the  Turks  against  the  Russians,  and  in  either  case  would  have  had  the 
Persians  for  his  allies  or  his  dependants.  By  this  train  of  policy,  which 
however  was  broken  at  the  first  link,  he  would  have  ruined  us  in  the  East 
Indies." 

There  is  something  in  that  view  of  the  case  undoubtedly  ;  but  on 
the  whole  it  is  singular  and  not  satisfying  to  observe  how  little  of 
what  we  now  should  think  the  true  moral  of  the  momentous  events 
then  passing  was  extracted  from  them  by  two  such  near  lookers-on  as 
these  famous  correspondents.  What  the  mere  politicians  of  the  time 
might  be  forgiven  for  dropping  out  of  account  can  hardly  be  excused 
to  Landor  or  to  Southey.  Men  of  such  activity  of  intellect,  familiar 
with  ancient  and  with  modern  history,  and  who  had  so  clear  an 
understanding  of  what  the  French  Revolution  involved,  might  surely 
also  have  been  expected  more  clearly  to  see  that  so  decisive  an  out- 
break of  democracy  would  have  to  run  its  natural  course  ;  that  the 
principles  embodied  and  represented  by  Bonaparte  would  survive  his 
repression  and  abuse  of  them  ;  and  that  the  curtain  about  to  fall  on 
him  would  have  to  be  uplifted  again  for  them. 

Two  more  passages  from  Southey's  letters  immediately  following 
the  last  from  Landor,  and  too  curious  to  be  lost  altogether,  ure  all 
that  can  here  be  given.  The  date  of  the  first  is  after  the  news  of 
the  fatal  affair  of  Bergen-op-Zoom. 

"  As  for  the  Dutch,  their  torpor  at  this  time  is  such  that  they  deserve,  ac- 
cording to  the  old  punster's  curse,  to  be  undammed  in  this  world,  and 
damned  in  the  next.  Yet  I  was  struck  the  other  day  in  reading  George 
coigne's  poems  to  come  to  a  passage  which  added  one  to  the  many 
striking  points  of  comparison  between  their  war  of  deliverance  and  that  of 
the  Spaniards.  lie  speaks  of  them  just  in  the  same  contemptuous  manner 
as  the  Spaniards  are  spoken  of  by  almost  all  who  have  served  with  them  : — 

1  They  be  but  hollow  gear, 
As  weak  as  wind  which  with  our  pull"  up  goeth; 
And  yet  they  brag,  and  think,  they  have  DO  fear, 
Because  Harlem  bath  hitherto  held  out, 
Although  indeed  (as  they  have  Buffered  Spain) 
The  end  thereof  even  now  doth  rest  in  doubt.'  " 


MT.  30-39.] 


PRIVATE   DISPUTES.  233 


Then,  in  May,  1814,  when  Bonaparte  had  left  for  Elba,  when  Wel- 
lington had  been  created  a  duke,  and  when  Louis  the  Eighteenth  had 
taken  possession  of  the  Tuileries,  Southey  thus  wrote  :  — 

"  So  the  curtain  has  fallen  after  a  tragedy  of  five-and-twenty  years !  In 
two  respects  the  catastrophe  is  as  it  should  be.  Bonaparte's  degradation  is 
complete.  Even  his  military  reputation  is  lost,  and  he  is  suH'ered  to  live 
more  because  he  may  safely  be  despised  than  because  of  his  Austrian  mar- 
riage. And  the  French  in  baseness  and  impudence  have  contrived  to  outdo 
their  former  masterpieces  in  this  kind.  Amiable  people !  they  have  been 
rather  the  victims  of  the  tyrant  than  his  agents  !  Then  the  patriotism  of  the 
rascals !  The  municipality  can  no  longer  reconcile  it  to  their  consciences  to 
keep  silenced  Wretches !  If  Bonaparte's  last  order  concerning  his  good 
city  of  Paris  had  been  executed,  I  could  with  little  difficulty  have  brought 
myself  to  believe  that  the  powder  could  not  have  been  more  fitly  ex- 
pended." 

But  before  that  letter  reached  its  destination  Landor  had  quitted 
England  ;  and  the  causes  that  led  to  his  departure  will  appear  in  my 
resumption  of  the  narrative  of  his  residence  at  Llanthony. 

XI.    PKIVATE  DISPUTES. 

In  the  early  months  of  1813  Landor  reminded  Southey  that  the  year 
had  come  which,  according  to  his  promise,  was  to  be  that  of  his  second 
visit  to  Llanthony.  Since  his  and  Mrs.  Southey's  first  visit  there 
had  been  many  improvements  as  to  comfort  ;  a  truth  of  which  he 
would  not  find  much  difficulty  in  persuading  her.  Could  he  also 
persuade  her  to  make  the  trial  1  His  house,  which  had  been  built 
for  a  bachelor,  and  would  be  enlarged  next  year  by  an  addition  of 
four  good  bedrooms,  had  two  large  ones  already,  and  several  smaller ; 
and  the  best  had  the  advantage  which  Italian  architects  laid  great 
stress  upon,  —  they  were  al  mezzo  giorno.  He  could  insure  them 
well-aired  beds,  and  his  horses  should  meet  them  anywhere  and  at 
any  time. 

Southey  hesitated,  doubted  if  he  could  make  the  time  suitable,  de- 
sired it  too  much  to  drop  it  altogether,  and  was  still  entertaining  it  as 
not  impossible,  when,  within  three  weeks  of  the  former,  a  second 
letter  reached  4iim.  It  opened  ominously,  for  already  Southey  had 
sufficient  experience  of  his  friend  to  know  that  any  new  literary  en- 
terprise was  not  unlikely  to  foreshadow  some  fresh  personal  vexation ; 
the  one  being  commonly  used  as  a  safety-valve  or  escape  from  the 
other.  "  I  have,"  this  letter  began,  "  written  a  comedy,  and  shall 
send  it  within  a  few  days  to  your  booksellers  for  you.  This,  in  my 
opinion,  may  be  acted.  There  is  a  preftUxny  discourse  by  the  editor, 
much  in  the  style  of  our  great  editors  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Tweed."  But  the  personal  vexation,  of  which  here  was  the  sure  fore- 
runner, carried  with  it  in  this  case  a  special  annoyance  to  Southey 
himself ;  for  the  letter  opening  thus  lightly  passed  into  tragical  utter- 
ance in  the  very  next  line,  as  it  conveyed  the  terrible  announcement 


234  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^^"i  "L 

that  with  the  tenant  he  had  himself  introduced  —  the  "agriculturist" 
of  whom  so  many  letters  had  been  written,  the  supposed  man  of  cap- 
ital to  whom  the  best  farm  of  Llanthony  had  been  let  on  terms  ex- 
travagantly liberal,  the  real  man  of  destiny  pre-selected  to  be  a 
plague  and  torment  to  both  friends  —  Landor  was  now  plunged  over 
head  and  ears  in  disputes  of  an  irreconcilable  bitterness,  and  to  which 
the  only  possible  issue  must  be  hopeless  and  irretrievable  loss. 

"  I  am  under  no  small  tribulation  from  that  Bctham  of  whose  family  you 
knew  something.  Hearing  a  good  account  of  his  lather  from  you,  and  that 
he  was  desirous  of  settling  here,  I  offered  the  old  gentleman  my  two  livings 
here,  worth  about  £270  a  year,  on  the  decease  of  the  present  incumbents, 
who  are  each  above  seventy.  That  the  son  might  have  a  comfortable  house 
and  a  large  farm,  I  consented  to  accept  the  resignation  of  a  lease  from  an 
excellent  tenant,  and  to  allow  him  £  50  a  year  ibr  it,  which  £  50  however 
Mr.  Betham  was  to  pay  me,  —  the  old  tenant  thinking  my  security  better 
than  his.  Mr.  B.  neglected  to  gather  in  Ins  com.  of  which  the  crop  was 
excellent,  and  lost  at  least  £  200  by  this;  he  did  not  thatch  his  hay,  by 
which  he  lost  £ 200  more;  and  by  a  series  of  such  conduct  as  might  be 
expected  from  a  sailor  turned  fanner,  and  by  living  at  the  rate  of  £  1,000  a 
year,  he  has  succeeded  in  spending  his  wile's  fortune,  —  about  £3,000.  In 
fifteen  months  1  have  received  no  rent  from  him,  though  his  rent  amounts 
to  above  £  1,100.  I  did  not  demand  it  the  first  half-year,  however  much  I 
wanted  it  ;  and  that  he  might  not  pay  it  the  second  he  lopped  my  trees,  and 
ploughed  all  the  meadow-ground  on  one  farm.  In  the  midst  of  this  last 
transaction  I  wrote  civilly  to  him,  telling  him  that  I  presumed  it  was  by  mis- 
take, and  requesting  that  it  might  be  discontinued.  He  replied  that  he 
should  not  be  hampered  in  what  he  considered  ibr  the  good  of  the  farm,  and 
'  besides,  that  I  had  promised  him  every  indulgence.'  In  fact,  I  had  never 
refused  him  any  request,  however  unreasonable.  To  prevent  my  other 
meadows  from  being  ruined,  which  would  lender  the  estate  quite  unde- 
sirable to  any  future  tenant,  I  have  (as  he  foresaw  and  wished)  brought  an 
action  againsl  him,  but  expressed  at  the  same  time  a  readiness  to  settle  it  by 
arbitration.  This  he  refused  ;  and  refuses  also  to  pay  any  rent,  under  pre- 
texl  thai  the  matters  in  dispute  will  be  settled  in  a  court  of  law. 

••  Although  for  several  months  he  came  uninvited  and  passed  his  evenings 
in  my  house,  although  his  sheep  have  consumed  the  produce  of  my  garden 
and  fields  and  woods,  he  has  had  the  baseness  to  threaten  to  shoot  my 
chickens  if  they  come  into  his  fields.  I  mention  this  to  show  the  extreme 
baseness  to  which  he  descends.  I  offered  to  put  his  hedges  in  repair,  if  he 
would  keep  them  so:  he  declined  it,  finding  it  more  convenient  to  pasture 

his  si p  in  my  meadows,  and  turning  them  into  bare  fallows  that  they  may 

be  forced  upon  my  land  by  hunger. 

■■  I  have  mentioned  only  a  few  instances  of  this  fellow's  roguery  and  in- 
gratitude; bul  enough  for  you  to  judge  of  him.  All  his  brothers — three 
certainly  —  have  abandoned  every  visible  means  of  procuring  an  honest 
livelihood,  and  are  with  him;  although  his  poor  laborers  are  starving,  and 
he  has  actually  borrowed  money  from  them.  In  fact,  he  thinks  it  more  rep- 
utable to  be  convicted  of  roguery  than  suspected  of  poverty.  He  has 
embezzled  the  money  I  allowed  for  the  repairs  of  the  house,  because  I 
insisted  on  no  written  agreement  and  relied  on  his  honor.  He  has  dis- 
charged me  and  my  gamekeeper  from  shooting  on  his  farm !  " 

Making  allowance  for  hardly  avoidable  partiality  in  stating  one's 


;et.  30-39.]  PRIVATE  DISPUTES.  235 

own  case,  there  will  appear  to  have  been  evidence  to  support  every 
count  in  this  indictment,  as  well  as  others  to  be  preferred  hereafter. 
Southey's   ominous  remark  upon  Betham's  ignorance  of  agriculture 
will  be  recollected  ;  his  previous  employments  having  in  fact  been 
those  of  usher  in  his  father's  school,  and  afterwards  of  petty  officer 
in  an  India  Company's  ship.     But  it  was  not  the  character  of  the 
man  only,  but,  as  appears  from  this  letter,  all  the  surroundings  of  the 
man,  that  marked  him  out  for  the  part  he  had  to   play-     It  was 
one  of  his  sisters,  as  before  we  have  seen,  who  induced  Southey  to 
recommend  him.     The  old  gentleman  his  father,  as  we  here  observe, 
was  the  origin  of  Landor's  first  troubles  with  him.     Nor  could  a  non- 
paying  tenant  present  himself  to  a  luckless  landlord  under  conditions 
more  aggravating  than  those  of  giving  bed  and  board  to  a  quarter  of 
a  dozen  idle  brothers  who  had  "  abandoned  every  other  visible  means 
of  procuring  an  honest  livelihood."     Does  it  not  all  confirm  what  has 
been  said  of  destiny  in  the   matter,  and  connect  with  it,  after  the 
manner  of  the  Greeks,  the  offender's  whole  helpless  family  1     "  I  for- 
got to  tell  you,"  wrote  Charles  Lamb  to  Landor  nearly  twenty  years 
later  in  an  unpublished  letter  now  lying  before  me,  "  I  knew  all  your 
Welsh  annoyancers,  the  measureless  Bethams.     I  knew  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  of  them.     Seventeen  brothers  and  sixteen  sisters,  as  they  appear 
to  me  in  memory.     There  was  one  of  them  that  used  to  fix  his  long 
legs  on  my  fender,  and  tell  a  story  of  a  shark,  every  night,  endless, 
immortal.     How  have  I  grudged  the  salt-sea  ravener  not  having  had 
his  gorge  of  him  !     The  shortest  of  the  daughters  measured  five  foot 
eleven  without  her  shoes.     Well,  some  day  we  may  confer  about 
them.     But   they  were   tall.     Surely   I   have   discovered  the  longi- 
tude — "     Of  course  the  hero  of  the  shark  was  Landor's  chief  tor- 
mentor.    He  had  been  in  the  East  and  in  the  West  Indies ;  and,  for 
the  sake  of  the  whole'  family  of  sharks  he  was  to  bring  up  to  have 
their  goige  of  Landor,  the  salt-sea  ravener  had  spared  him. 

Southey's  answer  was  written  in  the  midst  of  family  distress.  His 
wife's  brother  had  come  to  them  on  a  visit,  had  been  suddenly  at- 
tacked by  illness  which  proved  fatal  a  few  days  before  the  date  of  his 
letter,  and  had  left  everything  dismal  and  comfortless  around  them. 
But  bitter  beyond  all  was  his  grief  and  surprise  at  Betham's  conduct. 
Personally  he  knew  little  of  him,  and  never  meant  to  recommend 
him  ;  but  the  man  certainly  had  come  of  a  good  stock,  and  if  he  had 
not  himself  implicitly  believed  in  his  honor  and  honesty  he  would 
never  in  an  evil  hour  have  directed  him  to  the  Vale  of  Ewyas.  It 
was  very  strange,  but  misgivings  about  him,  though  not  affecting  his 
honesty,  had  occurred  a  few  months  ago.  He  had  sent  over  to  Kes- 
wick last  summer  from  Abergavenny  a  very  vulgar  fellow  with  letters 
of  introduction ;  and  this  had  given  Southey  a  bad  opinion  of  his 
taste  in  companions. 

Southey  then  talks  of  the  Charitable  Dowager.  He  supposes  the 
heroine  to  have  been  drawn  from  the  life,  and  thinks  that  as  a  drama 


236  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LL  ANTHONY.  ^SSf-S?" 

there  was  a  want  of  incident,  and,  in  that  on  which  the  catastrophe 
depends,  of  probability  ;  hut  lie  had  found  the  dialogue  abounding 
with  those  felicities  that  flashed  from  Landor  in  prose  and  verse  more 
than  from  any  other  writer.  He  remembered  nothing  but  Jeremy 
Taylor  that  at  all  resembled  them.  Jeremy  had  things  as  perfect 
and  touching  in  their  kind,  —  but  a  different  kind  :  the  same  beauty, 
the  same  exquisite  fitness :  but  not  the  point  and  poignancy  dis- 
played in  the  Comedy  and  the  Commentary,  or  the  condensation  and 
strength  that  characterized  Gehir  and  Count  Julian.  He  goes  on 
then  to  notice  certain  neighborly  compliments  bestowed  in  the  com- 
edy on  the  town  and  townsfolk  of  Abergavenny  ;  and  in  proof  that 
some  good  nevertheless  might  come  out  of  "Wales  besides  flannel  and 
lamb's-wool  stockings,  instances  a  book  he  has  been  lately  reading  on 
Eastern  history  by  a  Major  Price.  He  adds  that  in  three  weeks  he  is 
going  to  London,  and  that  he  has  given  up  the  Edinburgh  Register 
with  the  fourth  volume,  having  got  into  bad  hands  with  it,  and  being 
in  a  fair  way  of  being  defrauded  ;  but  he  does  not  regret  the  transac- 
tion on  the  wdiole.  Scott  owed  him  a  good  turn  for  that  indifferent 
one,  and  the  laureateship  now  hung  within  his  reach. 

From  Llanthony,  Landor  answered  in  August :  upon  the  personal 
points  first,  and  after  on  the  comedy.  Nothing  can  be  wittier  than 
his  attack  on  the  old  method  of  comedy  writing,  nothing  more  inge- 
nious than  the  simpler  mode  lie  prefers  ;  but  it  may  be  feared  that 
his  chances  were  not  greater  in  the  Dowager  than  they  formerly  were 
in  Count  Julian  of  carrying  a  theatreful  of  patient  listeners  along 
with  him. 

"  There  are  two  things  in  your  letter  which  grieve  me;  yet  perhaps  there 
are  hardly  any  two  things  that  have  wider  openings  for  consolation.  Mrs. 
Southey  will  be  unhappy  at  losing  her  brother,  from  the  great  gentleness 
and  pure  affections  of  her  nature.  You  will  enter'into  all  these,  and  come 
to  your  own  at  last.  My  habits  have  been  more  dissipated,  and  my  In-art 
more  hardened,  than  yours  could  have  been  by  any  accidents  or  occurrences 
of  life;  yet  nothing  can  happen  to  the  five  or  six  people  1  love,  whether  it 
be  by  death  or  loss  of  any  kind,  but  I  must  devise  some  reasons  for  them 
why  they  must  not  be  unhappy.  If  you  continue  the  History,  I  hope  and 
believe  there  will  be  little  to  regret,  ultimately,  in  your  abandonment  of  the 
Edinburgh  Register.  You  have  been  defrauded;  it  cannot  be  of  anything 
which  you  may  not  recover  by  the  same  means  as  you  acquired  it.  I  have 
also  been  defrauded,  and  have  no  means  whatever  of  replacing  what  I  have 
lost 

"  Betham  told  Addis,  my  tenant  and  a  very  honest  man,  that  he  should 
pay  me  no  rent  at  all  events  for  four  years.  Here  is  between  four  and  live 
thousand  pounds  gone  by  trusting  to  bis  honor.  I  Buffered  by  the  same  in- 
fatuation before.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  be  comforted  by  Ovid,  whose 
sentences  are  full  of  poetry  and  wisdom,  and  are  his  greatest  excellence. 

'  Leniter  ex  merito  qtucquid  patiara  ferendum  est: 
Qase  venit  indigtio  poena,  d<>l<-nda  veuit.' 

"  I  wish  to  improve  my  comedy,  and  to  have  it  acted.    The  acting  T  never 

thought  of;   but  Juan  Santos  de  Murieta,  a  poor  man  of  Castro  who  received 


,ET.  30- 39J  PRIVATE    DISPUTES.  237 

me  hospitably  when  I  found  Bilbao  in  occupation  of  the  French,  is  perhaps 
ruined  by  those  barbarians.  I  see  no  speedier  way,  little  speed  as  there  is 
in  this,  of  sending  him  some  money.  If  some  dashing  and  adventurous 
bookseller  would  give  me  £  100,  or  £  50,  or  £  30  for  all  I  can  ever  get  by 
the  comedy  and  the  preface,  —  which  is,  I  think,  a  humorous  specimen  of 
modern  editorship,  —  he  might  recover  as  much  by  the  mere  acting.  But 
not  unless  you  will  suggest  some  improvement  in  the  plan.  I  never  could 
keep  to  any  plan  of  my  own.  I  am  romantic,  and  I  am  in  eternal  dread  of 
being  absurd.  This  has  often  thrown  a  chill  over  me,  and  closed  the  petals 
of  my  fairest  flowers.  I  will  add  a  portion  of  the  Preface,  in  which  I  de- 
fend, in  the  character  of  Hardcastle,  my  own  manner.     The  editor  says :  — 

"  It  is  fur  from  a  hasty  or  a  slight  production ;  yet  the  plot,  one  would  imagine,  is  too 
simple  for  the  times.  "Hardcastle  has  preferred  truth  to  surprise,  and  character  to 
everything:  for,  although  the  follies  and  vices  he  satirizes  are  general  enough,  still  the 
persons  in  whom  they  are  represented  are  choice  individuals  of  their  kind.  Intricacy 
of  plot  was  always  considered  necessary,  and  the  more  so  when  delicacy  was  not-  it 
was  however  so"  difficult  to  make  the  audience  keep  watch  and  ward  for  it,  and  to 
command  an  uninterrupted  attention  for  five  whole  acts,  that  many  of  the  best  writers, 
from  Terence  to  the  present  times,  have  combined  two  entire  plots,  hoping,  as  our  au- 
thor expresses  it.  '  that  what  is  twisted  together  will  untwist  together,  and  leaving  a 
great  deal  to  the  goodness  of  providence  and  to  the  faith  and  charity  of  their  fellow- 
creatures.  Your  intricate  plotters  bring  many  great  changes  into  many  whole 
families,  and  sometimes  into  several  and  distant  countries,  within  the  day;  and  what 
is  more  difficult  and  incredible,  send  off  all  parties  well  satisfied.  For  my  own  share,' 
he  proceeds,  '  I  am  contented  with  seeing  any  one  fault  wittily  rebuked  and  checked 
effectually;  and  think  thai  surprising  enough,  considering  the  time,  without  the  forma- 
tion of  attachments,  the  begetting  or  finding  of  children,  bickerings,  buffets,  deaths, 
marriages,  distresses;  wealth,  poverty;  wealth  again, love  again,  whims  and  suspicions, 
shaking  heads  and  shaking  hands.  All  these  things  are  natural ;  but  one  would  rather 
breathe  between  them,  and  perhaps  would  think  it  no  bad  husbandry  to  put  some  of 
them  off  to  another  time.  The  combination  of  them,  after  all,  marvellous  as  it  ap- 
pears, is  less  difficult  to  contrive  than  to  credit.  I  have  been  an  idle  man  and  have 
read  or  attended  the  greater  part  of  the  plays  that  are  extant,  and  will  venture  to 
affirm  that  there  are  barely  a  dozen  plots  amongst  them,  comic  or  tragic :  so  that 
it  is  evidently  an  easier  matter  to  run  over  the  usual  variations  than  10  keep  entirely 
in  another  tune  and  raise  no  recollections.  Both  in  tragedies  and  comedies  the  changes 
are  pretty  similar,  and  nearly  in  the  same  places.  You  perceive  the  turns  and  wind- 
ings of  the  road  a  mile  before,  you,  and  know  exactly  the  precipice  down  which  the 
hero  or  heroine  must  fall :  you  can  discover  with  your  naked  eye  who  does  the  mis- 
chief and  who  affords  the  help;  where  the  assassin  bursts  out  with  the  dagger,  and 
where  the  old  gentleman  shakes  the  crab-stick  over  the  shoulder  of  his  dissolute 
nephew.  I  do  not  admire  these  direction-posts  to  perplexities  and  intrigues;  I  oppose 
this  agrarian  law,  this  general-enclosure  act:  I  would  not  attempt  to  square  the  circle 
of  poetry,  and  am  avowedly  a  nonjuror  to  the  doctrine  of  grace  and  predestination  in 
the  drama.'  Of  the  Charitable  Dowager  he  says:  'One  action  leads  to  and  brings  about 
one  event,  naturally  but  not  necessarily:  the  action  is  vicious,  the  event  is  desirable, 
and  is  accompanied  by  the  chastisement  of  the  evil-doer,  whose  machinations  are  the 
sole  means  of  accomplishing  what  their  motions  seem  calculated  to  thwart  and  over- 
throw. No  character  is  introduced  that  does  not  tend  towards  the  development  of  the 
plot,  or  does  not  manifest  the  bent  and  inclination  of  the  principals:  no  one  is  merely  a 
prompter  to  a  witticism,  or  gentleman-usher  to  a  repartee.  Characters  in  general  are 
made  subservient  to  the  plot :  here  the  plot  is  made  subservient  to  the  characters  ;  all 
these  are  real.  I  have  only  invited  them  to  meet,  and  bestowed  on  them  those  abilities 
for  conversation  without  which  a  comedy  might  be  very  natural,  but  would  not  possess 
the  nature  of  a  comedy.  I  wanted  to  expose  the  very  few  peculiarities  I  have  ex- 
posed. I  could  not  bring  them  together  in  another  way.  Any  one  may  compose  a 
more  artificial  piece;  but  whoever  could  make  the  present  one  more  complex,  preserv- 
ing its  regularity,  its  consistency,  its  truth  of  character,  can  do  more  than  I  can.  I 
should  lose  myself  in  attempting  it;  I  should  lose  also  whatever  I  might  earn- about 
with  me  to  prove  that  I  am  I.  Perhaps  I  should  be  more  like  others ;  but  I  should  be 
more  visibly  their  inferior.'  " 

"  What  is  your  opinion  of  my  giving  acts  the  name  of  scenes,  and  scenes 


238  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^SS^S,1' 

of  acts;  and  my  reasonings  on  that  head  in  the  letter  of  ITardcastle  to  his 
cousin  Leonard  Dusset,  —  which  I  tbrgot  to  date, 

'From  my  lodgings  at  the  Bath,  this  14th  of  January,  1687.'  " 

To  which  may  be  added  a  further  fragment,  found  among  his 
papers,  from  this  much-cherished  "  editorial  "  or  Hardcastle  preface; 
pursuing  his  laugh  against  the  bookmaking  of  which  the  principal 
scene  then  was  Edinburgh,  and  the  chief  promoter  Scott,  in  whose 
life  may  still  he  read  the  melancholy  page  of  it  disclosing  the  story 
of  his  commercial  partnership  with  Constable  and  the  Ballantynes. 
That  ill-fated  parted  partnership  began  some  three  or  four  years  be- 
fore this  date  ;  since  then  had  followed  in  rapid  succession  a  series  of 
printing  and  bookselling  ventures  of  which  every  one  is  now  known 
to  have  been  a  disastrous  failure  ;  and  in  the  present  year  there  had 
appeared  those  letters  of  Miss  Seward  which  even  Scott  was  ashamed 
to  have  helped  in  putting  forth.  Landor,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
never  very  tolerant  of  the  publishing  "  craft,"  protested  all  his  life 
(in  my  judgment  properly)  against  such  offices  of  editing  as  con- 
sisted simply  in  collecting  indiscriminately  the  worst  as  well  as  the 
best  productions  of  a  famous  writer,  and  swelling  out  even  these  by 
needless  annotation  ;  and  his  present  humorous  attack  represented 
something  more  than  his  personal  resentment  of  the  mention  of  him- 
self in  the  Seward  book.*  All  the  jest  has  perished  now  ;  but  these 
two  fragments  may  tell  us  with  what  avidity  it  was  followed  at  the 
time,  and  how  little,  while  the  humor  of  it  lasted,  Landor  is  likely  to 
have  cared  for,  or  given  any  proper  consideration  to,  the  troubles  and 
losses  now  darkly  closing  in  upon  him. 

"  MOTTO    FOR    THE    COMEDY. 

Nunc  adeo,  si  ob  cam  rem  vobis  mea  vita  invisa,  jEschine,  est, 
Quia  non  justa,  injusta,  prorsus  omnia  omnino  obseqnor; 
Missa  facio:  efrundite,  eniite,  facite  quod  vobis  lubet. 

Tekent.  Adelph.  circ.  finem. 

PREFATORY    DISCOURSE. 

Ala  tout'  ap   avrov  Kai  xd\'  j)i'  To  Spafiara' 
"O^ioia  fj.€v  noteti'  avaytcri  rrj  <t>v<rei.  'Apiaro^).   Oeo>io<f>opia£ou0'at. 

Non  lo  conobbe  il  mondo  mentre  1'  ebbe. 

Petrarch. 

"The  editor  of  the  Charitable  Dowager  has  waited  a  considerable  time  in 
the  hope  of  obtaining  two  able  coadjutors  in  the  departments  of  annotator 
and  antiquary :  for  the  public  is  not  to  be  informed, 'a1  this  time  of  day,' 
thai  the  office  of  editing  a  work  is  far  more  difficult  and  delicate  than  the 
mere  labor  of  writing  one.  Under  which  conviction  men  of  the  m 
lively  genius  have  toiled  through  glossaries  and  archives,  with  great  punc- 
tuality and  good  faith.  A  few  words  indeed  have  slipped  inadvertently 
into  their  commonplace  books,  —  such  words  however  as  the  mosl  morose 
of  the  original  writers  would  willingly  resign.  With  this  exception,  they 
have  taken  nothing;  satisfied  with  the  more  honorable  reward  that  the 

*  See  ante,  p.  68. 


/ET.  30-39.]  PRIVATE   DISPUTES.  239 

booksellers  have  promptly  and  prodigally  bestowed.  Every  author  who 
can  be  clearly  proved  to  have  failed  in  business  by  no  imprudence  in  his 
ventures  of  wit  and  no  launching  out  in  his  expenditure  of  learning,  hath 
all  his  books  and  papers  given  back,  which,  although  to  him  perhaps  the 
memories  of  little  but  misfortune,  may  excite  the  industry  or  curiosity  of 
others :  those  works  also  of  the  more  prosperous,  which  their  modesty  or 
their  indifference  threw  away,  have  been  presented  to  them  again,  in  the 
same  letter  and  binding,  as  their  most  cherished  offspring.  Our  maxim 
hath  been,  If  you  take  Isaac,  you  shall  take  Esau :  let  each  have  his  blessing. 
.  .  .  Letters  of  state,  of  love,  of  enmity,  are  edited  in  many  instances  by 
some  ingenious  and  celebrated  hand,  assisted  by  those  literary  friends  who 
are  most  conversant  on  the  different  topics.  And  he  hath  taken  care,  for 
the  consistency  and  character  of  the  writer,  that  no  asperity  shall  be 
softened,  no  rash  assertion  recalled,  no  error  of  any  kind  corrected ;  re- 
solved that  the  features  of  the  dead  shall  not  be  relaxed  by  death,  and  that 
the  passions  of  the  living  shall  not  be  irritated  by  any  whom  their  resent- 
ments can  reach*  .  .  .  Returning  to  the  comedy  before  us,  the  reader  for 
the  present  must  regret  the  volume  of  notes  which  at  a  time  perhaps  not 
distant  will  be  appended.  Such  only  can  be  afforded  to  this  first  volume 
as  are  requisite  to  elucidate  the  editor.  Nor  has  it  been  thought  necessary 
in  a  preliminary  discourse  to  discuss  whether  the  author  were  a  privy 
councillor  or  a  puisne  judge.  One  of  the  name,  a  Humphrey  Hardcastle, 
was  certainly  a  puisne  judge ;  but  there  is  reason  to  suppose  it  was  either 
the  father  or  son  of  our  comic  writer.  On  a  more  minute  inquiry  made  by 
my  learned  friend  Archibald  Stokes,  Esq.,  of  the  King's  Mews,  in  the  jour- 
nals of  the  Privy  Council,  for  which  distinguished  body  I  take  this  oppor- 
tunity of  expressing  my  esteem  and  veneration,  it  hath  been  discovered 
that  our  author  was  not  actually  a  privy  councillor,  but  was  only  brought 
before,  and  interrogated  by,  that  illustrious  assembly:  not,  as  it  would 
appear,  for  any  actual  misdemeanor,  but  because  those  unsettled  times  re- 
quired "  —  [Cetera  desunt.] 

To  the  Llanthony  letter  Southey  did  not  immediately  reply,  being 
now  in  London  on  the  laureate  business  ;  from  this  date  (October, 
1813)  to  the  May  following  the  Llanthony  disputes  assumed  tbeir  most 
serious  form,  and  involved  the  most  disastrous  consequences  ;  yet 
this  is  exactly  the  interval  when,  judging  from  Landor's  letters  to  his 
friend,  not  his  own  but  the  public  affairs  and  not  his  law -pleas  but 
his  Latin  poems,  we  might  suppose  to  be  receiving  his  exclusive  at- 
tention. Assuming  that  the  letter  above  named  had  not  reached 
Southey,  or  that  he  had  not  leisure  to  answer  so  many  things  at  once, 
he  selects  the  thing  as  to  which  his  needs  are  most  pressing.  "  I 
really  do  wish  that  my  comedy  should  be  both  printed  and  acted. 
You  alone  are  capable  of  giving  me  any  advice  that  I  am  likely  to 
follow  in  altering  the  plot.  A  comedy  must  have  some  bustle ;  a 
tragedy  should  have  none.  The  passions  will  permit  no  movements 
but  their  own,  —  they  should  be  painted  naked,  like  heroes  and  gods. 
If  I  can  make  my  comedy  worth  ten  pounds,  I  will  send  the  money 
to  an  honest  and  generous  man  named  Juan  Santos  de  Mureta,  whose 
property  was  destroyed  by  the  French  at  Castro.     He  received  me 

*  "  See  the  letters  of  Miss  Anna  Seward,  in  which  her  consistency  is  put  upon  as 
firm  a  foundation  as  her  judgment,  her  genius,  or  her  chastity." 


240  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONT.  ^t-'H' 

there  most  hospitably  when,  on  my  return  from  the  frigate  which  poor 
Atkins*  commanded,  I  found  that  the  enemy  had  entered  Bilbao." 
His  friend  would  observe  that  he  had  lowered  his  hopes  from  a  hun- 
dred pounds  to  ten  ;  but  seriously  he  did  not  at  present  believe  he 
could,  by  any  exertion,  write  anything  for  which  a  bookseller  might 
safely  exceed  the  amount  he  here  mentioned. 

Nor  had  that  letter  been  despatched  many  days  before  he  wrote 
again  to  say  that  he  had  been  finishing  an  old  scrap  of  Latin  poetry 
as  usual,  "  Finishing  !  as  usual !  —  no,  continuing  and  altering  ; 
then  either  losing  it  or  lighting  a  taper  with  it  to  seal  a  letter.  Here 
are  a  few  lines  that  will  give  you  some  idea  of  the  present  work.  I 
have  written  about  two  hundred."  And  the  letter  closes  with  forty- 
three  closely  transcribed  lines  of  the  poem  of  Corythus.f 

Southey  meanwhile  had  been  writing  with  some  misgivings  about 
the  comedy.  He  began  his  letter  by  saying  that  when  in  London  he 
had  been  asked  whether  he  was  the  author  of  Count  Julian :  a 
question  implying  a  great  compliment  to  him  and  small  discernment 
in  the  questioner.  To  his  own  thinking  Landor's  notion  of  tragedy 
was  perhaps  too  severe  ;  yet  he  believed  that  his  friend  could  write 
one,  that  even  in  representation  might  succeed,  more  easily  than  he 
could  a  comedy  ;  and  very  certainly  he  would  find  it  easier  to  write  a 
new  comedy  altogether,  than  to  introduce  action  and  bustle  into  a  plan 
constructed  without  them.  That  was  his  verdict,  expressed  with  all 
delicacy,  on  the  Dowager.  Yet  had  he  found  in  the  dialogue  of  it  a 
peculiar  character  easier  to  feel  than  to  analyze.  Landor's  prose  was 
like  his  verse  ;  everywhere  terse,  condensed,  and  full  of  thought ;  and 
with  flashes  of  which  the  thought  and  the  expression  were  so  apt,  so 
happy,  and  so  original,  that  he  knew  not  where  they  were  to  be  par- 
alleled, or  where  anything  approaching  them  was  to  be  found.  Cory- 
thus  he  had  also  read  with  immense  satisfaction  :  and  he  reminds  Lan- 
dor  of  a  scheme  formerly  mentioned  by  him  \  of  publishing  a  selection  of 
modern  Latin  poems  with  criticisms  ;  urging  him  now  to  carry  it  out, 
showing  how  suitable  it  would  be  to  public  schools  and  universities, 
and  expressing  himself  sanguine  of  its  success. 

To  all  this  however  there  is  not  even  allusion  in  the  next  of  Lan- 
dor's letters,  nor  does  the  Dowager  herself  appear  again  !  Occupation 
upon  his  Latin  verse  absorbs  him  once  more,  and  everything  else  is 
as  though  it  had  not  been.  In  the  pleasure  of  any  new  composition 
past  disappointments  were  always  as  quickly  forgotten  as  even  pres- 
ent pains  and  disquietudes.  "  Valpy  the  printer,"  he  now  wrote  to 
tell  Southey,  "the  greatest  of  all  coxcombs,  very  much  wished  to 
print  my  Latin  poems  ;  but  I  have  an  intention  to  print  them  at  Ox- 
ford, under  the  title  of  Tdyllia  Heroun  atque  Heroidum,  in  a  size  like 
the  sixpenny  books  of  children.    It  will  cost  me  £  35  3  and  I  intend  to 

*  See  nrtie.  p.  137.  . 

t   It  is  the  fifth  of  the  Idyllia  Ileroica  in  Poemata  et  Inscriptiones,  pp.  19-32.     And 
see  Hellenics,  pp.  174-186. 
t  Ante,  pp.  132,  133. 


JET.  30-39.]  PRIVATE   DISPUTES.  241 

give#whatever  they  sell  for,  which  may  amount  to  about  half  the 
money,  to  the  poor  of  Leipzig.  If  I  had  finished  or  preserved  my 
Polyxena,  it  would  be  perhaps  the  best.  At  present  they  consist  of, 
1.  Corythus,  sive  Mors  Paridis  atque  CEnones.  2.  Dryope.  3.  Pan  et 
Pitys.  4.  Coresus  et  Calliroe.  5.  Helena,  ad  Pudoris  Aram.  I 
have  published  nothing  that  will  bear  a  moment's  comparison  with 
Corythus.  My  head  rises  to  the  shoulder  of  Robert  Smith,  and  every 
other  of  the  modern  Latin  poets  is  below  my  knee.  Such  are  my 
dreams.  What  poet  would  tell  his  as  frankly  1  or  to  whom  else  could 
I  tell  mine  1 "  And  he  winds  up  with  forty-six  more  lines  of  Corythus. 
Yet  at  this  very  time  the  most  critical  hour  of  his  fortune  had 
come.  Out  of  his  great  dispute  with  Betham  had  sprung  sundry 
minor  differences,  not  merely  with  people  who  took  Betham's  part, 
but  with  others  having  small  interest  in  the  tenant  but  some  dislike  of 
the  landlord.  A  state  of  things  had  arrived  when  any  one  ill-disposed 
to  the  master  of  Llanthony  had  means  of  annoyance  at  hand  which 
not  a  few  were  ready  to  use.  Among  them  were  magistrates,  clerical 
and  lay,  with  the  old  grand-jury  grudge  against  him ;  small  farmers 
with  rents  overdue,  who  fancied  they  saw  advantage  to  themselves  in 
his  disadvantage ;  laborers  to  whom  honest  work  was  hateful,  but 
eager  for  any  amount  of  labor  that  was  vicious  or  mischievous  ;  and 
(not  least  though  last)  attorneys  sharp  enough  to  turn  to  bitterness 
every  hasty  act  or  ill-considered  word.  Landor's  chief  pride,  his 
plantations,  supplied  generally  the  ground  of  attack.  His  trees  were 
uprooted,  and  his  timber  stolen ;  and  upon  the  rare  occasions  when 
offenders  were  caught,  sympathizing  magistrates  admitted  them  to 
bail.  Against  one  desperate  fellow  he  had  to  swear  that  he  was  in 
personal  danger ;  but  though  the  magistrate  who  first  heard  the  case 
directed  the  man's  committal,  ten  pounds  were  subsequently  thought 
bail  sufficient  to  justify  his  release.*  This  fellow  soon  after  drank  him- 
self to  death  at  Abergavenny ;  and  by  the  Mr.  P.  whose  acquaintance 
has  before  been  made  by  the  reader,!  Landor  was  accused  of  having 
caused  his  death  :  but  the  accuser  was  acquitted  when  Landor  prose- 

*  To  the  magistrate  who  accepted  the  bail,  Mr.  Richard  Lewis,  of  Llandilo,  Landor 
wrote :  "  The  threats  were  not  such  as  any  one  who  cared  for  me  could  hear  without 
alarm.  It  was  the  conversation  of  the  parish  that  he  had  resolved  to  murder  me.  My 
wife,  who  heard  this  repeatedly  from  the  servants,  the  tenants,  and  the  workmen,  was 
afraid  to  leave  the  house  even  for  exercise.  To  quiet  her  alarms  I  at  last  swore  the 
peace  against  him.  That  my  own  are  not  liable  to  be  quite  so  easily  excited,  I  am 
ready  to  prove  before  any  man  who  has  at  once  the  baseness  to  traduce  me,  the  impu- 
dence to  affront  me,  and  the  spirit  to  meet  me.  I  really  do  think,  however,  that  the 
hazard  of  my  life  is  worth  more  than  the  hazard  of  ten  pounds."  The  closing  sen- 
tences of  the  letter  are  too  good  to  be  lost :  "  Let  me  entreat  of  you,  sir,  to  reconsider 
your  conduct.  \  do  not  look  for  any  acknowledgment  of  error;  such  is  made  only  by 
ingenuous  and  well-regulated  minds,  and  requires  a  degree  of  magnanimity  to  which 
self-importance  and  self-delusion  are  strangers.  But  I  do  hope,  if  not  for  your  credit 
and  reputation,  at  least  for  your  comfort  and  repose,  that  you  will  never  in  future  court 
a  transient  popularity  with  the  ignorant  and  the  wicked  at  the  expense  of  that  lasting 
peace  of  mind  which  a  conscientious  discharge  of  your  duties  will  impart,  —  at  a  period 
of  life,  too,  when  such  feelings  are  most  requisite,  and  such  rewards  most  welcome." 

t  In  the  letter  to  Baron  Thompson,  ante,  p.  204. 

16 


242  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONY.  ^a£-l!t!' 

cuted  him  for  slander.  On  the  other  hand,  when  one  of  Bctham's 
brothers  had  been  overheard  to  threaten  that  certain  trees  alleged  to 
have  been  planted  disadvantageously  to  his  brother's  farm  should  be 
removed,  and  Landor  posted  the  fact  in  a  handbill  charging  him  by- 
name as  meditating  felony  and  ottering  reward  for  his  apprehension, 
the  threatener  recovered  damages  against  Landor  for  libel.  Another 
of  the  brothers  with  sporting  tastes  bad  taken  np  with  congenial  as- 
sociates, of  whom  the  most  prominent  was  a  notorious  poacher,  son  of 
the  keeper  of  the  village  alehouse  ;  and  this  party,  according  to  Lan- 
dor, "with  dogs  of  all  descriptions  and  as  many  guns  as  they  could  pro- 
cure, sported  over  several  of  my  farms,  destroyed  my  game,  and  dined 
upon  it  at  the  alehouse  afterwards."  Out  of  this  arose  a  third  lawsuit, 
which  ended  in  an  apology  ;  and  when,  for  the  fourth  time,  Landor 
went  into  the  court-house  at  Abergavenny  to  give  evidence  against  a 
man  upon  trial  for  stealing  property  belonging  to  him,  he  protested 
that  if  he  had  been  the  thief  in  the  dock  he  could  not  have  been 
treated  worse  than  he  was  in  the  witness-box  by  the  cross-examining 
counsel. 

Of  some  of  these  and  other  kindred  matters,  apart  from'  the 
graver  suit  in  progress  against  the  elder  Betham,  Southey  appears  to 
have  inquired  with  great  concern  upon  reading  a  paragraph  in  one  of 
the  Bristol  papers.  "  I  burst  into  a  loud  fit  of  laughter,"  was  Lan- 
dor s  reply,  "  at  hearing  that  I  was  likely  to  be  made  an  outlaw. 
One  Mosele}T,  who  had  broken  all  the  principal  restrictions  of  his 
lease,  and  had  even  taken  up  and  sold  to  one  Fredericks  of  Crick- 
howel  the  new  quick  fences  of  his  farm,  moved  me  to  pity  by  the 
number  and  greatness  of  his  family  ;  and  instead  of  recovering  two 
or  three  hundred  pounds  damages,  I  gave  that  sum  for  his  resigna- 
tion. Descury  had  bought  oats,  <fec,  and  even  all  his  stock,  at  double 
the  value.  Near  four  years  afterwards,  during  all  which  time  his 
family  wanted  bread,  he  is  persuaded  by  some  of  his  friends  to  bring 
in  a  bill  against  me  of  £18,  although  every  bill  was  always  paid  in- 
stantly, and  although  a  settlement  was  made  for  all  demands  on  his 
quitting  the  estate.  I  received  an  impertinent  note  from  Hugh 
Jones,  his  attorney  at  Abergavenny,  in  reply  to  which  I  stated  the 
circumstances  as  above,  and  the  utter  improbability  that  I  could  be 
in  his  debt,  or  that  so  poor  a  man  could  permit  it  for  such  a  length 
of  time.  The  same  Jones  had  incited  a  poacher  to  take  a  false  oath 
against  me,  as  the  poacher  declared  to  my  servants  in  the  presence  of 
two  respectable  tenants.  I  reminded  him  of  all  this,  and  treated 
him  as  he  deserved.  He  brought  a  criminal  action  against  me. 
The  grand  jury  of  course  brought  in  a  true  bill.  Yet  the  fellow  was 
ashamed,  and  proposed  to  accommodate  the  matter  by  the  interven- 
tion of  two  arbiters.  They  decided  that  1  should  write  an  apology 
for  what  was  unlawful,  and  prescribed  the  form.  He  afterwards 
refused  to  comply  with  their  decision,  which  was  contained  in  the 
form,  and  which  stated  that,  the  offence  being  of  a  private  nature, 


JET.  30-39.]  PRIVATE    DISPUTES.  243 

the  apology  should  not  be  made  public.  I  shall  be  cited  to  take  my 
trial  at  Monmouth  ;  and  as  I  certainly  shall  not  appear,  I  shall  be 
outlawed.  That  is  the  meaning  of  the  paragraph.  Again,  a  fellow 
of  most  notoriously  bad  character  who  has  been  tried  for  more  than 
one  crime,  a  fellow  who  collects  the  window-tax,  was  the  friend  of  one 
Toombes  who  took  a  farm  of  me  of  £  300  a  year  and  never  paid  one 
farthing,  but  ran  away  and  lived  at  Abergavenny,  where  he  killed 
himself  by  drinking  brandy ;  and  that  tax-collecting  fellow,  merely 
to  insult  me,  took  occasion  to  come  up  to  me  and  inquire  aloud  of  a 
person  with  whom  he  was  walking  whether  I  was  the  person  who 
murdered  poor  Toombes.  He  then  followed  me  into  the  office  of  my 
attorney  Mr.  Gabb,  and  on  my  demanding  of  him  whether  he  asked 
that  question  of  me,  he  said,  '  Yes,'  and  that  his  friend  had  answered 
in  the  affirmative.  Well,  I  brought  my  action,  as  the  magistrate, 
Mi*.  Powell,  recommended.  The  jury  were  unanimously  of  opinion 
that  he  asked  only  for  the  sake  of  information,  and  found  him  not 
guilty.  You  perceive  what  chance  I  have  of  justice,  and  how  subject 
I  am  both  to  robbery  and  insult.  When  the  materials  of  my  house 
were  stolen,  and  when  the  thief  ran  away  from  the  constable  and  hid 
(in  a  ditch)  the  wood  which  the  constable  was  making  him  carry  as 
evidence  of  his  theft,  I  was  treated  by  Mr.  Taunton,  his  counsel, 
with  much  more  violence  than  any  criminal.  Our  laws  protect  none 
but  the  guilty.  I  would  not  encounter  the  rudeness  I  experienced 
from  this  Taunton  to  save  all  the  property  I  possess.  I  have  how- 
ever chastised  him  in  my  Latin  poetry  now  in  the  press.  I  heard 
accidentally,  from  Mr.  Hawkins  of  Pembroke  College,  a  little  anecdote 
which  shall  not  be  very  soon  forgotten  of  this  fellow  Taunton." 

That  was  his  comfort,  and  not  an  inconsiderable  one.  He  chas- 
tised Taunton  (afterwards  the  judge)  in  Latin  poetry,  and,  what  was 
more  to  the  purpose,  in  such  English  as  Swift  might  have  written.* 
Many  are  the  passages  in  the  "  Epistle  to  a  Barrister  "  worthy  still 
of  preservation,  and  now  to  be  read,  by  such  as  have  read  the  fore- 
going, with  a  proper  understanding  of  their  sarcasm  and  wit. 

"  Two  badger  eyes  has  Themis ;  one 
Is  always  leering. to  ward  the  throne; 
The  other  wanders  this  way,  that  way, 
But  sees  the  gap  and  leaves  the  gateway. 

My  sheep  are  flayed ;  the  flayer  bears 

The  best  of  names,  our  vicar  swears. 

And  why  reproach  the  mild  divine  ? 

He  loves  his  flock,  his  flock  loves  mine. 

My  timber  stolen,  could  I  know 

The  mark  I  made  a  month  ago  ? 

My  barns  cleared  out;  my  house  burnt  down; 

Could  the  whole  loss  exceed  a  crown? 

Shame !  are  such  trifles  worth  my  cares  ? 

I  'm  freed  from  rats  and  from  repairs ! 

*  For  a  specimen  of  the  Latin  verse  the  reader  may  be  referred  to  some  Iambics 
"  Ad  Causidicum,"  in  the  Puemata  et  Inscriptiones,  p.  180. 


244  LATH,    SPAIN,    AND   LLANTHONT.  ^la^i,"1' 

A  year  is  past:  I  beg  my  rent: 

/  must  mistake  —  thai  was  not  meant. 

I  tarry  on:  two  years  elapse: 

The  balance  may  be  theirs  perhaps. 

For  insolent  requests  like  these, 

Their  gentle  hands  uproot  my  trees; 

While  tlmse,  they  told  me  hurt  their  grain, 

I  fell,  their  gentle  hands  detain.  .  .  . 

Of  late  a  sort  of  suitor  there  is 

Who  courts  a  horsewhip  like  an  heiress. 

Kiek  him  .  .  .  not  Midas  would  enrich 

With  surer  stroke  the  flaccid  breech; 

The  blow  above  reiterate  .  . 

A  broken  head  's  a  good  estate; 

Adil  Swindler  .  .  .  and  behold,  next  minute 

He  's  out  of  jail,  and  you  are  hi  it!  " 

Nor  less  terse  and  whimsical  are  the  lines  descriptive  of  Welsh 
witnesses  and  magistrates  ;  the  "  Dick  Loose"  being  the  Mr.  Richard 
Lewis  of  Llandilo,  who  liberated  on  bail  the  man  whom  another 
magistrate  had  committed  for  threats  of  personal  violence. 

"  The  land  that  rears  snre-footed  ponies 
bears  surer-footed  testimonies, 
And  every  neighbor,  stanch  and  true, 
Swears,  and  Gut  pie ss  her  !  what  will  do. 
Exclaim  i  A  perjury!  '  and  you  libel  .  .  . 
Each  his  own  way  may  use  his  Bible, 
Else  how  is  ours  a  freeborn  nation. 
Or  wherefor  was  the  Reformation? 
If  you  demand  your  debts,  beware, 
But,  robbed,  cry  '  Bobbers!  '  if  you  dare; 
You  only  lost  a  farm  of  late, 
Stir,  and  you  pay  your  whole  estate: 
Expose  their  villanies,  Dick  Loose 
Will  shudder  at  the  gross  abuse, 
Free  them  from  prison  on  their  bail, 
And  pledge  them  in  his  mellowest  ale. 

Here  all  but  Innocence  may  trust, 
And  all  find  Justice  but  the  Just." 

Landor  had  left  Llanthony  and  was  in  his  house  in  Bath  when  the 
action  of  libel  which  Mr.  Frederick  Bet  ham  had  brought  for  the  hand- 
bill was  decided  against  him  :  and  thereupon,  in  graver  mood  than 
that  which  had  suggested  the  poetical  attack  on  Mr.  Taunton,  he  ad- 
dressed a  letter  to  the  plaintiff's  counsel  Mr.  Jervis  (afterwards  the 
chief  justice),  by  whose  unscrupulous  attack  upon  himself  the  case 
had  mainly  been  decided  ;  and  from  whom  he  hoped  by  this  means 
to  elicit  an  expression  of  regret  for  the  language  he  had  used,  failing 
which  he  told  him  he  should  consider  him  as  a  calumniator  in  what- 
ever Bpot  upon  the  earth  they  might  meet,  except  in  the  courts  mis- 
called of  justice  "  where  calumny  is  sanctioned  by  custom,  and  insolence 
has  the  protection  of  the  laws."  From  this  letter,  which  he  printed, 
a  few  brief  passages  will  tell  whatever  else  may  need  to  be  told  of 
these  painful  matters;  and  it  is  only  just  to  my  old  friend  that  I 
should  preface  them  with  the  manuscript  note  appended  to  the  copy 
of  the  printed  letter  transmitted  to  Southey,  who  made  himself  in 


jET.  30-39.]  PRIVATE   DISPUTES.  245 

consequence  some  inquiry  into  the  case,  and,  friendly  as  he  still  con- 
tinued with  several  of  the  family  of  the  Bethams,  declared  himself 
satisfied  that  these  averments  were  true. 

In  the  course  of  the  letter  to  Mr.  Jervis  it  is  stated  that  no  land- 
lord had  ever  acted  with  greater  kindness  than  he  had  done  to  the 
family  which  had  so  wronged  him  ;  and  it  was  to  that  remark  the 
note  following  was  made  for  Southey. 

"  I  thought  it  better  to  omit  the  numerous  instances  I  had  brought  to  my 
recollection,  as  the  statement  of  grievances  was  long  enough  without  any 
statement  of  ingratitude. 

"  1.  I  had  given  £  200  for  ornamenting  the  house  beyond  what  I  engaged 
for. 

"  2.  I  allowed  timber  for  ploughs,  carts,  wagons,  sheep-folds,  &c.,  also 
beyond  my  engagement. 

"  3.  I  gave  a  cottage  and  nearly  an  acre  of  land,  to  be  added  to  the  farm 
without  rent,  which  cottage  he  offered  for  sale  as  his  freehold.  , 

"  4.  I  offered  another  and  a  greater  quantity  of  land  to  facilitate  the  ex- 
change of  part  of  a  field  with  a  tenant  of  the  manor,  that  some  draining 
might  be  done  at  less  expense. 

"  5.  He  had  so  little  sense  of  delicacy  as  to  apply  repeatedly  to  my  gar- 
dener to  have  my  garden  of  between  two  and  three  acres.  To  accommo- 
date him,  I  consented  to  exchange  it,  together  with  a  nursery  which  he 
also  wanted,  for  a  less  quantity  of  ground,  above  two  hundred  feet  higher 
and  much  more  exposed ;  and  as  it  was  impossible  to  remove  the  trees 
from  the  nursery  at  that  season  of  the  year,  and  he  expressed  a  strong 
desire  to  have  the  garden,  I  gave  it  up  to  him,  and  accepted  no  compensa- 
tion whatsoever.  I  did  not  accept,  nor  did  he  ask  me,  any  of  the  small 
quantity  of  land  which  was  to  be  exchanged  for  it,  until  I  could  also  give 
up  the  nursery.  Yet  he  has  the  inconceivable  baseness  to  state  to  the 
Court  of  Exchequer  that  I  did  not  fulfil  my  agreement  with  him  in  this 
particular ! 

"6.  On  hearing  that  the  father  was  likely  to  occupy  one  of  the  farms,  I 
offered  him  the  next  presentation  to  two  livings.  He  never  thanked  me  ! 
On  my  asking  whether  he  was  likely  to  reside  in  the  parish,  he  coolly  re- 
plied, '  he  believed  he  was  as  well  where  he  was.'  I  had  afterwards  reason 
to  be  of  the  same  opinion.  He  admired  a  small  picture  at  my  house  of 
trifling  value,  and  I  gave  it  to  him.  He  promised  to  send  me  a  book  he 
had  written  on  the  Baronetage  of  England,  but  forgot  it.  No  differences 
at  that  time  existed  between  his  son  and  me,  nor  until  several  months  after- 
wards. Mr.  Lisle  Bowles  tells  me  of  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  the  late 
Marquis  of  Lansdowne,  in  which  he  strongly  urges  his  subscription  to  the 
Baronetage  book  with  some  cogent  reasons  for  it  from  the  character  of  the 
minister  his  father." 

From  the  letter  itself  few  extracts  will  suffice.  Making  all  allow- 
ance for  vivacity  of  statement,  they  give  so  startling  a  picture  of 
what  the  life  in  these  latter  days  at  Llanthony  must  have  been,  that 
but  for  what  formerly  has  been  said  of  the  practical  withdrawal  of 
justice  from  the  district,  and  of  the  condition  of  the  lower  orders  of 
Welsh  at  that  time,  it  might  seem  wholly  incredible.  Landor  de- 
scribes the  annoyances  practised  against  him  on  system  by  the  Be- 
thams. 


246  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^s^-,"1' 

"  It  was  customary  for  this  person,  whom  it  appears  I  have  so  traduced 
and  disparaged,  to  stand  upon  a  gate-post,  with  hia  In-other,  for  the  purpose 
of  looking  into  my  dining-room,  and  when  I  walked  out,  to  thrust  some 
notice  into  my  hands  or  face:  this  he  did  in  the  presence  of  Mrs.  Landor, 
after  following  us  through  our  pleasure-grounds.  He  and  some  other  of 
the  most  disorderly  people  in  the  parish  surrounded  the  house  after  ten 
o'clock  at  night  on  such  pretences,  and  some  one  attempted  to  force  open 
the  door.  On  another  occasion  he  aimed  a  bayonet  at  the  wife  of  my 
gamekeeper.  In  consequence  of  these  proceedings,  which  were  varied 
every  day,  neither  I  nor  my  family  could  reside  any  longer  in  the  country. 
On  the  purchase  and  improvement  of  Llanthony  I  had  laid  out  between 
sixty  and  seventy  thousand  pounds,  and  I  employed  for  many  years  from 
twenty  to  thirty  laborers  in  building  and  planting.  I  have"  planted  and 
fenced  half  a  million  of  trees:  a  million  more  are  lost  to  the  country  by 
driving  me  from  it.  I  may  speak  of  their  utility,  if  I  must  not  mention 
my  own." 

A  subsequent  passage  supplies  further  illustration  :  — 

"  I  had  planted  a  great  number  of  stocks  for  orchard ;  they  were  of  large 
size,  and  brought  from  Hereford  at  considerable  expense:  he  promised  to 
preserve  them,  —  they  are  all  ruined!  I  had  planted  many  ornamental 
trees  near  the  Abbey ;  the  fences  were  broken  clown  at  night,  and  my 
keeper  forbidden  to  replace  them  !  I  collected  together  some  of  the  hewn 
and  'ornamental  stones  belonging  to  the  Abbey ;  the  Bethams  came  into  my 
court-yard,  and  threw  them  into  the  road  they  were  making.  The}'  took 
down  a  saw-pit  on  the  waste  ground  opposite  their  house,  which  had  been 
used  in  common  by  the  tenants  of  the  estate  from  beyond  the  memory  of 
man ;  they  threw  my  timber  into  the  road,  and  placed  the  posts  of  the  saw- 
pit  in  direct  view  of  my  draAving-room  and  library  windows,  for  the  pur- 
pose, as  they  expressed  themselves,  of  annoying  me ;  and  they  passed  no 
inconsiderable  portion  of  their  time  in  looking  through  my  windows  from 
this  place,  which  was  within  eighty  yards." 

Southey  had  professed  little  hope  of  Betham's  farming  from  the 
first,  lmt  he  declared  himself  not  less  dismayed  than  his  friend  at  the 
picture  here  presented  of  it. 

"  The  one  who  rents  under  me  told  me  on  his  first  coming  that  he  in- 
tended to  lay  out  a  capital  of  from  £4,000  to  £5,000  on  the  farm;  but  he 
told  Francis  Robbins  a  few  weeks  afterwards  that  if  he  had  £4,0U0he 
never  would  he  a  farmer.  He  promised  to  introduce  the  Suffolk  husbandry, 
with  an  intelligent  bailiff;  and  for  the  sake  of  this  example,  I  consented  to 
let  him  a  farm  within  a  few  pounds  of  £  1,000  per  annum.  Pie  broke  his 
promises  to  his  bailiff,  whom  he  induced  to  come  into  Monmouthshire  with 
his  wife  and  child,  and  who  threatened  soon  afterwards,  as  many  others 
have  done  for  want  of  their  wages  being  paid  to  them  month  after  month, 
to  come  upon  the  parish.  An  old  miller,  a  very  industrious  and  honest 
man,  was  obliged  to  compromise  or  starve,  and  lie  had  to  consent  to  take  a 
part  only  of  the  money  for  which  he  was  engaged:  others,  when  they 
applied  for  money,  were  referred  to  the  devil  with  their  wives  and  families, 
while  these  brothers  had  their  two  bottles  of  wine  upon  the  table.  A*  for 
the  Suffolk  system  of  agriculture,  wheat  was  sown  upon  the  Lost  of  May, 
and  cabbages  for  winter  food  were  planted  in  August  or  September." 


JET.  30-39.]  DEPARTURE  FROM  ENGLAND.  247 

To  these  may  be  added  the  passage  in  which  Landor  stated  his  ex- 
cuses for  the  act  which  the  law  had  pronounced  to  be  a  libel. 

"  I  considered  the  rooting  up  of  my  trees  as  a  felony.  I  did  not  know 
that  threatening  to  root  them  up  lessened  the  crime,  when  a  threat  to  injure 
any  one,  in  general,  is  thought  to  aggravate  it.  It  was  the  opinion  of  Mr. 
Phillimore  that  this  Betham  should  be  prosecuted  for  a  felony  under  the 
Black  Act,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Davies,  of  Court-y-gollen,  a  most  intelligent 
and  upright  magistrate,  declared  that  he  would  commit  him  whenever  I 
could  bring  forth  witnesses  of  the  fact.  If  I  erred  in  my  opinion  as  to  the  ex- 
tent of  the  crime,  I  erred  in  common  both  with  a  most  discreet  and  excellent 
magistrate,  and  with  a  most  dispassionate  and  learned  counsellor.  Yet  you 
have  had  the  insolence  to  declare  in  a  court  of  justice  that  I  acted  unlike  a 
man  of  honor  and  a  gentleman.  Was  it  not  natural  that  a  man  who  had 
planted  more  than  half  a  million  of  trees,  and  who  had  double  that  number 
ready  to  plant,  should  take  the  most  prompt  and  efficacious  measures  to  de- 
tect and  expose  so  wanton  and  criminal  a  destroyer  ?  When  you  assert 
that  I  condescended  to  become  a  bill-sticker,  you  again  assert  an  untruth. 
The  crime  committed  by  Frederick  Betham  was  distinguished  from  a  felony 
by  a  very  slight  shade  of  difference :  the  error  on  my  part  was  an  error  in 
law  only,  or  rather  in  the  nomenclature  of  law.  No  court  could  even  have 
taken  cognizance  of  it,  if  the  word  felony  had  not  been  prefixed  to  the 
offer  of  reward." 

But  the  most  impressive  point  made  in  the  letter  was  at  its  close, 
when  Landor,  to  illustrate  the  veracity  of  a  statement  of  his  adver- 
saries that  so  far  from  having  any  claim  upon  them,  he  was  actually 
in  their  debt,  described  dryly  and  without  comment  the  result  of  the 
action  for  rent  which  he  had  brought  against  his  defaulting  tenant. 
"  The  Court  of  Exchequer  has  overruled  the  whole  of  their  exceptions, 
dissolved  the  injunction,  and  awarded  to  me  every  farthing  of  my 
demand,  to  the  amount  of  one  thousand  nine  hundred  and  sixty-eight 
pounds  seventeen  shillings  and  sixpence." 

Such  indeed  was  the  decision  of  the  Exchequer  upon  the  leading 
matter  in  dispute.  All  the  lesser  differences  sprang  out  of  it,  the 
life  at  Llanthony  had  been  imbittered  and  broken  up  by  it,  and  now 
one  of  the  highest  courts  of  the  realm  declared  Landor's  claim  to  be 
just.  But  the  help  this  might  have  given  opportunely  came  now 
too  late.  As  he  bitterly  said  on  receiving  it,  "  The  laws  that  permit 
a  man  to  be  deprived  of  his  property  for  two  years  may  restore  it  to 
him  when  it  is  worthless,  —  but  better  order  him  at  once  to  be 
starved  in  an  iron  cage."  The  delays  which  his  adversary  had  been 
permitted  to  interpose,  and  the  facilities  afforded  him  even  after  this 
verdict  to  intercept  its  immediate  operation,  were  fatal  to  Landor. 
He  had  already  quitted  Llanthony,  and  was  now  making  preparation 
to  depart  from  England. 

XII.  DEPARTURE  FROM  ENGLAND. 

In  the  middle  of  May,  1814,  Landor  had  taken  the  resolution  to 
quit  England,  and  on  the  16th  he   communicated   his  intention  to 


248  BATH,    SPAIX,    AND    LLANTHONY.  ^fes*™' 

Southey.  Writing  from  Swansea,  he  told  him  that  two  conditions 
-would  regulate  the  exact  time  of  his  going.  When  Mr.  Jervis  had 
made  up  his  mind  whether  or  not  to  notice  his  letter  ;  and  when  the 
Oxford  printers  should  have  finished  his  Latin  poems,  of  which  the 
profits  (if  there  should  happen  to  be  any)  were  to  go  to  the  sufferers 
of  Leij>zig ;  he  would  remove  from  his  country  forever. 

His  intention  and  its  motive  will  be  best  described  by  himself : 
"  I  must  borrow  at  fifteen  per  cent  by  annuity,  as  I  have  no  other 
means,  my  estate  being  settled;  and  my  property  is  worth  £  200  a  year 
less,  even  if  I  get  these  fellows  out.  I  expect  to  lose  at  least  £  2,000, 
besides  the  £  200  a  year  and  law  expenses  ;  for  they  have  squandered 
away  whatever  they  had  by  man'iage  or  otherwise.  The  sister  has 
told  innumerable  falsehoods  to  Lady  Beddingfield  and  others,  but  I 
trust  the  decree  of  the  Court  of  Exchequer  will  sufficiently  expose  the 
principal  one.  I  pray  to  God  I  may  see  you  before  1  go  abroad.  I 
remain  here  ten  days.  I  spend  three  weeks  with  my  mother,  part 
at  Warwick,  part  at  Ipsley  Court  near  Redditch  ;  or,  if  the  weather 
continues  so  cold  as  it  is,  all  the  time  at  Warwick.  After  that,  I  go 
to  France.  I  am  trying  to  sell  my  life  interest  in  the  Llanthony 
estate.  If  I  get  £  30,000  I  shall  be  contented.  The  purchaser,  for 
about  £  3,000  more,  might  buy  up  the  lifeholds,  and  make  a  clear 
income  of  £  3,000  per  annum." 

Southey  had  not  replied  to  these  painful  tidings  when  the  Wey- 
mouth post  of  the  27th  May  took  him  Landor's  last  letter  from  Eng- 
land, and  with  it  more  startling  announcements.  "  Every  hope  of 
meeting  you  again  in  England  has  vanished.  Pardon  me  if  this  is 
only  the  second  of  my  wishes.  My  first  is,  that  I  may  become  by 
degrees  indifferent  to  this  country.  The  Court  of  Exchequer  has  de- 
cided in  my  favor;  but  Bctham  has  been  able  to  promise  bail 
and  a  replevy,  so  that  the  ends  of  justice  arc  defeated.  Nearly 
three  years'  rent  will  be  due  before  I  can  receive  one  farthing  from 
him;  and  all  my  timber  is  spoiled.  I  shall  be  utterly  ruined. 
Not  being  aide  to  pay  the  interest  of  £  10,000  debt  on  the  Llanthony 
estate,  the  mortgagee  will  instantly  seize  on  it  until  he  has  paid  him- 
self the  whole  of  the  principal  The  laws  of  England  are  made  en- 
tirely for  the  protection  of  guilt.  A  creditor  could  imprison  me  for 
twenty  pounds,  while  a  man  who  owes  me  two  thousand,  and  keeps 
me  from  the  possession  of  two  thousand  more,  can  convert  wealth  and 
affluence  into  poverty  and  distress,  ■ — can,  in  short,  drive  me  forever 
from  my  native  country,  and  riot  with  impunity  on  the  ruins  of 
my  estate.  1  had  promised  my  mother  to  visit  her.  1  never  can  hope 
to  see  her  again.  She  is  seventy-two,  and  her  sorrow  at  my  over- 
whelming and  most  unmerited  misfortunes  will  too  surely  shorten 
her  days.  My  wife,  when  she  married,  little  thought  she  should 
leave  all  her  friends  to  live  in  obscurity  and  perhaps  in  want.  For 
my  sake  she  refused  one  of  the  largest  fortunes  that  any  private  gen- 
tleman possesses,  and  another  person  of  distinguished  rank.     Who- 


J£X.  30-39.]  DEPASTURE  FROM  ENGLAND.  249 

ever  comes  near  me  is  either  unhappy  or  ungrateful.  There  is  no 
act  of  forbearance  or  of  kindness  which  Betham  did  not  receive  from 
me.  His  father  saw,  and  knew  perfectly,  that  his  farming .  must  ruin 
him.  Yet,  instead  of  persuading  him  to  resign  it,  he  sent  the  re- 
mainder of  his  family  to  live  with  him,  and  to  countenance  him  in 
all  his  violence  and  roguery.  I  go  to-morrow  to  St.  Malo.  In  what 
part  of  France  I  shall  end  my  days,  I  know  not,  but  there  I  shall 
end  them ;  and  God  grant  that  I  may  end  them  speedily,  and  so  as 
to  leave  as  little  sorrow  as  possible  to  my  friends.  No  time  will 
alter  my  regard  and  veneration  for  you  :  nor  shall  anything  lessen 
the  kind  sentiments  you  entertain  for  me.  It  is  a  great  privilege 
to  hold  the  hearts  of  the  virtuous.  If  men  in  general  knew  how 
great  it  is,  could  they  ever  consent  to  abandon  it  1  I  am  alone  here. 
My  wife  follows  me  when  I  have  found  a  place  fit  for  her  reception. 
Adieu." 

To  the  first  of  these  letters  Southey,  sending  at  the  same  time 
the  close  of  the  MSS.  of  Roderick,  had  replied  before  the  second 
reached  him,  earnestly  dissuading  from  the  project  of  selling 
Llanthony,  and  advising  that  his  friend  should  go  abroad  for  a 
time  only  :  not  as  an  emigrant,  but  as  a  guest  or  stranger.  "A  few 
years  might  be  pleasantly  passed  on  the  Continent,  while  your  prop- 
erty is  vested  in  England ;  but  not  if  you  went  with  a  purpose  of 
not  returning.  My  own  intention  is  to  take  my  family  abroad 
at  the  expiration  of  the  first  term  of  my  lease  if  I  can  compass 
the  means.  The  difference  of  living  will  probably  balance  the  ex- 
pense of  the  journey,  and  my  young  ones  will  pick  up  languages 
while  I  enjoy  a  genial  climate.  But  a  few  years,  a  very  few,  would 
suffice  :  for  the  older  we  grow  the  dearer  those  old  times  become 
which  time  has  spared.  I  grant  there  is  vexation  enough  in  our 
laws  ;  but  take  it  for  all  in  all,  there  is  no  country  in  which  a  man 
lives  with  so  little  annoyance  from  the  government."  The  rest  of  the 
letter  was  about  Roderick  and  the  death  of  Danvers  :  "  One  of  my 
oldest  and  dearest  friends,  at  whose  lodgings  I  first  saw  you.  I 
loved  him  with  my  whole  heart,  and  scarcely  any  loss  could  have 
wounded  me  so  deeply." 

But  though  Southey  wrote  only  one  day  later  than  his  friend  had 
last  written  to  him,  Landor  was  already  gone.  Two  brief  notes  will 
tell  their  own  story. 

ROBERT    LANDOR   TO    SOUTHEY. 

"  Sir,  —  It  is  proper  to  inform  you  that  two  letters  intended  for  my  brother, 
with  the  Keswick  postmark,  are  lying  at  Warwick.  "We  are  not  aware  that 
he  has  any  other  correspondent  in  that  neighborhood  besides  yourself.  You 
will  pardon  me  if  it  should  be  otherwise.  My  brother  was  indeed  expected 
at  Warwick.  He  is  in  France.  I  feel  no  hesitation  in  communicating  what 
we  are  anxious  to  conceal  from  every  other  person,  that  he  left  this  country 
under  circumstances  the  most  perplexing  to  his  family,  and  with  feelings  the. 
most  unhappy  for  himself.     We  cannot  forward  the  letters  in  question  be- 


250  BATH,    SPAIN,    AND    LLAXTHOXY.  ^Ss-i"" 

cause  we  are  ignorant  of  every  other  particular  relating  to  him  excepting 
his  arrival.  Hitherto  we  have  waited  in  the  expectation  that  we  might 
hear  from  him  and  learn  his  address.  We  do  not  return  the  letters  because 
we  are  by  no  means  certain  that  they  are  from  you,  and  because  We  still 
hope  that  they  may  be  sent  to  France  shortly.  It  is  right  however  that 
you  should  learn  why  they  have  not  been  answered,  and  that  you  should 
have  the  power  to  determine  in  what  manner  we  shall  dispose  of  them.  I 
am,  sir,  with  the  greatest  sincerity  and  respect,  your  obedient  servant,  Rob- 
ert E.  Landor. 

"  Warwick,  Monday,  June  27,  1814." 

SOUTHEY    TO    ROBERT    LAXDOR. 

"  Keswick,  4th  July,  1814. 
"  Sir,  —  The  letters  concerning  which  you  have  done  me  the  favor  to  write 
are  from  me.  They  contain  parts  of  a  long  poem  which  I  used  to  take 
pleasure  in  transcribing  for  your  brother's  perusal,  and  some  attempts  at 
dissuading  him  from  a  resolution  which  he  had  communicated  to  me  of 
emitting  England  forever.  A  few  days  after  they  were  despatched  I 
received  a  letter  from  him  from  Weymouth,  explaining  the  causes  of  his 
departure  in  a  manner  which  I  sincerely  hope  the  natural  warmth  of  his 
mind  has  made  him  overcharge.  The  whole  affair  has  given  me  great 
uneasiness,  and  the  more  because  I  cannot  but  feel  that  I  have  been,  very 
innocently,  instrumental  in  it,  having  been  the  means  of  introducing  Betham 
to  him.  May  I  request  you  to  inform  me  of  his  address  as  soon  as  you  are 
acquainted  with  it.  I  am,  sir,  with  great  respect,  your  obedient  humble 
servant,  Robert  Southey." 

"What  happened  in  the  interval  of  nearly  three  months  before  Southey 
again  knew  anything  of  his  friend,  it  is  not  strictly  incumbent  on 
me  here  to  tell ;  but  no  pain  can  be  caused  by  the  brief  description 
I  shall  give  of  it,  and  there  are  points  of  character  involved  that  it 
may  not  be  right  to  omit.  Yet  even  so  much  reference  to  it  will 
not  be  easy.  Disagreements  between  husband  and  wife  are  very  deli- 
cate to  the  touch  ;  and  I  have  the  example  to  encourage  or  deter  me 
of  the  biographer  of  one  of  Laudor's  brother  poets,  who  laid  it 
down  as  an  established  truth  that  a  man  of  the  highest  order  of 
genius  must  in  the  unavoidable  nature  of  things  quarrel  with  his 
wife.*  That  however  is  hardly  my  view,  and  the  facts  will  not  carry 
off  my  hero  so  handsomely.  It  is  rather  to  show  that  genius  has  no 
immunity  from  the  conditions  on  which  all  kinds  of  happiness  rest, 
that  domestic  differences  springing  solely  from  faults  of  temper  are 
the  subject  of  passing  mention  here. 

Landor  had  gone  first  to  Jersey;  and  while  staying  at  this  place, 
where  he  was  joined  immediately  by  Mrs.  Landor  and  one  of  her 
sisters,  the  expressed  intention  of  taking  up  permanent  abode  in 
France  led  to  fretpient  disagreement.  The  one,  having  made  up  his 
mind,  could  not  bear  that  the  matter  should  be  talked  of;  the  other, 
haying  equally  made  up  her  mind,  coidd  talk  of  nothing  else;  and 
"  A  pleasant  sort  of  thing  truly,  that  you  are  never  to  be   contra- 

*  Moore's  Life  of  Byron,  passim. 


AT-  30-39-1  DEPARTURE  FROM  ENGLAND.  251 

dieted  ! "  was  the  usual  and  only  reply  to  entreaties,  repeated  again 
and  again,  that  she  would  not  drive  him  to  distraction.  The  usual 
charges  and  retorts  succeeded ;  the  harsher  followed  the  lighter 
word  ;  what,  even  while  it  provoked,  had  been  attractive,  became 
provoking  without  the  attractiveness  ;  and  at  last,  in  the  presence 
of  the  sister,  such  allusion  was  made  to  the  difference  of  years 
between  them  as  Landor  interpreted  into  deliberate  insult,  and  re- 
solved thereupon  to  leave  her.  He  was  up  at  four  o'clock  the  next 
morning,  and  before  midday,  having  walked  to  the  other  part  of  the 
island,  was  sailing  on  board  an  oyster-boat  for  France.  From  Tours, 
on  the  2d  of  October,  he  wrote  and  told  Southey  what  had  happened. 
He  was  ignorant  then  that  his  wife's  elder  sister  had  already  writ- 
ten to  acquaint  him  with  his  wife's  extreme  grief  and  very  serious  ill- 
ness ;  but  this  is  the  subject  of  his  next  letter  to  his  friend,  written 
at  the  opening  of  1815,  in  which  he  says  that  it  had  at  once  banished 
from  his  mind  all  traces  of  resentment,  and  that  he  had  written  in- 
stantly to  comfort  and  console  her.  As  soon  as  her  health  and  the 
weather  admitted  of  her  joining  him,  he  added,  he  was  to  meet  her 
in  England,  where  he  should  stay  only  two  days ;  and  his  closing 
assurance  that  Southey  would  receive  his  Latin  poems  in  a  fortnight 
has  amusing  confirmation  in  what  one  of  his  brothers  soon  after- 
wards wrote  to  his  mother  about  this  unhappy  domestic  dispute  : 
"  When  we  supposed  him  to  be  so  miserable  at  Tours  after  palling 
with  his  wife,  he  was  busy  about  a  long  Latin  poem  on  the  Death 
of  Ulysses  !  " 

The  reader  will  now  understand  the  allusions  to  the  incident  in 
the  extracts  that  follow  from  letters  to  Southey. 

TOURS  :    OCTOBER   2,    1814  :    A   DOMESTIC    QUARREL. 

"  How  many  sad  events  have  crowded  into  a  life  already  full  and  over- 
flowing with  them,  between  the  writing  and  the  arrival  of  your  letter !  My 
brain  seems  to  be  heaving  on  an  ocean  of  fire  when  I  attempt  to  recollect 
what  I  would  say.  Julia  had  long  shown  a  disinclination  to  quit  this  coun- 
try, and  hardly  a  day  elapsed  without  some  expression,  more  or  less  ener- 
getic, of  her  sentiments.  T  subdued  my  temper,  —  the  worst  beyond  com- 
parison that  ever  man  was  cursed  with,  —  remembering  the  rank  and 
fortune  she  had  refused  for  my  sake,  and  the  content  and  moderation  she 
had  always  preserved  in  the  midst  of  privacy  and  seclusion.  We  had 
passed  above  a  month  at  Jersey,  and  in  another  day  were  about  to  sail  for 
France.  Her  little  sister  was  with  us."  [The  circumstances  of  the  quarrel 
are  then  described :  arising  from  an  ordinary  dispute,  but  imbittered  by  the 
language  which  Mrs.  Landor  is  alleged  to  have  permitted  herself  to  em- 
ploy.] "  All  these  things,  with  a  thousand  variations,  both  of  anger  and 
mockery,  and  all  of  them  turning  upon  what  she  declared  to  have  been  her 
own  fault  in  marrying  such  an  old  man,  made  her  little  sister  burst  into 
tears.  Julia  told  her  not  to  be  such  a  fool  as  to  cry ;  that  if  she  cried,  it 
certainly  should  not  be  about  me.  I  endured  all  this  a  full  hour  and  a  half 
without  a  syllable  of  reply;  but  every  kind  and  tender  sentiment  was 
rooted  up  from  my  heart  forever.  .  .  .  No  woman  could  or  ought  to  five  with 


252  BATH,    SPAIN*,    AND    LLANTHONY.  PJg£*  ™' 

a  man  by  whom  such  language  was  merited :  nor  could  any  man  support 
life  with  a  woman  from  whom  it  fell  undeserved.  I  remained  broad  awake, 
as  I  firmly  believe,  and  yet  I  had  a  succession  of  dreams,  rapid,  incoherent, 
and  involuntary.  I  rose  at  four.  I  walked  to  the  other  part  of  the  island, 
and  embarked  alone,  on  board  of  an  oyster-boat,  for  France.  It  was  this 
very  day  month.  I  am  resolved  to  see  her  no  more.  I  wish  to  have  only 
£  1G0  a  year  for  myself.  It  is  enough.  1  have  neither  wife  nor  family,  nor 
house  nor  home,  nor  pursuit  nor  occupation.  Every  man  alive  will  blame 
me;  many  will  calumniate  me ;  and  all  will  cherish  and  rejoice  in  the  cal- 
umny. This  is  natural  on  all  occasions,  but  more  so  here;  for  who  will 
believe  that,  where  there  are  such  smiles  and  spirits,  there  can  be  such  an 
itch  for  tormenting,  such  rudeness,  such  contradiction  and  obstinacy  ?  All 
that  were  not  unjust  to  me  before  will  be  made  unjust  to  me  by  her.  A 
thousand  times  have  I  implored  her  not  to  drive  me  to  distraction;  to  be 
contented  if  I  acknowledged  myself  in  the  wrong;  to  permit  me  to  be  at 
once  of  her  opinion,  and  not  to  think  a  conversation  incomplete  without  a 
quarrel.  The  usual  reply  was,  'A  pleasant  sort  of  thing  truly,  that  you  are 
never  to  be  contradicted  1 '  As  if  it  were  extraordinary  and  strange  that 
one  should  wish  to  avoid  it.  Sin-  never  was  aware  thai  more  can  lie  said 
in  one  minute  than  can  be  forgotten  in  a  lifetime.  For  the  sake  of  exer- 
cising her  ingenuity  and  of  improving  my  temper,  she  will  cause  me  to  die 
among  strangers  and  probably  in  a  madhouse.  She  gave  me  my  first  head- 
ache, which  every  irritation  renews.  It  is  an  affection  of  the  brain  only, 
and  it  announces  to  me  that  my  end  will  be  the  most  miserable  and  the 
most  humiliating.  I  wish  I  could  acquire  all  the  heartless  profligacy  of  this 
people,  —  that  I  could  be  anything,  good  or  bad,  dead  or  alive,  hut  what  I 
am." 

CLOSE    OF    SAME    LETTER. 

"Never  shall  T  spend  so  delightful  an  evening  as  when  we  met  at  the 
house  of  poor  Mr.  Danvers.  I  called  on  him  twice,  but  never  saw  him  after- 
wards. I  shall  think  of  his  death  many  hours  this  night,  and  envy  it  many 
in  future.  There  is  in  the  first  of  your  letters  —  for  both  have  reached  me 
together  and  hut  this  morning  —  something  that  raises  my  hopes  and  gives 
me  a  glimpse  of  comfort:  the  idea  that  you  will  one  day  come  into  France. 
Do  not  forget  to  tell  me  in  your  next  when  is  the  expiration  of  the  lease. 
The  climate  here  is  delicious.  I  cannot  say  much  for  either  the  town  or 
country,  which  many  travellers  have  admired.  There  is  not  one  great  or 
shady  tree  within  view,  even  from  the  towers  of  the  cathedral,  and  the 
river  is  full  of  sand-banks.  These,  and  the  poplars,  give  a  sad  paleness  to 
the  scene,  which  is  covered  too  with  square  white  walls  and  ragged  vine- 
yards. Vines  are  sometimes  pretty  enough;  but  a  vineyard  is  always  ugly, 
I  think,  unless  when  it  hides  the  nakedness  of  a  hill  destitute  of  form  and 
grandeur.  I  live  in  a  tower,  with  a  large  and  shady  garden,  where  I  intend 
to  he  buried,  if  I  die  here.  Adieu.  May  you  enjoy  all  happiness,  —  as  much 
as  I  have  lost  !  or  rather  as  much  as  I  fancied  I  had  found!  " 

GRATKFL'L    FOB    THE    SYMPATHY   OF   SOUTHEY  :   TOURS,  NOVEMBER  4,  1814. 

"There  is  more  kindness  in  one  sentence  of  your  letter  than  I  have  re- 
ceived from  all  quarters  of  the  world  from  my  birth  to  the  present  hour.  I 
have  often  thought  of  your  happiness,  and  enjoyed  a  portion  of  it  in  the 
thought  itself:  bul  tin-  tempest  that  drove  me  into  France  prohibits  my  re- 
turn, and  the  halcyons  will  never  make  their  nests  on  the  seas  that  I  must 
traverse." 


JET.  30-39.]  DEPARTURE   FROM   ENGLAND.  253 

THREATENED    WITH    OUTLAWRY  :    SAME   PLACE   AND    DATE. 

"  I  can  lose  nothing  by  outlawry.  "Whoever  chooses  to  take  any  part  of 
my  property  can  only  do  what  he  could  do  before  with  the  same  impunity. 
I  am  told  that  all  my  woods  and  plantations  are  laid  waste ;  three  hundred 
thousand  trees  are  lost,  —  but  not  to  me ;  nor  have  I  room  for  any  more 
vexations.  It  is  not  improbable  that  in  the  spring  I  shall  go  into  the  north 
of  Italy,  for  this  place  begins  to  be  infested  with  English :  they  reckon  near 
two  hundred.  But  if  ever  you  come  on  the  Continent,  I  will  come  near 
you  ;  it  will  make  me  wfser,  better,  and  happier.  I  do  not  believe  that  any 
lake  in  the  universe  is  equal  to  yours.  I  wait  some  attainable  image  of  it. 
I  shall  see  the  lake  di  Como ;  but  I  shall  never  say  on  its  banks,  as  Catullus 
did, 

'  0  quid  solutis  est  beatius  curis 
Cum  meus  onus  reponit.'  " 

RECONCILIATION  :    TOURS,    JANUARY   23,    1815. 

"  Not  long  after  I  received  your  last  letter,  I  received  one  from  the  sister 
of  my  wife,  dated  so  early  as  the  middle  of  September.  It  acquainted  me 
with  her  extreme  grief,  and  of  an  illness  which  threatened  to  be  fatal.  This 
banished  from  my  mind  all  traces  of  resentment,  and  I  wrote  instantly  to 
comfort  and  console  her.  My  own  fear  is,  that  I  shall  never  be  able  to  keep 
my  promise  in  its  full  extent,  to  forgive  humiliating  and  insulting  language. 
Certainly  I  shall  never  be  so  happy  as  I  was  before ;  that  is  beyond  all 
question.  If  there  is  a  pleasure  in  pardoning,  there  is  a  proportionate  pain 
in  doubting  whether  we  possess  the  power.  Julia  has  not  yet  recovered 
her  health  entirely,  but  expresses  a  wish  to  join  me.  Whenever  the 
weather  is  a  little  milder,  I  shall  meet  her  in  England,  where  I  shall  not  re- 
main longer  than  two  days." 

THE    LATIN    POEMS  :    SAME    PLACE   AND    DATE. 

"  You  will  receive  my  Latin  poems  in  about  a  fortnight.  I  took  extreme 
care,  as  I  fancied,  to  correct  the  press:  yet  I  discover,  in  a  copy  just  now 
sent  me,  some  odious  and  most  stupid  misprints.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
the  fellow  has  employed  a  blockhead  to  correct  the  press  after  me  for  the  sake 
of  greater  security.  Happily  they  are  of  such  a  nature  that  the  most  malev- 
olent cannot  attribute  them  to  me.     There  are  not  less  than  six  or  eight. 

"  I  have  addressed  one  of  my  Latin  poems  to  you :  — 

Quo  vetus  asseruit  l.Turea  vate  decus 
Nempe  chorus  primam  tibi,  Suthei,  detulit  omnis, 
Invidiseque  angues  pectore  vulsit  amor. 

I  have  hazarded,  or  rather  more  than  hazarded,  a  lie  in  the  last  line  ;  but  it 
is  the  province  of  eloquence,  in  all  kinds,  to  say  non  quod  sit,  sed  quod  de- 
cent esse.  The  concluding  verses  of  this  short  piece  contain  a  thought  which 
I  afterwards  paraphrased  :  — 

Mild  is  the  parting  vear,  and  sweet 

The  odor  of  the  falling  spray; 
Life  passes  on  more  rudely  fleet, 

And  balmless  is  its  closing  day." 

DEDICATION    OP    THE   LATIN    POEMS    TO    PARR  :    SAME    PLACE    AND    DATE. 

"  I  have  dedicated  the  volume  to  Parr,  in  a  very  short  dedication  ;  that 
is,  about  four  pages  of  fourteen  or  sixteen  lines  each.     I  mention  his  hospi- 


25 -A  BATH.    SPAIN,    AND   LLAXTHONY.  ^-i"1' 

tality  and  kindness  of  heart  as  my  reason.  There  is  also  another.  People 
attempted  to  persuade  him  —  for  lie  is  credulous  —  that  I  wrote  a  satirical 
poem  on  him  and  his  acquaintance.*  The  appearance  of  this  satire  gave 
me  great  uneasiness  .  .  .  and  I  could  only  assure  Parr  that  I  never  lost  my 
respect  or  my  regard  for  him;  that  I  owed  to  him  a  great  deal  of  what  I 
knew;  and  that  I  had  spent  some  of  my  most  joyous  hours  at  TIatton.     If 

you  had  not  mentioned  to  me  that  the  poem  was  attributed  to ,  I  should 

perhaps  have  closed  my  lips  on  the  subject,  even  to  you  ;  though  there  is  a 
difference  between  communicating  a  fact  and  divulging  a  secret.  Parr  be- 
lieved me  instantly.  Strange  inconsistency  !  to  fancy  that  I  could  be  guilty 
of  exposing  a  friend  to  ridicule,  yet  to  reject  all  suspicion  that  I  could  utter 
a  falsehood.  As  if  the  latter  were  the  greater  baseness!  Of  all  the  others 
that  came  under  the  lash,  Greathead  is  the  only  one  I  would  have  exempted. 
He  is  fantastical,  conceited,  and  pompous  ;  but  he  is  good-humored  and  be- 
neficent. In  my  opinion  the  foibles  of  such  a  character  should  not  be  dwelt 
upon.  It  will  not  do  to  pretend  that  the  attack  is  made  purely  against  had 
taste.  The  worst  taste  of  all  resides  in  that  busybody  rashness  which 
knocks  off  the  noses  of  the  charities  in  its  alacrity  to  sweep  the  cobweb. 
The  weather  here  is  so  bitterly  cold  that  the  archbishop  can  no  longer 
amuse  himself  among  the  little  girls  of  Paris,  and  the  weathercock  of  the 
cathedral  is  too  slippery  for  the  jackdaws.     Adieu." 

To  that  letter  Southey  replied  on  the  5th  of  February,  loud  in 
pleasure  at  the  reconciliation,  and  encouraging  his  friend  not  to 
doubt  but  that  he  would  be  able  to  keep  his  promise,  and  be  the 
happier  for  keeping  it.  He  bids  him  also  not  forget  that  Tours  holds 
the  grave  of  Ronsard,  who  would  have  been  a  great  poet  if  he  had 
had  not  been  a  Frenchman.  "  But  poetry  of  the  higher  order  is  as 
impossible  in  that  curst  language  as  it  is  in  Chinese."  For  himself 
he  is  climbing  trees  in  the  Hesperides  still ;  and  though  not  without 
the  graver  feelings  uttered  in  Landor's  quatrain, f  he  is  convinced 
they  will  both  be  the  better  for  believing  that  the  decline  of  life  has 
also  delights  of  its  own,  autumnal  odors  and  sunset  hues.  The  let- 
ter closes  with  the  hope  that  they  may  meet  somewhere  on  the  Con- 
tinent before  another  autumn  is  gone  :  but  not  many  weeks  were 
gone  before  the  hope  began  to  look  desperate,  and  Napoleon  was 
again  in  the  Tuileries  when  Landor  replied.  Nevertheless  this  had 
found  him  prepared.  War  or  no  war,  he  would  not  return  to  the 
country  that  had  cast  him  out,  by  refusing  to  his  property  the  pro- 
tection of  its  laws.  He  thought  Bonaparte's  government  not  unlikely 
now  to  last,  and  he  had  obtained  leave  from  it  to  continue  resident  in 
France.     That   it  was  not  his  intention  to  return  to  England,  and 

*  This  is  noticed  nvte,  pp.  194,  195.  I  subjoin  an  allusion  to  Parr  from  another  of 
Landor's  letters  of  this  date.  "He  treated'  me  with  all  the  kindness  I  could  have 
wished  in  a  father,  and  invited  me  to  live  in  his  house.     Yet  we.  never  quite  agreed  on 

Eolitica.     I  was  the  only  person  who  could,  without  bringing  down  a  tempest  on  his 
ead.  attack  his  friend  Fox." 

t   Which  appeared  in  his  collected  poems  with  this  addition:  — 
"  I  Wait  its  close,  I  court  its  gloom, 

Hut  mourn  that  never  mnst  there  fall 
Or  on  my  breast  or  on  my  tomb 
The  tear  that  would  have  soothed  it  all." 


MT.  30-39.]  DEPARTURE  FROM  ENGLAND.  255 

that  he  had  every  disposition  to  prefer  the  empire  to  the  government 
it  had  so  suddenly  displaced,  he  told  his  friend  in  this  letter. 

RETURN    OF    NAPOLEON  :    TOURS,    8TH    MAY,    1815. 

"  An  Englishman  is  returning,  who  will  convey  a  letter  from  me,  an  op- 
portunity which  perhaps  may  not  occur  again  for  some  years.  I  have 
applied  to  Fouche  for  permission  to  remain  in  France,  and  he  has  granted 
it.  Whether  our  countrymen  in  general  will  be  molested  or  not  depends,  I 
presume,  in  great  measure  on  the  future  conduct  of  our  government.  I  should 
rather  have  said,  of  your  government ;  for  with  me  they  have  nothing  more 
to  do  than  to  despoil  me  of  my  property  to  support  their  stupendous  folly. 
What  has  happened  was  quite  certain  to  happen  from  the  beginning. 
Can  anything  be  more  clear  than  the  prediction  of  Calvus  ?  *  The  aliena- 
tion, or  rather  the  perfect  indifference  of  the  people,  arose  from  a  paper  in 
the  Journal  des  De'bats  on  the  possibihty  of  renewing  the  tithes.  The  Jour- 
nal des  De'bats  was  perhaps  the  best-written  paper  that  ever  appeared  in 
Europe,  and  was  devoted  to  the  old  monarchy.  It  was  read  in  every  coffee- 
house. Now  certainly  a  government  which  could  permit,  without  disavow- 
ing it  formally  and  by  proclamation,  so  horrible  a  report  to  spread  and 
propagate,  deserves  annihilation.  All  the  oppressions  France  ever  suffered 
are  light  in  comparison  with  tithes.  Where  they  already  exist,  purchasers 
and  proprietors  of  land  endure  them  as  known  contingencies,  as  bad  air, 
as  the  dry-rot,  &c.  But  who,  when  he  had  repaired  his  house,  would  per- 
mit any  man  to  infect  it  again  with  either  the  one  or  the  other  ?  The 
French  laws,  if  they  are  observed,  are  incomparably  better  than  ours,  which 
are  calculated  only  for  the  rich  and  the  crafty.  A  man  in  France  cannot  be 
ruined  by  pursuing  his  rights.  In  England  he  unquestionably  may.  This 
reduces  the  debatable  ground  to  an  inch  in  extent,  and  proves  my  assertion 
at  once." 

Two  more  months  however  again  unsettled  everything,  and  greatly 
weakened  in  Landor  the  desire  to  continue  a  French  citizen. 

*  See  ante,  pp.  230,  231. 


BOOK    FOURTH. 

1815-1821.     JEt.  40-46. 
FIRST  SIX  YEARS  IN  ITALY :  AT  COMO,  PISA,  AND  PISTOIA. 

I.  From  Tours  to  Milan. —II.  At  Como.  —  III.  At  Pisa.  —  IV.  At  Pistoia.  — 
V.  Again  at  Pisa.  —  VI.  On  the  Way  to  Florence.  —  VII.  —  Retrospect  and 
Prospect :  a  new  Literary  Undertaking. 

I.    FROM  TOURS  TO  MILAN. 

The  intention  of  remaining  in  France  survived  Waterloo  but  a  lit- 
tle while,  and  with  the  second  Bourbon  restoration  Landor  resolved 
upon  quitting  Tours.  But  any  return  to  England  being  for  the  pres- 
ent impossible,  he  now  thought  of  Italy  for  his  home. 

What  had  been  his  homes  in  Llanthony  and  Bath  were  now  no 
longer  his.  His  personal  property  had  been  sold  in  both  places,  and 
the  management  of  his  real  estate  had  been  taken  out  of  his  hands. 
It  was  a  sad  time.  The  Llanthony  vision  was  over.  No  more  possi- 
bility now  of  what  once  had  been  his  dream,  to  rebuild  the  abbey  as 
a  princely  mansion  ;  no  more  chance  of  seeing  in  its  plantations  the 
two  or  three  million  trees  which  with  a  desperate  fidelity  his  fancy 
and  his  hopes  had  made  almost  real ;  and  though  his  new  roads  were 
to  survive  him  as  they  do  even  yet,  too  surely  had  the  doom  already 
been  pronounced  against  whatever  else  he  woidd  have  associated  with 
his  name  at  Llanthony.  Before  his  house  had  well  been  inhabited 
his  new  trustees  had  ordered  it  to  be  taken  down  ;  but  a  few  months 
earlier  a  flood  had  carried  away  the  bridge  he  built ;  and  whatever 
beside  he  valued  had  as  ruthlessly  since  been  swept  away  by  a  public 
sale.  "  I  have  here  in  my  rectory,"  writes  Mr.  Robert  Landor,  "  a 
Titian  valued  at  twelve  hundred  guineas  which  my  brother  Henry 
purchased  at  the  auction  for  ten  pounds."  It  needs  not  to  dwell  fur- 
ther on  these  things. 

As  to  his  real  estate  he  was  happily  more  fortunate.  By  the  an- 
nuity reserved  under  the  act  of  Parliament  to  his  mother,  she  became 
the  first  <>f  bis  creditors;  and  being  enabled  to  demand  the  manage' 
ment  of  Llanthony,  she  set  apart  from  it  for  his  use  five  hundred  a 
year  on  condition  that  the  money  so  advanced  should  be  repaid  to 
her  younger  children  whenever  by  her  death  the  estate  at  Ipsley 
should  fall  into  bis  bands.  Her  life  was  prolonged  for  fourteen  years, 
during  which  she  had  tints  paid  to  him  seven  thousand  pounds;  and 
what  was  held  to  be  a  sufficient  provision  having  accrued  in  the 


JET.  40-46.]  FROM   TOURS   TO   MILAN.  257 

same  interval  to  the  younger  children,  partly  by  her  economy  and 
partly  by  the  bequests  of  other  relatives,  shortly  before  her  death, 
with  the  entire  concurrence  of  those  other  children,  the  above-named 
condition  was  abandoned  and  Llanthony  released  from  that  encum- 
brance. To  this  it  will  be  only  necessary  to  add  that  irrespective  of 
all  th^se  arrangements  there  were  simple  contract  debts  unsettled 
which  rendered  for  the  present  unadvisable  not  only  any  return  to 
England,  but  even  a  continued  residence  at  Tours  ;  and  Mr.  Robert 
Landor,  having  at  the  time  a  project  to  visit  Italy,  at  his  brother's 
earnest  request  joined  him  at  Tours  that  they  might  make  the  jour- 
ney together. 

Landor's  stay  in  the  hospitable  old  French  town,  not  then  so  over- 
run with  English  as  in  later  days,  had  been  not  without  many  enjoy- 
ments ;  for  the  ease  with  which  at  will  he  put  off  from  his  thoughts 
whatever  troubled  or  harassed  him,  the  old  characteristic  well 
known  to  his  family,  surprised  even  his  brother  when  they  met  so 
soon  after  the  tragedy  of  Llanthony.  I  have  heard  the  latter,  in  re- 
lating their  first  visit  together  to  the  quaint  old  market-place  with 
its  splendid  fountain  where  Walter  had  been  in  the  habit  of  doing 
his  own  marketing  daily  during  his  exile,  describe  the  joyous  greeting 
that  broke  forth  from  all  the  market-women  successively  as  he  came 
in  view,  and  his  laughing  word  of  jest  or  compliment  for  each  that 
had  given  him  universal  popularity.  The  prefet  of  the  town,  next  to 
the  market-women,  he  seems  to  have  regarded  with  most  favor ;  it 
was  the  same  who  (I  believe  erroneously)  was  reported  to  have  given 
brief  refuge  to  Napoleon  in  his  recent  flight  to  the  English  coast ; 
and  it  was  always  Landor's  belief  that  he  had  seen  the  fugitive  em- 
peror dismount  in  the  court-yard  of  the  prefet's  house  in  one  of  the 
suburbs,  to  which. he  had  himself  gone,  finding  the  door  unexpectedly 
closed  to  him,  upon  the  very  day  when  Napoleon  was  supposed  to 
have  passed  through  Tours. 

In  September  the  brothers  started  for  Italy,  and  by  means  of  a 
letter  addressed  in  the  following  month  to  their  mother  by  the 
younger  of  them  I  learn  some  of  the  incidents  of  their  journey. 
Here  are  its  opening  sentences  :  "  Walter  wished  very  much  to  leave 
Tours  on  many  accounts  ;  amongst  others,  on  account  of  its  un- 
healthiness,  the  probability  of  fresh  revolutions,  and  some  personal 
apprehensions  about  his  English  creditors.  I  wished  to  see  Italy; 
and  as  he  pressed  it  most  earnestly,  and  indeed  could  not  travel 
without  me,  I  agreed  to  accompany  him.  After  contests  with  his 
landlady  of  a  most  tremendous  description,  we  set  off.  Walter  had 
kept  his  own  carriage  in  all  his  distresses,  and  as  posting  was  the 
cheapest  thing  in  France,  we  posted  :  Walter  and  myself  on  the 
dicky,  his  wife  and  her  maid  within.  Our  road  lay  on  the  eastern 
side  of  the  river  Loire  for  more  than  two  hundred  miles.  This  side 
was  occupied  by  the  German  troops,  and  the  other  by  the  French. 
Thus  we  passed,  between  Tours  and  Lyons,  a  distance  of  four  hun- 

17 


258  FIRST   SIX    TEARS    IX    ITALY.  ^.'i  £f' 

dred  miles,  through  200,000  men,  —  Austrians,  Prussians,  Bavarians, 
Wirtembergers,  Hessians.  At  Monlins  the  Prince  of  Hesse  with  all 
his  staff  was  at  the  same  hotel ;  and  amused  himself,  whilst  we  were 
at  supper,  by  standing  with  another  officer  at  the  door  of  our  room 
and  looking  at  Walter's  wife.  I  ordered  the  door  to  be  shut  in  his 
face.  As  this  was  done  by  an  Englishman,  he  only  laughed.  If  it 
had  been  done  by  a  Frenchman  or  a  German,  there  would  have  been 
no  laughing  on  either  side." 

The  acres  of  vineyards  seen  by  them  on  the  banks  of  the  Loire, 
Landor  himself  would  often  refer  to  with  enthusiasm  as  not  number- 
ing less  than  hundreds  of  thousands ;  and  as  they  passed,  he  told 
me,  he  could  not  but  remember  Goldsmith  and  his  flute  ;  though  the 
scene  otherwise  was  unlike  the  poet's  pastoral  picture,  for  along  the 
rocky  parts  of  the  shore  they  observed,  miles  together,  the  people 
making  their  homes  in  the  rock.  The  towns  on  the  route  were  dirty 
and  ill-built  as  Lyons  itself;  but  for  the  last  half  of  the  distance,  the 
two  hundred  miles  nearest  that  second  city  of  France,  they  found 
the  scenery  liker  their  own  than  anywhere  else,  saw  enclosures  of 
quick  with  timber  in  the  fences,  rich  and  well-cultivated  land,  and 
young  wheat  much  forwarder  than  in  England.  "  It  was  from  the 
bridge  of  Lyons  we  first  saw  the  Alps,  extending  immediately  in  our 
front  to  a  great  distance.  They  were  covered  with  snow  half-way 
from  the  summits.  It  was  about  twenty  miles  from  Lyons  that  one 
of  our  wheels  broke  for  the  third  time,  and  we  were  detained  more 
than  a  day.  At  last  however  we  proceeded  towards  Chambery,  the 
capital  of  Savoy,  and  passed  through  a  most  enchanting  and  roman- 
tic country, —  rocks,  woods,  vineyards,  and  the  finest  passes."  What 
the  letter  proceeds  to  tell  of  their  first  impression  of  Italy,  destined 
to  be  the  home  of  one  of  them  for  more  than  twenty  years  and  after 
another  thirty  years  his  final  resting-place,  is  told  with  much  reality 
and  vividness.  At  first,  it  will  be  seen,  Landor  meant  to  have  fixed 
his  quarters  at  Chambery  ;  but  he  made  wiser  ultimate  choice  of  the 
Lake  of  Como. 

"  Walter  had  hitherto  intended  to  stop  at  Chambery  -and  live  there ;  but 
he  was  too  restless.  Nothing  can  be  more  delightful  or  romantic  than  the 
country  about  Chambery;  and  there  are  a  great  many  pleasant  houses 
situated  at  some  distance  from  the  town.  The  town  itself  is  bad,  and  the 
eternal  passage  of  Austrian  troops  made  it  disagreeable.  Here  we  agreed 
with  a  voiturier;  a  man  who  undertakes  to  conduct  yon  with  his  horses 
and  carriages  to  any  given  distance  for  a  certain  sum,  and  to  pay  for  your 
eating,  drinking,  and  Lodging.  Walter  gave  him  his  carriage  on  condition 
that  he  would  carry  him  free  of  expense  tirst  to  Milan  and  afterwards  to 
Como,  twenty-live  miles  farther,  where  the  Princess  of  Wales  resides.  I 
do  not  think  that  the  bargain  was  a  bad  one  for  Walter,  as  his  carriage  was 
no  longer  serviceable  in  its  present  state.  I  gave  eighteen  louis  dor,  or 
guineas,  a  little  more  than  the  common  price,  to  be  carried  as  far  as  Rome. 
From  Chambery  we  travelled  along  level  roads  between  the  most  magnifi- 
cent mountains.     Many  were  covered  with  snow.     These  are  the  low 


jET.  40-46.]  FROM    TOURS    TO    MILAN.  259 

Alps.  We  rested  four  nights  at  miserable  inns,  and  then  passed  Mount 
Cenis,  one  of  the  highest  Alps,  where  a  road  was  cut  by  Bonaparte  which 
is  considered  the  most  wonderful  in  the  world.  It  is  not  very  steep  in  any 
part,  but  runs  backwards  and  forwards  up  the  side  of  the  mountain.  We 
had  been  rising  very  greatly  for  four  days  before  we  reached  the  foot  of 
Mount  Cenis,  and  it  took  as  many  hours  to  get  up  the  side.  But  the 
other  side,  when  we  descended,  was  infinitely  more  grand  and  beautiful. 
It  was  indeed  sublime.  We  looked  down  into  Italy  from  above  the  clouds; 
and  when  we  had  travelled  more  than  two  hours  we  passed  among  vast 
woods  of  the  grandest  chestnuts  for  two  more  to  the  bottom.  The  wagons 
of  the  Austrian  army  were  descending  at  the  same  time.  It  is  the  Italian 
side  of  these  Alps  that  is  far  the  finest.  We  reached  Turin,  the  capital  of 
Piedmont,  two  days  after,  —  a  fine  town,  with  many  large  palaces.  On  one 
side  there  is  a  range  of  beautiful  hills,  which  would  be  called  mountains  in 
England,  covered  with  woods,  palaces,  country-houses,  churches,  and  con- 
vents ;  on  the  other  the  Alps,  which  do  not  appear  to  be  ten  miles  off,  though 
they  are  thirty  or  forty,  covered  with  ice  and  snow,  and  formed  more  beau- 
tifully than  any  painter  in  the  world  could  imagine.  The  streets  of  Turin 
are  all  straight ;  and  from  some  of  them  you  see  the  hills  which  I  have 
described  when  looking  one  way,  and  the  Alps  when  looking  the  other. 
Three  days  more  brought  us  to  Milan,  a  great,  ill-built,  ugly  town  with  a 
wonderful  cathedral,  the  capital  of  Lombardy.  Walter  and  his  wife  set  off 
almost  immediately  for  Como,  and  would  arrive  the  same  night.  I  wait 
till  the  carriage  returns  which  took  them,  and  in  two  days  more  shall  set 
off  a^ain  for  Florence  and  Rome." 

Of  the  small  and  great  discomforts,  and  their  trials  of  temper,  in- 
cident to  such  a  twenty  days'  joiirney  over  the  seven  .  hundred  miles 
separating  Milan  from  Tours,  the  son's  letter  told  also  something  that 
the  mother  might  be  glad  to  hear,  and,  so  far  as  there  are  touches  of 
character,  my  readers  too ;  but  it  must  be  read  with  allowances.  If 
Mr.  Robert  Landor  did  not  spare  himself,  of  his  brother  he  was  quite 
as  unsparing ;  and,  with  a  very  humane  and  proper  chivalry  which 
need  not  now  be  construed  with  excessive  strictness,  all  his  sympathy 
and  all  his  pity  were  reserved  for  the  pretty  little  wife.  To  an  ob- 
server so  generous  as  well  as  just,  her  advantages  of  sex  as  well  as  of 
youth  and  beauty  were  indeed  very  great;  but  though  prepared  for 
Walter's  "  ten  thousand  "  fits  of  temper,  it  is  a  little  startling,  after 
the  incident  at  Jersey,  to  find  Walter's  wife  never  giving  way  to  even 
one.  "  He  is  seldom  out  of  a  passion  or  a  sulky  fit  excepting  at  din- 
ner, when  he  is  more  boisterous  and  good-humored  than  ever.  Then 
his  wife  is  a  darling,  a  beauty,  an  angel,  and  a  bird.  But  for  just 
as  little  reason  the  next  morninar  she  is  a  fool.  She  is  certainly  sen- 
tie,  patient,  and  submissive.  She  takes  all  the  trouble,  is  indeed  too 
officious,  and  would  walk  on  foot  most  willingly  if  he  wished  it  and 
she  were  able.  If  he  loses  his  keys,  his  purse,  or  his  pocket-handker- 
chief, which  he  does  ten  times  in  an  hour,  she  is  to  be  blamed  ;  and 
she  takes  it  all  very  quietly."  Perhaps  one  might  have  said  too 
quietly.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  an  ostentatious  meekness,  or,  as 
the  poor  bad-tempered  husband  in  the  play  puts  it,  a  "  malign  excess 
of  undemanded  patience."     Nor  is  it  difficult  to  discover  that  the  fits 


260  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^aS-^' 

of  passion,  on  the  other  side,  were  rather  of  the  lambent  and  phos- 
phorescent than  of  a  scorching  or  consuming  kind.  "  If  he  is  ever 
really  unhappy,  it  is  because  the  cook  has  put  oil  or  garlic  into  the 
soup.  Give  him  a  good  dinner  well  cooked,  and  he  is  happier  than 
an  emperor.  He  writes  and  reads  all  the  day  besides.  As  for  his 
creditors,  he  cares  no  more  about  them  or  his  own  concerns  than 
about  Bonaparte's.  He  has  plenty  of  money  for  this  country  ;  lives 
as  well  as  ever  he  did  in  his  life  ;  and  at  Tours  had  even  saved  five- 
and-thirty  pounds.  He  has  one  entire  quarter  in  his  banker's  hands 
at  present,  after  travelling  so  far." 

Again,  on  the  10th  of  December  in  the  same"  year,  being  then  at 
Rome,  Mr.  Robert  Landor  wrote  to  his  mother  that  he  had  heard  from 
Walter  atComo;  that  he  found  it  expensive,  was  dissatisfied  with  it,  and 
talked  of  going  farther  east ;  but  that  he  had  himself  written  to  dis- 
suade this,  at  least  for  the  present.  "  He  has  seen  nothing  of  Italy, 
and  yet  he  swears  that  it  contains  nothing  worth  seeing.  Every  place 
is  the  worst."  From  Rome  the  writer  had  moved  to  Naples  in  April, 
1816  ;  and  in  a  letter  of  the  26th  of  that  month  to  their  sister  Eliza- 
beth he  tells  her  that  "Walter  had  written  in  the  last  week  from  Como, 
and  seemed  just  then  very  tranquil  and  comfortable,  but  that  for 
himself  lie  would  as  soon  trust  to  Vesuvius.  Finally,  having  mean- 
while paid  a  visit  himself  to  Como,  he  writes  thus  again  to  that  sister 
from  Venice  on  the  24th  of  June  :  "  At  Como  I  found  Walter  and  his 
wife  in  comfortable  apartments,  or  rather  in  a  comfortable  house. 
But  they  had  lost  their  English  maid,  whose  misconduct  in  leaving, 
and  depravity  after  having  left,  were  not  the  least  part  of  the  griev- 
ance. Julia  looks  thin,  but  not  pale  ;  talks  much  of  dying,  and  of 
returning  to  Bath,  preferring  the  latter  a  little  ;  and  amuses  herself 
in  learning  the  very  worst  Italian  from  the  old  cook,  who  is  quite 
unintelligible  to  Walter  and  everybody  else.  Walter  is  much  as  usual ; 
that  is,  in  very  unequal  spirits  ;  fretful,  gloomy,  absent,  and  very 
gay  by  turns.  Unfortunately  the  latter  is  not  frequent,  and  I  be- 
lieve that  I  saw  him  to  the  greatest  advantage.  The  lake  is  charm- 
ing.    The  M s  joined  me  at  Como,  and  liked  Walter  and  his  wife 

very  well." 

At  Como  Landor  lived  three  years;  and  three  more  wandering 
years  he  passed,  between  Pisa  and  Pistoia,  before  he  pitched  his  tent 
in  Florence  in  1821.  Between  the  home  he  had  lost  in  England  and 
that  which  he  thus  found  in  Italy,  this  interval,  measured  even  by 
the  general  driftless  character  of  his  life  and  ways,  was  so  entirely 
unsettled,  that  it  is  not  my  intention  to  dwell  upon  it  at  any  length. 
It  will  suffice  if  I  indicate,  by  passages  from  his  correspondence  in  these 
various  places  of  abode,  the  subjects  that  from  time  to  time  occupied 
or  interested  him,  and  the  manner  in  which  his  life  was  passed.  My 
own  comments  will  be  very  sparing. 


MT.  40-46.]  AT   COMO.  261 


II.  AT  COMO. 

The  first  letter  written  to  Southey  from  Italy  miscarried ;  and 
when  again,  in  the  June  of  1816,  Landor  wrote  to  him,  he  had  heard 
nothing  from  Keswick  since  leaving  Tours. 

LETTER-SMUGGLERS. 

"  About  three  months  ago  a  sort  of  pedler  was  going  from  Como  to  Eng- 
land, and  I  fancied  I  had  an  opportunity  of  sending  you  a  letter  by  him. 
But  I  discovered  that  they  are  narrowly  searched  by  the  custom-house 
officers,  and  letters  taken  away  from  them  and  destroyed.  I  was  disap- 
pointed, and  he  was  more  so;  for  I  told  him  my  letter  was  for  the  poet- 
laureate  of  England,  and  to  remove  all  incredulity  wrote  the  address  in 
that  manner.     I  sent  it,  however,  by  the  post." 

WHAT    HIS    BROTHER    ROBERT    THOUGHT    OP    ROME. 

"  My  youngest  brother,  who  has  been  at  Rome  and  Naples,  and  indeed 
in  all  the  other  celebrated  places  of  Italy,  is  now  on  his  return,  and  will  put 
this  into  some  English  post-office.  He  appeared  to  admire  the  character  of 
the  present  Romans,  though  he  carried  with  him  many  and  strong  preju- 
dices against  them.  He  represents  them  as  sedate  and  silent,  delicate  and 
disinterested,  brave  and  adorers  of  liberty.  He  was  disappointed  in  all 
their  ancient  buildings,  and  thinks  nearly  all  the  modern  extremely  desti- 
tute of  good  taste.  He  prefers  a  picture  of  Theseus  on  one  of  the  walls  of 
Pompeii  to  even  the  best  of  RafFael,  and  indeed  to  any  work  of  art  he  has 
ever  seen  except  the  Apollo  Belvidere,  and  is  convinced  that  the  ancient 
painters  were  as  much  superior  to  the  modern  as  the  ancient  statuaries." 

REGRETS    AND    WISHES    OP    AN    EXILE. 

"  We  often  talk  of  you.  I  wish  to  God  I  could  exchange  the  Lake  of 
Como  for  the  Lake  of  Keswick,  just  one  evening.  I  know  nothing  of  what 
passes  either  in  the  political  or  literary  world.  To  be  deprived  of  reading 
your  works,  and  of  seeing  you  for  so  many  years,  is  infinitely  the  greatest 
loss  I  sustain  in  losing  my  country.  I  have  engaged  my  house  for  a  year 
and  a  half.  I  wish  there  was  any  hope  of  your  coming  into  Italy.  We 
have  two  spare  rooms  and  one  spare  bed,  the  cleanest  on  this  side  of  the 
Channel,  and  at  Milan  they  make  butter." 

AMUSEMENTS    ON    THE   LAKE  :   JUNE,  1816. 

"  At   Como  we  have   been   exempt  from  the of  the   Princess   of 

Wales  for  a  considerable  time.  I  think  I  told  you  that  her  scudiere  was 
postilion  to  Pino,  a  deserter  from  the  Austrian  service.  He  has  now  pur- 
chased an  estate  for  200,000  florins  and  his  wife  keeps  her  carriage  and  is 
allowed  15,000  florins  a  year.  His  brother  is  maggiordomo  to  the  princess, 
and  rides  out  covered  with  gold  lace  and  accompanied  by  her  servants. 
These  rascals  have  kept  her  so  poor  that  she  has  not  yet  been  able  to  furnish 
her  rooms.  Is  it  not  scandalous  that  the  money  of  England  should  be 
squandered  away  on  the  most  worthless  wretches  in  Italy,  when  the  most 
industrious  men  in  England  want  bread?  If  we  had  one  honest  man  in 
Parliament,  would  not  some  sort  of  notice  be  taken  of  it?     Above  all  it 


2G2  FIRST   SIX   TEARS   IN    ITALY.  .  ^fs-aiT" 

surprises  mo  that  the  prince  does  not  divorce  her.  .  .  .  Lady  dimming, 
daughter  of  Lady  Charlotte  Campbell,  went  over  to  visit  the  princess. 
She  saw  her  in  the  midst  of  the  lake  with  her  scudiere,  whose  arm  was 
round  her  waist.  Instead  of  returning,  they  proceeded  to  the  house, 
where  they  found  the  prefet  of  Como,  and  soon  afterwards  the  princess 
entered.  In  a  few  minutes  the  scudiere  came  swaggering  in,  made  a 
Blight  bow  to  them,  took  no  notice  of  the  princess,  but  said  to  the  prefet, 
'Shall  ive  see  you  at  dinner?'  The  princess  then  invited  him,  and  he 
staved.  As  Lady  C.  had  remembered  him  a  footman  under  the  princess, 
and  now  recognized  him  to  be  the  person  whose  arm  was  round  her 
waist,  she  took  her  leave.  These  rascals  make  a  point  of  insulting  all 
the  English." 

He  had  himself  suffered  from  such  insults,  as  he  fancied,  taking  to 
himself  what  had  probably  no  reference  to  him  ;  and  his  present  infor- 
mation was  to  be  accepted  with  much  more  caution  than  in  the  cir- 
cumstances was  likely  to  be  given  to  it.  It  will  appear  hereafter  that 
it  was  turned  to  immediate  use.  That  any  use  would  he  made  of  it 
at  all  he  does  not  seem  to  have  imagined,  and  some  sentences  in  this 
portion  of  the  letter  I  am  obliged  to  suppress. 

It  will  be  best  so  to  deal  also  with  its  burst  of  anger  against  Mr. 
Mundav  of  Oxford,  for  misprints  in  the  Idyllva  and  for  not  sending  the 
volume  to  his  friends  ;  nor  will  the  reader  regret  to  lose  its  three-and- 
thirty  scathing  Latin  lines  against  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  just  written 
for  the  cenotaph  of  Porlier,  which  he  implored  Southey  to  make  pub- 
lic in  the  Courier  with  the  name  of  the  writer,  as  he  wished  to  circu- 
late them  on  the  Continent  as  widely  as  he  could. 

Still"  Southey  did  not  reply,  and  for  many  more  months  there  was 
a  silence  incomprehensible  to  his  friend.  It  had  been  a  year  of  great 
trouble  at  Keswick.  The  heaviest  affliction  of  Southey's  life,  the  loss 
of  his  (then  only)  son,  had  fallen  upon  him  in  the  spring  of  1816; 
ami  in  the  following  spring  occurred  the  greatest  vexation  of  his  life, 
the  publication  from  a  stolen  manuscript  of  his  youthful  drama  of 
Wat  Tyler,  and  the  chancellor's  (not  very  logical)  refusal  to  restrain 
its  sale,  because  of  the  injury  it  was  calculated  to  do  to  society.  To 
this  troubled  interval  of  silence  on  Southey's  part  belongs  a  letter 
characteristic  of  Landor  in  his  best  mood  :  sensitive  and  self-distrust- 
ful, but  loyal  to  his  friend  ;  in  the  manliest  vein  of  sympathy  ;  and, 
though  full  of  sorrow,  nay,  by  reason  of  it,  nobly  consolatory. 

"I  have  written  many  letters  to  you  since  I  received  one  from  you. 
Can  anything  occur  that  ought  to  interrupt  our  friendship?  Believe  me, 
Southey,  — and  of  all  men  living  I  will  be  the  very  last  to  deceive  or  to 
flatter  you,  —  I  have  never  one  moment  ceased  to  love  and  revere  you,  as 
the  most  amiable  and  best  of  mortals,  and  your  fame  has  always  been  as 
precious  to  me  as  it  could  ever  be  to  yourself.  If  you  believe  me  capable, 
as  you  must,  of  doing  anything  to  displease  yon.  tell  it  me  frankly  and  fully. 
Should  my  reply  be  unsatisfactory,  it  will  not  be  too  late  nor  too  soon  to 
shake  me  off  from  all  pretensions  to  your  friendship.  Tell  it  me  rather 
while  your  resentment  is  warm  than  afterwards,  for  in  the  midst  of  resent- 
ment the  heart  is  open  to  generous  and  tender  sentiments;  it  closes  after- 


JET.  40-46.]  AT    COMO.  263 

wards.  I  heard  with  inexpressible  grief  of  your  most  severe  and  irrepa- 
rable loss,  long  indeed  ago;  but  even  if  I  had  been  with  you  At  the  time,  I 
should  have  been  silent.  If  your  feelings  are  like  mine,  of  all  cruelties 
those  are  the  most  intolerable  that  come  under  the  name  of  condolence  and 
consolation.  Surely  to  be  told  that  we  ought  not  to  grieve  is  among  the 
worst  bitternesses  of  grief.  The  best  of  fathers  and  of  husbands  is  not 
always  to  derive  perfect  happiness  from  being  so ;  and  genius  and  wisdom, 
instead  of  exempting  a  man  from  all  human  sufferings,  leave  him  exposed 
to  all  of  them,  and  add  many  of  their  own.  Whatever  creature  told  me 
that  his  reason  had  subdued  his  feelings,  to  him  I  should  only  reply  that 
mine  had  subdued  my  regard  for  him.  But  occupations  and  duties  fill  up 
the  tempestuous  vacancy  of  the  soul ;  affliction  is  converted  to  sorrow,  and 
sorrow  to  tenderness ;  at  last  the  revolution  is  completed,  and  love  returns 
in  its  pristine  but  incorruptible  form.  More  blessings  are  still  remaining  to 
you  than  to  any  man  living.  In  that  which  is  the  most  delightful  of  all 
literary  occupations,  at  how  immense  a  distance  are  you  from  every  rival  or 
competitor!  In  history,  what  information  are  you  capable  of  giving  to 
those  even  who  are  esteemed  "the  most  learned!  And  those  who  consult 
your  criticisms  do  not  consult  them  to  find,  as  in  others,  with  what  feathers 
the  most  barbarous  ignorance  tricks  out  its  nakedness,  or  with  what  gypsy 
shuffling  and  arrant  slang  detected  impostures  are  defended.  On  this  sad 
occasion  I  have  no  reluctance  to  remind  you  of  your  eminent  gifts.  In 
return  I  ask  from  you  a  more  perfect  knowledge  of  myself  than  I  yet  pos- 
sess. Conscious  that  I  have  done  nothing  very  wrong,  I  almost  hope  that 
I  have  done  something  not  quite  right,  that  I  may  never  think  you  have 
been  unjust  towards  me.     W.  L." 

With  more  than  the  old  affection  Southey  at  once  replied  ;  ex- 
plained now  his  recent  silence  by  uncertainty  as  to  a  visit  into  Italy 
he  had  resolved  himself  to  make  ;  and  hoped  they  would  shortly 
meet.  At  Como  they  met  accordingly  at  the  end  of  June,  1817  ;  and 
Southey  stayed  with  his  friend  three  days.  In  the  poem  already 
quoted  *  for  its  mention  of  the  visit  to  Llanthony,  there  is  record  of 
this  visit  also. 

*  See  ante,  p.  199.  I  will  add  some  lines  from  a  later  poem,  A  Dream  of  the  Elysian 
Fields,  in  which  his  friend  appears  to  him  "the  genial  voice  and  radiant  eye"  un- 
altered, and  they  speak  of  their  past  days  together :  — 

"  '  I  do  not  ask,' 
Said  I,  '  about  your  happiness ;  I  see 
The  same  serenity  as  when  we  walkt 
Along  the  downs  "of  Clifton.     Fifty  years 
Have  rolled  behind  us  since  that  summer-tide, 
Nor  thirty  fewer  since  along  the  lake 
Of  Lario,  to  Bellaggio  villa-crowned, 
Through  the  crisp  waves  I  urged  my  sideling  bark, 
Amid  sweet  salutation  off  the  shore 
From  lordly  Milan's  proudly  courteous  dames/ 
'  Landor !  I  well  remember'it,'  said  he; 
'  I  had  just  lost  my  first-born  only  boy, 
And  then  the  heart  is  tender;  lightest  things 
Sink  into  it,  and  dwell  there  evermore.' 

The  words  were  not  yet  spoken  when  the  air 
Blew  balmier;  and  around  the  parent's  neck 
An  angel  threw  his  arms:  it  was  that  son. 

Father,  I  felt  you  wisht  me,'  said  the  boy ; 

Behold  me  here ! ' 

Gentle  the  sire's  embrace, 


2G4  FIRST   SIX   YEARS   IX    ITALY.  ^aS-^T" 

"  War  had  paused :  the  Loire 
a    Invited  me.     Again  burst  forth  fierce  War. 
I  minded  not  his  fury:  there  I  stayed, 
Sole  of  my  countrymen,  and  foes  abstained 
(Though  sore  and  bleeding)  from  my  house  alone. 
But  female  fear  impelled  me  past  the  Alps, 
Where,  loveliest  of  all  lakes,  the  Lario  sleeps 
Under  the  walls  of  Como. 

There  he  came 
Again  to  see  me;  there  again  our  walks 
We  recommenced  .  .  .  less  pleasant  than  before. 
Grief  had  swept  over  him;  days  darkened  round: 
Bellaggio,  Valintelvi,  smiled  in  vain, 
And  Monte  Rosa  from  Helvetia  far 
Advanced  to  meet  us,  wild  in  majesty 
Above  the  glittering  crests  of  giant  sons 
Stationed  around  ...  in  vain  too !  all  in  vain !  " 

Nay,  not  wholly  so  ;  for  it  appears  from  what  Southey  wrote  of  his 
journey  home,  immediately  on  his  return,  that  these  and  other  shapes 
of  beauty  had  made  so  far  successful  appeal  to  him  as  even  to  shake 
for  a  time  his  allegiance  to  his  native  lakes  and  mountains. 

SOUTHEY    TO    LANDOR,  SEPTEMBER,   1816. 

"Our  journey  home  was  as  prosperous  as  we  could  desire.  The  Lake  of 
Lugano  seemed  to  exceed  the  Lario  in  variety  and  in  beauty ;  and  the  Mag- 
giore,  where  we  crost  it,  to  exceed  both :  but  probably  in  such  scenery  that 
which  is  present  must  always  obtain  the  preference.  The  Isola  Bella  is  at 
once  the  most  costly  and  the  most  absurd  effort  of  bad  taste  that  ever  has 
been  produced  by  wealth  and  extravagance.  What  you  had  been  told  of 
the  hissing  of  serpents  in  the  vaults  proved  to  be  the  noise  of  the  bats,  who 
have  taken  possession  of  the  ground-tier  in  this  ridiculous  place.  We  saw 
them  in  great  numbers  flying  in  and  out.  Taking  all  things  into  considera- 
tion, I  should  prefer  the  neighborhood  of  Lausanne  to  any  place  on  the  Con- 
tinent which  I  have  seen  for  a  residence.  The  loveliest  places  which  we 
saw  were  the  little  tract  between  the  Lakes  of  Thun  and  Brientz,  and  the 
Lake  and  Valley  of  Lingern,  than  which  the  heart  of  man  could  desire 
nothing  lovelier.  On  my  return  Skiddaw  did  not  appear  to  have  lost  any- 
thing in  magnitude,  — the  mountains  around  the  lake  had;  and  I  perceived 
a  poverty  ami  coldness  in  the  valley  :  this  however  wore  off  in  a  lew  days, 
and  Keswick  is  now  as  beautiful  as  ever." 

When  the  friends  met  at  Como  their  talk  had  been  much  of  poetry  ; 
of  what  they  were  fain  to  think  the  very  doubtful  chances  of  duration 
to  the  then  raging  popularity  of  Byron  ;  and  of  the  advance  made  by 
Wordsworth  in  his  last  great  poem.  To  these  matters  Southey  refers 
in  th.it  letter  of  September,  telling  Landor  that  he  had  already  de- 
spatched to  him,  along  with  his  own  History  of  Brazil  and  other  books, 
not  only  Wordsworth's  collected  edition,  but  both  his  great  poems 
published  separately  during  the  two  last  years,  the  Excursion  and  the 
White  Doe.     At  the  close  of  the  same  letter  also,  with  much  less  than 

Gentle  hi<  tone.     '  See  here  your  father's  friend! ' 
He  gazed  into  my  face,  then  meekly  said: 
1  He  whom  my  father  loves  hath  his  reward 
On  earth;  a  richer  one  awaits  him  here.'  " 


jet:.  40-46.] 


AT  COMO.  2G5 


his  usual  discrimination  of  passing  events  in  those  regions,  he  had 
spoken  of  the  "  ill-judged  attempt  at  revolution  "  in  Brazil,  which  he 
believed  to  have  failed,  and  had  expressed  an  opinion  not  only  against 
the  revolutionary  governments  in  South  America,  but  in  favor  of  the 
probability  of  Russia  joining  Spain  to  put  them  down  :  "  both  powers 
equally  regarding  the  Yankee  Americans  (we  must  not  call  them 
Anglo-Americans)  as  interlopers  on  that  coast."  In  England  he  had 
found  at  his  return  little  to  relieve  the  generally  black  and  dreary 
outlook,  the  Watson  and  Thistle  wood  trials  having  just  ended  in  ver- 
dicts of  acquittal :  but  there  had  been  a  good  harvest,  and  "  though  the 
seditious  press  is  as  active  as  ever,  the  poison  which  it  administers 
does  not  operate  with  the  same  effect  upon  a  full  stomach  as  upon  an 
empty  one."  Upon  all  which  subjects  Landor  will  be  found  himself 
to  have  something  to  say. 

One  letter,  bearing  date  the  last  day  of  August,  he  had  already 
written  since  his  friend's  visit ;  and  the  verses  which  close  it,  and 
which  have  not  been  preserved  elsewhere,  show  something  of  the  ef- 
fect upon  the  writer  of  what  he  had  doubtless  heard  from  Southey  of 
his  Wat  Tyler  and  other  feuds.  The  bitterest  of  the  Byron  quarrels 
had  not  yet  broken  out ;  but  of  all  the  Quarterly  reviewers  he  who 
had  been  the  most  resolute  and  unsparing  in  striking  at  reform  and 
reformers,  remembering  past  days  and  his  own  fierce  passion  for  re- 
form, could  hardly  wonder  at  having  now  become  a  mark  for  many 
eager  and  envenomed  assailants.* 

"  I  know  not  any  better  way  of  celebrating  the  anniversary  of  St.  Abon- 
dio,  the  patron  of  Como,  in  whose  church  we  enjoyed  a  cool  hour  in  the 
hottest  day  of  June,  than  by  showing  him  as  well  as  the  police,  who  both 
have  the  privilege  of  reading  my  letters,  that  I  have  not  forgotten  the  bene- 
fit I  received  from  him.  Whether  you  are  yet  at  Keswick  I  can  but  con- 
jecture. I  hope  shortly  to  hear  that  you  are  there,  for  you  can  feel  and 
communicate  all  the  pleasures  of  an  Englishman's  home.  My  plans  are 
never  fixed  and  never  will  be.  I  have  taken  my  house  at  Como  for  another 
year,  because  my  wife  is  unable  to  travel,  and  expects  to  be  confined  in  the 
beginning  of  March.  The  climate  does  not  agree  with  her,  nor  indeed  can  she 
bear  any  great  degree  of  heat.  You  perceive  that  I  creep  onward  in  my 
pilgrimage  to  Rome  like  the  good  brother  who  had  peas  in  his  shoes,  and 
not  the  boiled  ones.  There  is  one  object  which  I  have  constantly  wished 
to  see  above  all  others,  and  which  I  would  rather  see  than  all  the  cities  in 
Italy,  with  Rome  at  their  head :  I  mean  the  tomb  of  Cicero.  And  there  is 
one  duty  which,  if  ever  I  am  rich  enough,  I  will  perform.  I  will  inscribe 
a  simple  tablet  (for  I  hear  there  is  none  existing)  to  Ludlow.     I  am  re- 

*  It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  show  what  Byron's  real  opinion  of  .Southey  was  be- 
fore bad  temper  imbittered  and  distorted  everything.  They  met  at  Holland  House  at 
the  close  of  1813,  when  Byron,  greatly  struck  by  Southey's  appearance,  protested  that 
he  would  have  written  his  Sapphics  to  have  had  his  head  and  shoulders.  Somewhat 
later,  in  a  diary  he  was  writing,  he  entered  a  more  deliberate  opinion:  "  Southey's  ap- 
pearance is  epic;  and  he  is  the  only  existing  entire  man  of  letters.  .  .  .  His  talents  are 
of  the  first  order.  His  prose  is  perfect.  Of  his  poetry  there  are  various  opinions. 
There  is  perhaps  too  much  of  it  for  the  present  generation;  posterity  will  probably 
select;  but  he  has  passages  equal  to  anything." 


2G6  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^-iT 

minded  by  this  resolution  that  I  wrote  some  verses  on  your  laureateship. 
They  are  these  :  — 

Breath  of  what  god  hath  blown  the  mists  away, 

That  thou  whose  influence  filled  the  solitude, 

Whose  music  was  for  souls  that  shun  the  world, 

At  length  from  thronging  cities  art  beheld 

And  hailed  from  pinnacles  of  palaces 

Far  under  thee,  O  Southev!  late-beheld, 

As  were  the  greater  of  the  first-born  stars 

The  nearest  to  their  mighty  .Maker's  throne. 

Sit  light  of  heart  in  the  clear  cool  serene, 

Where  other  voice  than  that  which  called  thee  none 

Is  heard  around,  nor  other  harp  than  thine. 

What  serpents  slid  athwart  thy  noontide  path! 
What  birds  of  evil  omen  flapped  their  wings 
Heavily,  lower  and  lower!  their  darksome  eye 
Saw  not  that  radiant  visage  burst  the  clouds, 
That  right  hand  beckon  upward,  and  that  left 
Point  toward  Python  with  the  golden  bow. 

If  this  be  earth,  50  lofty  ami  bo  pore, 
Thou  hast  not  left  it  utterly,  divine 
Astrea !  She  who  led  the  son  of  Jove, 
And  fixed  his  choice,  performed  her  office  here; 
But  Thou  upon  the  summit  hast  received 
Him  whom  >ho  brought,  and  from  thy  righteous  hand 
(Nine  white-robed  virgins  hymning  slow  before) 
Upon  his  brow  I  saw  the  crown  descend." 

Hardly  had  that  letter  been  despatched  however,  when  Southey's  of 
the  1  7th  September  reached  its  destination  ;  and  on  the  various  sub- 
jects named  in  it  comment  was  made  in  a  reply  by  Landor  on  the 
20th  November,  1817. 

NON-ARRIVAL    OF    BOOKS,  AND    BOOKSELLERS'    ROGUERIES. 

I  have  been  expecting  not  a  little  impatiently  the  library  you  have  sent 
me  from  England.  Two  months  have  expired  since  the  date  of  your  letter; 
the  ship  ought  to  have  reached  Genoa  in  twenty  days.  It  is  unfortunate 
thai  Longman  did  not  inform  you  of  its  name  and  captain.  I  am  not  much 
surprised  at  the  roguery  of  Munday.  He  was  paid  in  advance  for  printing 
my  Latin  poems,  and  has  not  sent  a  single  copy  to  any  of  my  friends  or  to 
myself;  in  contempt  of  my  repeated  orders.  I  begin  to  think  that  the 
English  are  become  more  rascally  than  any  other  nation.  Few  men  have 
had  concerns  with  fewer  men  than  I  have:  yet  I  have  been  defrauded  to 
the  am.  Mint  at  least  of  seventeen  thousand  pounds  by  about  half  a  dozen 
rogues.'' 

SOUTII    AMERICAN    REPUBLICS    AND    DANGERS    FROM    RUSSIA. 

"I  never  trouble  my  head  with  European  politics;  but  I  must  confess 
that,  for  many  reasons,  I  am  deeply  interested  in  the  success  of  the  South- 
Americans.  First,  because  I  wish  every  nation  under  heaven  to  be  inde- 
pendent ;  and  secondly,  because  it  is  highly  advantageous  to  England  that 
Borne  near  and  close  counterpoise  should  exist  against  North  America,  now 
becoming  a  formidable  and  most  mischievous  power.  Is  it  possible  that  the 
English  can  be  insensible  to  the  efforts  of  Russia,  in  favor  of  Spain?  Are 
our  ministers  Ignorant  that  the  empire  of  Russia  in  five-and-twenty  years 
will  extend  from  the  Adriatic  to  the  plains  of  Mexico,  from  Lapland  to  the 
fountains  of  the  Ganges  and  the  wail   of  China '!     I  will  stake  my  head 


.ST.  40-46.] 


AT  COMO.  2G7 


against  a  brass  sixpence  —  or,  what  is  of  less  value,  against  any  one  of 
tf1L.irs  —  on  the  fact.  We  ought  to  have  insisted  on  the  independence  of 
Poland,  governed  by  a  Russian  prince,  but  never  united  to  Russia ;  we 
should  have  insisted  on  its  integrity,  and  have  given  Denmark  and  Saxony 
(both  fairly  forfeited)  in  lieu  of  Polish  Prussia.  I  am  certain  that  we  never 
shall  be  what  Ave  have  been,  and  I  am  equally  certain  that  we  might  have 
been  more  great  than  ever." 

EVIL    OP    TOO    MANY    MINISTERS  :     A   WORD    FOR    CHATHAM. 

"  We  are  the  only  people  in  the  universe,  except  the  Spaniards,  whose 
national  debt  is  a  grievous  burden ;  and  that  of  Spain  is  intrinsically  so  in- 
considerable, that  a  firm  hand  could  reduce  it  to  nothing  in  ten  years.  The 
proper  means  are  apparent,  and,  what  is  better,  are  adopted ;  but  can  they 
be  carried  into  execution  by  a  government  that  has  many  ministers  ?  Cab- 
inets, as  they  are  called,  are  the  ruin  of  politics.  Never  was  this  fact  so 
clearly  proved  as  in  the  time  of  Chatham.  A  minister  ought  to  be  sole  and 
absolute,  but  responsible.  Had  I  been  in  the  place  of  Chatham,  I  would 
have  committed  all  the  opposition  of  the  cabinet  to  the  Tower  on  a  charge 
of  high  treason,  and  have  brought  them  to  trial  when  I  had  carried  my 
plans  into  execution.  The  success  of  them,  which  was  certain,  would  have 
satisfied  the  public  mind,  and  have  left  me  without  impediment  in  future." 

The  letter  closed  with  a  long  Latin  poem.  He  had  at  last  had  cour- 
age, he  told  his  friend,  to  recommence  his  S}ionsalia  Polyxence,  and 
he  would  transcribe  just  what  his  paper  will  hold  :  whereupon  he 
makes  the  paper  hold  all  of  it,  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
seven  hexameters !  He  did  not  imagine,  he  adds,  that  he  could  have 
written  in  such  small  characters  as  to  include  the  whole  poem.  "  You 
will  rank  me  as  a  sort  of  undertaker  among  the  fraternity.  I  could 
not  refuse  a  bunch  of  white  plumes  and  a  sprig  of  rosemary  to  poor 
Polyxena ;  but  I  have  much  curtailed  my  original  plan,  of  wThich  I 
retain  only  the  two  first  verses."  * 

Of  course  his  alarm  about  the  books  was  premature.  I  say  of 
course,  because  the  characteristic  that  attended  him  through  his  life, 
and  which  I  never  knew  once  to  fail  him  in  all  his  later  years,  was  his 
inability  to  wait  with  proper  patience  for  anything.  He  wrote  again, 
in  the  middle  of  December,  1817,  to  say  that  the  packet  had  come. 

THE    CENSORSHIP    IN    ITALY. 

"  If  I  had  waited  five  days  longer,  I  should  not  have  sounded  an 
alarm  about  the  books.  They  have  arrived  safe,  and,  what  is  extraordinary, 
sound.  Before  I  was  permitted  the  use  of  them  they  were  examined  by  a 
person  who  understands  not  a  word  of  English,  lest  they  should  contain 
anything  against  the  church  or  the  government.  When  he  had  satisfied  his 
mind  on  the  subject,  he  sent  them  to  my  house.  Surely  against  a  govern- 
ment so  liberal  and  enlightened  as  it  ought  to  be  from  its  vicinity  to  Turkey, 
the  most  ingenious  and  the  most  malevolent  could  utter  not  a  syllable ;  but 
the  church  is  at  least  equal  in  liberality,  and  has  its  own  authority  (an  in- 
flexible one  according  to  its  own  decrees)  that  it  never  can  be  shaken.     Its 

*  See  Poemata  et  Inscripliones,  pp.  11-16.  Translated  by  him  in  Hellenics,  pp.  193- 
200.  In  its  final  form  the  Sponsalia  had  become  enlarged  to  one  hundred  and  eighty- 
four  lines. 


2G8  FIRST    SIX    YEARS    IX    ITALY.  [®°i°-a™ 

liberality  is  carried  to  such  a  point  that  any  man  may  be  an  atheist  and 
must  only  not  be  a  heretic,  and  may  follow  Christ  where  he  chooses  if  he  is 
not  ordered  to  the  contrary  by  St.  Augustin.  I  perceive  by  the  Lugano 
Gazette  that  an  accession  has  lately  been  made  to  literature  by  the  discov- 
ery of  two  hundred  sermons  written  by  this  saint.  They  were  found  in 
the  library  of  Monte  Cassino.  I  very  much  fear  that,  even  in  our  own 
times,  some  classical  works  have  been  destroyed  or  consigned  to  darkness 
by  the  persons  whom  the  Pope  appoints  to  superintend  this  ancient  reposi- 
tory." 

A   VISIT    FROM    AX    EDITOR    OF   PLATO. 

"  Two  months  ago  I  received  a  visit  from  M.  Becker,  who  has  made  dis- 
coveries in  Greek  works  and  has  added  a  little  to  those  of  Plato,  of  whom 
he  has  given,  as  I  understand,  a  very  correct  and  admirable  edition.  I 
never  saw  a  more  modest  man.  He  informed  me,  on  my  inquiry,  that  alter 
repeated  applications  to  several  persons  in  power,  he  could  not  obtain  per- 
mission to  see  anything  more  of  the  Ambrosian  Library  than  any  other 
traveller.  Before  he  had  time  to  begin  writing  any  remarks,  the  doors 
were  closed,  and  they  are  opened  only  on  stated  days.  He  could  not  help 
comparing  this  conduct  with  the  frankness  and  anxiety  shown  in  every 
German  library  that  books  should  be  read  and  examined.  Dr.  Angelo  Mai, 
who  published  a  few  pages  of  Cicero,  and  Fronto,  and  Symmachus,  promised 
much  and  performed  nothing.  He  seemed  to  consider  the  library  as  a 
property,  in  which  his  friends  support  him.  The  Ambrosian  Library  has 
not  even  a  catalogue." 

WORDSWORTH. 

"  The  first  of  your  magnificent  books  that  I  took  out  of  the  box  was 
Wordsworth.  I  would  have  given  eighty  pounds  out  of  a  hundred  that  he 
had  not  written  that  verse, 

'  Of  high  respect  and  gratitude  sincere.' 
It  is  like  the  verses  of  the  Italians,  Spaniards,  &c,  quite  colloquial;  and 
'  high  respect,' an  expression  borrowed  from  the  French,  is  without  in- 
trinsic" sense.  Wordsworth  has  the  merit,  the  rarest  of  all  merits  and  the 
most  difficult  to  be  certain  of,  to  avoid  street-and-house  language  and  t< 
richly  endowed  with  whatever  is  most  simple,  pure,  and  natural.  In  his 
Lyrical  Ballads  he  has  sometimes  disappointed  me,  just  as  an  yEolian  harp 
has  done  when  I  expected  a  note  more.  These  books  have  wakened  me  up. 
I  shall  feed  upon  them  till  I  fall  asleep  again,  but  that  will  not  be  until  I 
have  devoured  all." 

The  line  objected  to  is  in  the  dedication  to  the  Excursion,  and  is 
one  of  those  unaccountable  descents  into  dead  flat  prose  which  dis- 
may, not  seldom,  the  readers  of  this  noble  poet. 

Before  the  year  closed  Southey  wrote  to  him  again  ;  thanking  him 
for  a  box  of  books  he  had  sent  from  Milan  ;  describing  to  him  a  cor- 
respondence with  his  brother  Robert  about  the  Latin  poems,  of 
which  the  result  had  been  that  the  impression  printed  at  Oxford 
would  be  transferred  from  Slatter  and  Munday  to  the  Longmans,  so 
that  he  ought  strike  the  Oxford  printers  out  of  his  black  list  ;  and, 
upon  a  subject  of  which  they  had  talked  much  when  together,  the 
serpents  in  the  neighborhood  of  Milan,  sending  him  not  merely  a 
learned   disquisition    but    some   prescriptions    against    their    venom, 


JET.  40-46.]  AT    COMO.  2G9 

which  he  prays  that  St.  Abondio  may  bless,  since  he  owes  that  saint 
indeed  a  good  turn  for  the  delicious  shelter  he  had  afforded  them  on 
that  hottest  of  days  of  which  his  friend  had  reminded  him.  Then 
there  is  a  curious  passage.  Landor  is  told  that  what  he  had  com- 
municated about  the  lady  of  the  lake  might  not  improbably  be  im- 
portant (it  wanted  yet  three  years  to  the  too  famous  "  trial ") ;  that  the 
amusements  of  Como  were  not  unlikely  before  long  to  become  the 
amusements  of  England  ;  and  that  if  it  should  be  so,  from  the  lady's 
sympathizers  throughout  the  kingdom  the  "  knight  "  would  doubt- 
less have  plenary  absolution  for  all  those  offences  which  in  old  time 
were  punished  with  brimstone,  the  "  assassin  "  would  be  as  popular 
among  the  London  liberals  "  as  Bonaparte  (why  not  1  ),"  and  the 
other  worthy  would  be  a  red-letter  saint  in  the  Morning  Chronicle. 
Similar  and  not  less  significant  passages  were  in  the  letters  that  he 
and  Landor's  brother  had  exchanged  upon  the  transfer  of  the  Latin 
poems. 

SOUTHET    TO'  ROBERT    LANDOR  :    KESWICK,    27TH    DECEMBER,    1817. 

"  I  had  a  letter  from  your  brother  three  days  ago.  He  is  more  out  of 
humor  with  the  Ambrosian  Library,  or  rather  with  the  librarian,  than  I 
was.  Perhaps  this  may  be  because  Becker,  who  complained  to  him  of  his 
treatment  there,  was  a  G-erman,  and  therefore  less  likely  to  be  treated  with 
attention  at  Milan  than  an  Englishman  would  be. 

"  It  would  not  surprise  me  if  the  amusements  of  Como  were  to  be  brought 
forward  erelong  for  public  discussion,  and  the*  Scudiere,  the  Knight,  and 
the  Assassin  were  to  enjoy  their  deserved  celebrity  in  this  enlightened 
country,  and  become  as  popular  as  Bonaparte  and  Mr.  Hone." 

ROBERT    LANDOR   TO    SOUTHEY  :    HITCHENDEN,    7TH    JANUARY,  1818. 

"  I  am  induced  by  some  inquiries  which  have  been  made  relative  to 
Como  since  the  receipt  of  your  letter  to  believe  that  your  suppositions  are 
well  founded.  For  my  part  I  had  nothing  to  communicate,  and  I  am  sorry 
that  the  subject  should  be  discussed.  Since  it  is  now  so  clear,  in  the  opinion 
of  all  enlightened  men,  that  blasphemy  is  not  injurious  to  religion,  we  may 
shortly  learn  that  adultery  is  not  offensive  to  morals.  As  for  treason,  there 
is  no  such  thing :  it  is  as  ridiculous  as  witchcraft.  There  is  no  way  by 
which  a  man  can  gain  either  fame  or  riches  half  so  easy  and  expeditious  as 
by  doing  something  for  which  he  would  have  been  hanged  fifty  years  ago. 
We  shall  have  large  subscriptions  for  the  scudiere  and  assassin,  and  this 
'  persecution '  will  end  in  making  the  most  infamous  woman  in  Europe  the 
most  popular." 

A  family  event  of  some  importance  was  announced  in  the  next 
letter. to  Southey  from  Como. 

BIRTH    OF    LANDOR'S    FIRST    CHILD    IN    MARCH,    1818. 

"  When  we  met  at  Como  last  year,  I  do  not  think  you  had  any  suspicion 
that  I  was  in  process  of  time  about  to  become  a  father.  Such  however  is 
the  case.  I  have  at  last  a  little  boy,  to  whom  I  have  given  the  names  of 
Arnold  Savage.  I  would  rather  that  he  had  been  born  in  England,  and  wish 
I  could  look  forward  to  his  education  there.     However,  if  I  can  do  nothing 


270  FIRST    BIX    YKAR3    IX    ITALY.  ^ft^-a^' 

more  for  him,  I  will  take  care  that  his  first  words  and  his  first  thoughts 
shall  arise  within  sight  of  Florence.  We  certainly  leave  Como  in  Septem- 
ber, and  shall  probably  spend  the  winter  at  Genoa;  if  not,  it  will  cither  be 
at  Florence  or  Pistoia." 

That  was  in  May,  1818.  Already,  on  the  5th  of  the  preceding 
month,  he  had  informed  his  mother  of  the  event  as  having  occurred 
"  exactly  a  month  ago." 

ARNOLD    SAVAGE    LAN DOR. 

"I  intend  to  call  the  boy  Arnold  Savage,  from  a  Sir  Arnold  Savage,  who 
was  second  speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  who,  as  Mr.  Bevan 
assured  me,  was  of  our  family,  and  proprietor  of  Baginton.  I  looked  for 
him  in  a  book  which  I  bought  on  purpose,  and  procured  with  extreme  diffi- 
culty, written  by  a  person  named  Hakewell,  on  the  manner  of  holding  par- 
liaments, and  found  that  Sir  Anmld  Savage  was  the  first  who  declared  that 
grievances  should  be  redressed  before  money  should  be  granted.  J  have  so 
much  respect  for  a  person  of  this  stamp  that  I  should  be  likely  to  name  a  son 
after  him,  even  if  I  had  no  connection  with  his  family  or  name.  The  cere- 
mony of  baptism  is  the  same  here  as  in  England,  and  the 'godfather  does 
nol  promise  that  the  child  shall  be  educated  in  any  kind  of  Romish  idolatry 
or  superstition.  For  which  reason  I  shall  comply  with  the  custom  of  the 
country  in  about  five  or  six  days.  lie  will  be  christened  again  in  England, 
if  he  should  return  within  the  next  twelve  or  fourteen  years;  but  on  this 
subject  I  am  doubtful,  or  rather  I  am  indifferent.  I  have  learned  that  it  is 
possible  to  live  oul  of  England,  and  that  a  j:>erson  who  hates  all  society  can 
do  without  it  here  lull  as  well  as  there." 

The  other  contents  of  the  May  letter  to  Southey  may  be  left  to 
explain  themselves. 

A   STRANGE   REPORT. 

"A  mosl  extraordinary  piece  of  intelligence  reached  us  yesterday,  that 
the  Princess  of  Wales  and  five  of  her  rascals  had  been  poisoned.  Such  is 
the  profound  ignorance  of  the  English  character  among  this  most  degraded 

ami  infamous  j pie,  that  it  is  considered  as  a  thing  beyond  all  doubt  that 

the  English  have  committed  this  atrocity.  I  could  not  refrain  from  making 
the  following  remark  :  '  There  is  only  one  nation  in  Europe  accused  of  such 
Yillanv.  and  thai  nation  is  far  removed  in  all  its  institutions  and  feelings 
from  the  English'  Although  the  report  is  circulated  among  the  best- 
informed,  I  am  inclined  to  disbelieve  it.  Surely  it  is  more  probable  that  the 
sudden  and  violent  heats  have  inflamed  the  blood  of  creatures  who  are 
always  half  drunk,  or  that  disease  or  the  remedies  of  disease  arc  preying  on 
their  constitutions.  It  is  not  indeed  quite  impossible  thai  those  who  arc 
implicated  in  the  forgery  of  the  two  letters  of  exchange  have  despatched  a 
wretch  capable  both  of  employing  and  betraying  them :  nor  thai  jealousy, 
nol  arising  from  the  enjoymenl  of  personal  charms,  bul  from  the  disposal  of 
niary  favors,  has  precipitated  some  of  the  scoundrels  in  her  service  to 
commit  this  atrocious  deed.  She  has  a  known  and  convicted  assassin  in  her 
household,  and  who  knows  bul  some  such  untoward  accident  may  have  be- 
fallen her  as  befell  Cesar  Borgia,  and  played  a  sorry  trick  upon  the  infalli- 
bility of  his  father?  We  -hall  certainly  know  more  of  the  matter  soon. 
The  Pope's  govemmenl  i-  excellent  in  all  respects,  and  Consalvi  is  at  once 
the  most  honesl  and  prudent  statesman  in  Europe.  He  will  unravel  the 
mystery  ;  for  whoever  may  be  the  contriver  of  this  mischief,  the  perpetrator 
must  be  in  the  house." 


JET.  4O-46.I  AT   PISA.  271 

THE    ATTEMPT    TO    ASSASSINATE    WELLINGTON. 

"  The  attempt  that  was  made  a  little  while  ago  on  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton is  blamed  by  a  French  poet  —  for  failing  !     His  verses  are :  — 

'  La  maladresse  est  un  deTaut ; 

Mais  tout  s'explique,  et  voici  comme: 
L' imbecile  a  vise  trop  haut, 
II  l'aura  pris  pour  un  grand-homme.' 

Surely  the  maladresse  of  the  assassin  was  not  greater  than  that  of  the  poet, 
that  all  the  French  generals,  with  the  emperor  at  their  head,  should  be 
conquered  by  a  person  who  was  not  a  great  man  at  all.  I  wrote  an 
answer :  — 

A  nos  rrois  premiers  chefs  qui  vainquirent  la  France 

II  coutoit  maint  effort  et  de  glaive  et  de  lance. 

Qui  nous  expliquera,  poete  ou  guerrier,  '  'comme'1 

On  le  fait  aujourd'hui  sans  s'appeler  '  grand  homme  '  t  " 

AS    TO    SERPENTS. 

"  The  only  well-informed  and  rational  man  I  ever  converse  with  here  in- 
forms me  as  a  certain  fact  that  other  serpents  than  are  commonly  met  with 
are  seen' occasionally  on  the  mountains  near  Val  Intel vi,  where  he  formerly 
lived.  In  the  family  of  the  Borromei  is  the  skeleton  of  one,  —  of  that 
species  which  gave  rise  to  the  fable  of  dragons  with  something  like  wings. 
There  is  no  appearance,  he  says,  of  fallacy  in  this  phenomenon.  He  him- 
self has  seen  the  aspide,  which  he  represents  as  having  a  head  broader  and 
larger  than  any  other  snake.  That  some  islands  should  be  exempt  from 
these  reptiles  and  others  abound  in  them  proves  clearer  than  anything  that 
some  are  split  off  from  continents  and  others  emerged  from  the  sea. 
Britain  was  certainly  part  of  a  continent ;  and  one  would  fancy  that  Ire- 
land was,  from  its  proximity.  But  this  simple  fact,  in  my  mind,  destroys 
the  hypothesis.  Cyprus  always  abounded  in  poisonous  reptiles.  Crete 
was  always  exempt  from  them;  so  was  Delos  and  the  Cyclades.  The 
situation  of  all  the  latter  leads  one  to  believe  in  their  marine  origin,  differ- 
ent from  Cyprus.  I  must  go  to  see  the  Borromean  serpent.  I  cannot  but 
suspect  that  a  bat's  wings  have  been  appended  by  some  learned  Tagliaco- 
tius.      If  a  serpent  had  wings,  he  would  have  no  occasion  to  be  a  serpent." 

This  was  Landor's  last  letter  from  Como,  which  he  quitted  for 
Genoa  in  the  following  September.  He  had  already  so  resolved,  as 
we  see  ;  but  when  the  time  came  it  was  no  longer  a  matter  of  choice, 
for  he  had  meanwhile,  as  he  said  himself  in  a  note  to  one  of  his 
sisters,  made  the  place  too  hot  to  hold  him. 


m.    AT  PISA. 

LAST    INCIDENTS    AT    COMO. 

"  A  scoundrel,  one  Monti,  wrote  a  most  violent  invective  in  the  form  of 
a  sonnet  against  England,  in  which  he  prays  that  heaven  may  refuse  her 
light  for  her  wars  and  treachery  against  St.  Napoleon.  I  answered  it  in 
Latin,  and  attempted  to  print  my  poem,  with  an  epigram  on  Voltaire  and 
four  others,  in  which  no  name  whatever  was  employed.  The  censor  de- 
clared that  they  were  six  libels.    I  expostulated  with  him.    I  informed  him, 


liTl*  '    FIRST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^ttas^au' 

for  T  had  consulted  a  sensible  jurist,  that  censors  never  refused  their  license 
to  Latin  compositions  unless  sovereigns  or  their  alliances,  or  religion  or 
morals,  were  attacked.  I  attributed  his  proceeding  to  ignorance  of  these 
customs,  and  not  to  injustice;  and  I  directed  a  copy  of  my  letter  to  Count 
Strasoldo,  principal  of  the  council.  Instead  of  correcting  a  gross  abuse  of 
power,  this  gentleman  wrote  a  long  letter  to  the  regio  delegate  of  the  prov- 
ince. The  regio  delegate  sent  me  information  that  my  Latin  poems  were 
detained  only  because  it  was  customary  to  send  two  copies,  one  of  which 
continued  in  the  archives  of  the  censor,  but  that  if  I  was  desirous  of  it  I 
might  apply  to  his  oifice.  J^ot  caring  about  the  copy,  I  never  went. 
About  a  week  afterwards  he  sent  a  second  letter,  to  inform  me  that  he  re- 
quested  my  attendance  on  affairs  very  interesting  to  me.  I  went  immedi- 
ately. He  then  discovered  his  first  fallacy,  and  began  to  read  a  letter  from 
Count  Strasoldo,  in  which  this  fellow  expressed  his  surprise  that  1  should 
use  injurious  expressions  towards  the  royal  censor,  a  person  immediately 
acting  under  government  He  then  closed  the  letter  and  thought  it  requi- 
site to  make  a  comment  upon  it.  He  was  astonished  that  I  should  write  an 
insolent  Letter.  I  stopped  him  quietly,  and  said,  'Sir,  the  word  insolent  is 
never  applied  to  a  gentleman.  If  you  had  known  the  laws  of  honor  or  pro- 
priety you  would  not  have  used  it;  and  if  you  had  dared  to  utter  it  in  any 
other  place  you  would  have  received  a  bella  bastonata.'  At  this  he  sprang 
from  his  chair  and  rang  the  bell.  He  called  the  guards  and  all  the  officers 
of  the  police,  who  live  under  the  same  roof  during  the  daytime.  With 
these  reinforcements  he  pursued:  '  Prepare  instantly  to  conduct  this  gentle- 
man to  Milan.  Sir,  unless  you  immediately  retract  your  words  you  answer 
to  government.'  I  replied:  'I  never  retracl  any  word  of  mine;  but  I  tell 
you  in  presence  of  all  these  persons  that  before  I  leave  this  room  you  shall 
retract  yours.'  lie  then  pretended  that  he  said' rather  insolent,  that  inso- 
lent meant  disrespectful  or  violent,  that  if  I  had  understood  the  lan- 
guage I  should  not  have  animadverted  on  the  expression,  that  he  expressed 
the  sentiments  of  Count  Strasoldo.  I  replied:  'I  care  not  a  quattrino 
what  are  the  sentiments  of  Count  Strasoldo;  but  he  would  not  dare,  and 
you  may  tell  him  that  he  would  not  dare,  from  me,  to  use  any  such  ex- 
pression  towards  his  equal.  There  is  not  one  among  the  guards  you  have 
called  in  who  would  endure  it.  As  for  your  sending  me  to  Milan  under 
arrest,  do  it,  if  you  are  not  afraid  of  exposing  yourself  still  more  than  you 
have  done.'  He  then  began  talking  of  his  honor,  that  he  had  been  in  the 
service,  that  the  threat  of  a  caning  was  not  to  be  borne,  and  thai  if  it  was 
not  for  his  high  office  be  would  settle  the  business  with  his  sword  in  the 
square.  I  laughed  in  his  face;  and  the  rascal  had  the  baseness  to  offer  his 
hai  d  in  token  of  reconciliation,  and  to  tell  me  what  a  friend  he  had  always 
been  of  the  English.  The  story  was  carried  all  over  the  town  the  same 
evening,  although  it  rained  heavily;  and  what  surprises  me  is  that  it  was 
told  correctly.  I  remained  in  Como  a  week  longer,  rather  wishing  to  be 
senl  for  to  Milan.  My  time  expired  on  the  19th  of  September.  I  pro- 
tracted my  stay  till  the  28th,  and  no  attempt  was  made  to  assassinate 
me." 

After  brief  stay  at  Genoa,  Landor  now  determined  to  settle  at 
Pisa  for  a  time.  He  would  thin  have  pushed  on  to  Florence,  but  the 
reported  cheapness  of  living  at  Pisa  induced  him  to  make  trial  of  it. 

I  w  m    COMO   TO   PISA. 
"  I  reached  Genoa  in  three  days,  the  most  magnificent  city  in  the  world, 


JET.  40-46.] 


AT    PISA.  273 


and  the  most  reasonably  discontented.  I  found  the  people  civil,  and,  con- 
trary to  their  usual  character,  honest.  They  flattered  themselves  that 
20,000  English  were  coming  to  take  them  under  our  dominion.  I  came  to 
Pisa  because  I  had  heard  formerly  that  it  was  a  cheap  place.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  the  very  dearest  I  ever  lived  in,  and  the  tradesmen  sell  nothing 
but  refuse.  Tea  is  double  the  price  it  is  at  Genoa,  and,  considering  the 
quality,  ten  times  dearer.  The  wine  I  cannot  swallow.  Several  English 
gave  fifty  and  forty-five  zechins  a  month  for  indifferent  lodgings.  What 
blockheads  must  those  be  who  imagine  the  hanging  tower  to  have  been 
built  designedly  so !  Almost  every  tower  and  every  great  building  either 
leans  or  fs  cracked  in  the  neighborhood.  In  fact  the  foundations  are  of 
sand,  formerly  covered  by  the  sea.  Here  is  a  cloister  round  an  old  ceme- 
tery called  the  Campo  Santo,  by  much  the  best  building  I  have  seen  in 
Italy.  It  is  a  light  but  not  too  florid  Gothic,  and  by  miracle  no  architect 
has  been  permitted  to  corrupt  it.  The  Italian  architects,  with  the  single 
exception  of  Palladio,  are  the  most  fantastic  merry-andrews.  Even  Bra- 
mante  and  M.  Angelo  would  not  permit  antiquity  to  be  antiquity ;  they 
wanted  girlish  airs  and  graces  where  they  found  matronly  decorum.  I  re- 
main here  rather  more  than  two  months  longer.  Pray  let  me  hear  how 
you  and  Mrs.  S.  do,  and  whether  you  have  bought  your  house  as  you  in- 
tended. If  it  were  in  a  milder  climate  it  would  be  better.  When  we  stand 
between  forty  and  fifty  we  want  the  sun  and  zephyrs  for  other  purposes 
than  poetry." 

READING   WORDSWORTH. 

"  It  is  very,  very  long  indeed  since  I  have  heard  from  you.  I  forget 
whether  in  my  last  letter  or  the  preceding  I  mentioned  that  I  had  received 
the  books.  I  am  reading  over  and  over  again  the  stupendous  poetry  of 
Wordsworth.  In  thoughts,  feelings,  and  images  not  one  amongst  the  an- 
cients equals  him,  and  his  language  (a  rare  thing)  is  English.  Nations  are 
never  proud  of  living  genius.  Surely  no  country  under  heaven  has  pro- 
duced in  twenty  years  so  much  excellent  poetry  and  such  a  rich  lattermath 
of  what  approaches  to  good  as  our  own  in  the  last  twenty.  Our  breakfast- 
table  poets  alone  are  fairly  worth  all  the  long-winded  beaux  of  Louis  XIV. 
I  have,  however,  a  great  fondness  for  La  Fontaine ;  for  I  never  see  an  ani- 
mal, unless  it  be  a  parrot  or  a  monkey  or  a  pug-dog  or  a  serpent,  that  I  do 
not  converse  with  either  openly  or  secretly.  Besides,  La  Fontaine  is  the 
only  French  writer  in  verse  who  knows  when  he  has  said  enough." 

Southey  lost  no  time  in  replying ;  but  another  letter  crossed  his 
on  its  way,  conveying  to  him,  early  in  February,  1819,  a  Latin  ode  to 
Bernadotte,  Carmen  ad  Reg  em  Suedorum. 

"  Hearing  that  all  the  poets  in  France  and  Germany  are  contending  for 
the  prize  decreed  by  the  Academy  of  Stockholm  to  be  given  for  the  best 
ode  on  the  accession  of  Bernadotte,  I  resolved  to  set  myself  against  the 
continent.  If  you  have  any  means  of  forwarding  my  ode  to  the  Royal 
Academy  of  Stockholm,  pray  do.  Bernadotte  has  this  merit :  he  has  kept 
his  word,  and  given  an  excellent  and  most  liberal  constitution  to  Sweden, 
or  rather  restored  one.  For  which  reason  I  place  him  next  to  the  Duke  of 
Saxe -Weimar  among  the  sovereigns  of  Europe,  and  sincerely  wish  him  a 
long  and  happy  reign.  The  few  lines  at  bottom,  announcing  my  intentions, 
should  be  inclosed,  and  sealed  or  wafered  separately.  I  never  felt  greater 
anxiety  than  now  to  hear  from  you.  For  God's  sake  write  soon.  Direct 
Mr.  W.  S.  Landor,  gentiluomo  Inglese,  Firenze,  Italy,  because  the  English 

18 


274  FIRST   SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^a^JST" 

letter-  are  always  put  apart  in  the  office.  I  remember  your  mentioning 
that  Mr.  Frere  bad  made  <>ut  some  old  Greek  ballads  from  the  Odyssea.  It 
ig  curioua  that  Cicero  should  have  entertained  the  same  idea;  surely  not 
from  In-  knowledge  of  poetry.  Ee,  however,  must  have  given  Mr.  Frere 
his  idea  of  the  fact.     Adieu."  Many,  many  happy  years!  " 

The  "  few  lines  at  the  bottom"  were  in  characteristic  vein.  If  the 
lines  got  the  prize,  it  was  to  be  given  away  in  charity.  "Si  forte 
hoc,  Academici,  carmen  praemio  dignetur,  id  velim  pauperibus  detis, 
ant,  quemadmodum  visum  erit,  adversa  valetudine  laborantibus. 
Savagius  Lax  dor." 

Meanwhile  from  Keswick,  on  the  3d  of  January,  Southey  has  ac- 
knowledged ("  it  came  in  eighteen  days")  the  December  letter  from 
Pisa ;  has  excused  his  recent  silence  by  prolonged  anxiety  for  the 
health  of  his  wife  ;  has  recommended  Landor,  when  he  had  seen 
enough  of  Italy,  to  try  a  short  stay  in  Switzerland  ;•  and  has  told 
him  that  before  that  time  they  may  perhaps  meet  again.  "  I  dream 
of  seeing  Rome  before  I  die." 

laxdor's  reply  :  (april,  1819.) 

"  The  idea  that  I  shall  see  you  before  I  leave  Italy  makes  my  residence 
here  much  delightfuller.  When  my  spirits  wax  faint  I  say  to  myself,  'I 
have  yet  to  see  Koine  and  Southey.'  " 

AGAIN  THE  LATIN  ODE  TO  BERXADOTTE. 

"  If  I  remember  right,  your  last  letter  of  the  3d  of  January  came  a  few 
days  after  I  wrote  from  Pisa.  Mine  contained  an  ode  to  the  King  of 
Sweden.  I  wrote  it,  both  because  I  consider  him  as  the  most  patriotic 
king  that  ever  lived,  and  because  I  hear  the  Germans  and  French  are  con- 
tending for  a  prize  to  be  given  for  the  best  poem  on  the  subjed  by  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Sweden.  In  a  Beparate  piece  of  paper  r  said  something 
lis  kind:  'Si  carmen  hoc  nostrum  prsemio  dignum  judicabitur,  habeant 
pauperes,'  with  my  name.     If  my  letter  reached  you,  perhaps  you  have  had 

sol pportunity  of  sending  it  to  the  president     Lest  it  should  not,  I  will 

transcribe  the  verses  again,  nol  caring  greatly  whether  they  ever  reaeh  their 
further  destination  or  not.  Remember  what  a  library  you  sent  me  last  year, 
and  pray  do  not  think  of  adding  anything  to  the  two  volumes  I  am  anx- 
iously expecting,  the  last  of  the  History  of  Brazil  and  Life  of  Wesley.  I 
shall  read  both  with  great  interest,  but  less  the  first  time  than  Roderick  the 
fourth.  Roderick,  I  think,  contains  a  greater  variety  of  powers  put  into 
action  than  Kehama.  It  did  not  delighl  me  nor  agitate  me  so  much,  yet 
•  is  no  poem  in  existence  that  I  shall  read  so  often." 

Very  sore  was  Southey's  need  of  his  friend's  praise  just  now,  for 
upon  him  and  upon  Wordsworth  dark  days  had  set  in.  The  still 
continuing  and  increasing  rage  for  Byron  and  his  imitators  had  all 
but  extinguished  what  scant  popularity  the  others  once  enjoyed,  and 
for  selling  power  their  books  were  at  zero.  Southey  bad  hoped  to 
see  the  bubble  burst  in  a  year  or  two  ;  but  double  the  time  bad  come 
and  gone,  and  never  did  it  soar  so  high  as  now,  or  flare  out  with 
what  doubtless  seemed  to  him  such  frothy  but  highly  colored  pre- 


JET.  40-46.]  AT    PISTOIA.  275 

tences.  Replying  to  that  letter  of  his  friend  in  May,  1819,  he  can- 
not control  his  temper.  He  describes  the  fashionable  compound  as 
made  up  of  morbid  feelings,  atrocious  principles,  exaggerated  charac- 
ters, and  incidents  of  monstrous  and  disgusting  horror ;  adding  that 
the  more  un-English,  un-Christian,  and  immoral  it  was,  the  surer  it 
was  of  being  better  liked,  provided  only  it  were  slavered  over  with  a 
froth  of  philosophy.  Was  it  wonderful  that,  such  being  the  fashion, 
Wordsworth  was  despised  and  abused  1  The  getting  abused  in  such 
company  was  his  own  solitary  bit  of  comfort,  for  nobody  paid  him 
the  compliment  of  imitating  what  he  did.  His  friend's  ode  had  gone 
to  Sweden  through  the  ambassador ;  and  he  was  going  shortly  to 
send  him,  by  Wordsworth's  express  desire,  a  little  poem  with  a  pro- 
logue he  would  be  much  pleased  with.*  At  the  close  of  the  letter, 
which  announces  also  the  birth  of  a  son,  he  tells  Landor  that  some- 
body had  mentioned  him  that  week  in  the  Westmoreland  Gazette  as 
the  English  poet  who  most  resembles  Goethe.  "I  do  not  know 
enough  of  Goethe  to  judge  how  far  this  assertion  may  be  right  ;  but 
a  writer  who  estimated  you  so  justly  must  have  been  capable  of  esti- 
mating him.  0  that  you  had  been  as  incapable  of  writing  Latin 
verse  as  I  am  !     God  bless  you." 

To  this  letter  Landor  replied  from  Pistoia  ;  whither  he  had  gone, 
moving  still  nearer  to  Florence,  at  the  approach  of  the  summer  of 
1819. 

IV.    AT  PISTOIA. 

BIRTH    OF    A    SOX    TO    SOUTHEY  :    JUNE,    1819. 

"  Thank  God !  Tears  of  joy  came  into  my  eyes  on  seeing  that  you  are 
blessed  with  a  son.  The  same  kind  Providence  that  has  given  the  child 
will  watch  over  the  mother.  Present  my  most  cordial  congratulations  to 
her,  and  tell  her  that  of  all  the  women  that  exist  on  earth,  she  has  occupied 
my  thoughts  the  most  for  many,  many  months.  A  long  series  of  happy  days 
lies  before  you,  —  of  happy  days  well  earned.  I  am  glad  on  every  account 
that  your  brother  is  come  to  reside  near  you.f  Exercise  in  itself  is  good ; 
but  the  cessation  of  study,  at  more  frequent  intervals  than  you  are  disposed 
to  allow,  is  far  more  important.  I  never  studied  so  much  as  you  have  always 
done,  yet,  after  four  years  of  a  rather  close  attention  to  books,  my  eyes  were 
weakened.  Sea-bathing  restored  them,  but  they  are  sometimes  dim.  I 
used  to  play  the  river- god  in  a  very  humble  manner,  placing  the  palms  of 
my  hands  upon  the  hard  gravel  of  the  Arrow,  and  making  my  legs  plash 
about  like  weeds.  Idleness  is  as  dear  to  me  as  to  .any  gypsy,  but  above  all, 
idleness  in  the  water  or  upon  it." 

BRAZIL    AND    THE    AMERICAN    REPUBLICS. 

"  In  respect  to  Brazil,  you  have  many  means  of  forming  a  correct  judg- 
ment which  I  have  not,  but  I  differ  from  you  totally.     Mali  pecoris  contagia 

*  "  Peter  Bell." 

t  Southey's  letter  had  told  of  his  hrother  the  sea-captain's  farm  within  four  miles 
of  Keswick,  and  of  his  own  pleasure  in  visiting  him  there,  and  bathing  in  the  "  beck  " 
at  the  bottom  of  his  fields,  "  where  there  are  natural  baths  of  all  depths,  and  seats 
■where  you  may  act  the  river-god." 


27G  FIRST    SIX    YEARS    IX    ITALY.  ^Su-if' 

Icedent.  The  Portuguese  will  not  be  seduced  by  the  republic  of  Venezuela; 
the  inhabitants  of  Monte  Video,  whether  subject  to  Brazil  or  not,  will  har- 
monize little  with  the  Brazilians,  but  the  sailors  and  merchants  of  North 
rica  will  instil  the  slower  poison  of  disaffection.  The  military  system 
of  Brazil  is  both  oppressive  and  inefficient  Chili  seems  to  me  the  most 
likely  to  be  happy  and  powerful :  happy  because  virtuous,  powerful  because 
unassailable.  The  climate,  the  people,  the  remote  situation,  are  equally 
favorable  to  the  growth  of  freedom.  I  wish  they  were  governed  by  a  Ber- 
nadotte  or  a  Oonsalvi.  But  how  seldom  in  a  thousand  years  is  a  nation 
blessed  with  such  prudent  statesmen!  Would  to  God  that  either  one 
or  the  other  had  governed  England  at  the  commencement  of  the  French 
Revolution  I  France  had  been  divided  by  her  factions  at  this  hour,  and 
England  the  arbitress  of  Europe  without  the  pressure  of  debt. 

'  Yankee-land  *  will  crack  and  split  asunder,  either  in  the  combustion  of 
party  or  under  the  driving  sirocco  of  avarice,  but  will  corrupt  many 
thousands  of  our  seamen  first,  and  injure  the  character  of  our  merchants  by 
her  connection  with  them." 

BYROX,  HIMSELF,  AXD  GOETHE. 

"  It  is  just  as  easy  to  write  a  breakfast-table  poem  as  to  make  the  draw- 
ing of  a  giant  on  a  wall :  who  cares  about  the  features,  or  looks  for  anything 
but  the  giant  ?     I  have  read  the  Bride  of  Ahydos.     Lord  B.  may  well  ask, 

*  Know  ye  the  land 
Where  the  citron  and  olive  are  fairest  of  fruit, 
And  the  voice  of  the  nightingale  never  is  mute?  ' 

\Yho  the  devil  does  ?  But  why  should  the  young  rascal,  the  hero  of  the 
piece,  take  such  infinite  pains  to  show  his  mistress  his  insincerity  at  the 
moment  he  would  seduce  her  from  home  ? 

'  Bound  where  thou  wilt,  ray  barb,  or  glide  my  prow, 
Hut  be  the  star  that  guides  the  wanderer,  thou.'1 

The  star  then  is  either  a  barb  or  a  boat,  explain  it  as  he  may  afterwards. 
There  are  several  other  such  incoherences,  not  worth  looking  for.  I  would 
never  publish  a  poem  that  contained  any  character  of  a  human  being  until 
I  had  lived  with  that  character  two  or  three  years.  I  left  off  Count  Julian 
and  his  daughter  twice,  because  each  had  said  things  which  other  person- 
mighl  say:  the  other  characters  are  no  characters  at  all,  —  mere  shad- 
ows, passing  before  me  often,  but  never  entering  into  my  heart,  or 
questioned  by  me  why  they  did  this  or  thought  that.  As  to  Gebir,  I  am 
certain  that  1  rejected  what  almost  every  man  would  call  the  best  part.  I 
am  afraid  that  I  have  boiled  away  too  much,  and  that  something  of  a  native 
flavor  has  been  losl  in  procuring  a  stronger  and  more  austere  one.  My  sole 
felicity  as  a  poet  is  this,  that  when  I  wrote  Gebir  I  had  read  no  modem 
Continental  poetry  whatever,  except  the  Henriade  of  Voltaire,  one  tragedy 
(1  forgel  which )  ,,f  Corneille,  and  La  Fontaine's  fables.  Fresh  from  reading 
the  Greek  tragedians  and  Pindar,  Voltaire  and  Corneille  were  intolerable  to 
me.  La  Fontaine  gave  me,  and  gives  me  still,  great  pleasure,  because  I  love 
to  enter  into  the  thoughts  of  animals  and  contract  a  friendship  with  them 

*  Southey  had  talked  freely  in  his  last  letter  of  Yankee-land  in  connection  with  a 
visit  to  him  of  some  young  Bostonians,  George  Ticknor  and  others,  whom  he  had  (bond 
accomplished  in  Bne  literature  tar  beyond  the  run  of  their  countrymen)  but  who 
had  failed  to  cure  him  of  hie  grudge  against  America  ''Our  French  neighbors  are 
fond  <>f  comparing  u-  to  the  Carthaginians,  but  the  parallel  would  suit  the  Americans 
better,  for  their  commercial,  military,  and  nuvul  skill,  their  boundless  ambition,  their 
dishonesty,  and  their  lack  of  literature." 


JET.  40-46.]  AT    PISTOIA.  277 

whenever  they  come  in  my  way.  I  could  wish  I  understood  a  little  Ger- 
man, to  see  the  resemblance  between  me  and  so  celebrated  a  poet  as  Goethe. 
I  do  not  admire  his  Sorrows  of  Werter" 

POETS    AND    THEIR    IMITATORS. 

"  I  am  glad  you  have  finished  the  History  of  Brazil,  not  because  our  liter- 
ature wanted  history,  as  it  did  most  grievously,  but  because  the  New  England 
poem  will  give  you  in  writing  and  me  in  reading  ten  thousand  times  greater 
delight.  You  have  no  imitators,  not  because  you  are  not  fashionable  only, 
but  because  you  have  no  trick.  Have  you  never  observed  how  fond  low 
people  are  (and  poetry  has  its  low  people)  of  imitating  any  legerdemain  ? 
God  in  his  mercy  preserve  you  and  Wordsworth  first  from  translators,  and 
next  from  imitators.  The  present  of  a  book  from  W.  will  be  one  of  the  three 
or  four  eras  in  my  life ;  and  those  who  come  after  me,  if  they  remember 
and  love  me,  will  show  it  to  their  friends.  Give  your  little  boy  a  kiss  for 
me.  In  one  of  my  letters  that  miscarried  from  Como  I  mentioned  that  I 
also  had  a  son.  He  begins  to  walk.  I  am  anxious  for  the  time  when  he 
will  talk  as  much  nonsense  to  me  as  I  have  to  him.  Among  my  few  bless- 
ings I  have  always  reckoned  this,  that  every  child  in  the  world  loves 
me.  Amongst  grown  men,  I  question  whether  there  are  five  upon  earth  that 
do." 

The  same  subjects  are  resumed  and  pursued  in  another  letter, 
written  also  from  Pistoia  in  the  following  month,  which  continues 
the  reply  to  his  friend. 

SOUTHEY'S   SON  :   JULY,    1819. 

"  On  the  receipt  of  your  letter,  which  gave  me  more  joy  than  anything 
that  has  occurred  for  many  years,  I  immediately  wrote  an  answer,  and  re- 
quested Dr.  Randolph  to  leave  it,  with  a  little  poem,  at  Longman's.  A  few 
hours  afterwards  I  recollected  that  he  did  not  think  of  reaching  England 
before  October.  What  a  large  and  varied  scene  of  delights  and  enjoyments 
is  opening  before  you !  Nor  are  they  lost  upon  me.  I  enjoy  them  in  all 
my  walks,  and  in  all  the  better  moments  of  my  solitude." 

DRAWBACKS    OP    BATHING    IN    THE    OMBRONE. 

"  I  too  used  formerly  to  act  the  river-god  and  sea-god  on  every  fair  oc- 
casion ;  but  our  Ombrone  is  a  river  only  a  few  months  in  the  year,  and  if  I 
assumed  the  dignity  of  representing  him  in  any  little  hollow  of  his  channel, 
there  would  be  a  danger  of  being  obliged  to  sustain  the  same  character  in 
the  streets  of  Pistoia.  The  first  passenger  would  steal  my  clothes.  Have 
you  never  observed  in  the  Roman  writers  how  perpetually  they  talk  of 
thieves  ?  All  the  authors  on  husbandry,  and  all  the  poets,  are  full  of  them. 
The  windows  of  every  house,  both  in  town  and  country,  are  barred  below. 
The  Italians  have  always  been  the  most  thievish  of  nations,  and  I  think  the 
French  (to  their  honor  be  it  spoken)  the  least." 

WORDSWORTH    AND    HIS    ASSAILANTS. 

"  I  am  impatient  to  see  Wordsworth's  new  poem :  partly,  I  am  afraid, 
from  an  avidity  of  honor.  This  passion  preys  upon  me  as  little  as  upon 
most  men,  but  I  am  rather  feverish  at  the  thought  that  Wordsworth  is 


278  FIRST   SIX    TEARS   IN   ITALY.  ^5-™ 

about  to  give  me  nno  of  his  writings.  Exhort  him,  if  he  wants  exhorting, 
to  continue  his  greal  work;  and,  if  it  can  be  done  without  offending  him, 
press  him  never  to  notice  in  future  those  contemptible  writers  and  had  men 
to  whom  his  notice  even  in  resentmenl  is  an  important  acquisition.  Hos- 
tility, not  only  between  states,  but  between  individuals,  is  apt  to  present 
some  idea  of  parity.  God  forbid  that  these  rascals,  drunk  or  dreaming, 
should  ever  experience  or  excite  it." 

AGAIN    THE    AMERICAN    REPUBLICS. 

"Your  History  of  Brazil  contains  facts  which  would  have  been  eternally 
losl  to  the  world  if  you  had  not  collected  them.  In  my  opinion  another 
half-volume  would  close  it  entirely.  I  cannot  see  how  so  vile  a  govern- 
ment can  endure  seven  years.  What  an  amazing  general  is  Artigas! 
Europe  has  seen  nothing  like  him  since  Sertorius.  Happy  would  it  have 
been  for  Buenos  Ayres  it'  its  armies  had  been  intrusted  to  this  marvellous 
creature  instead  of  opposed  to  him.  I  hope  our  government  will  discern 
that  South  America  may  become  our  best  ally  against  North  America,  and 
that  we  may,  next  year  or  the  following,  assist  it  in  recovering  Florida  or 
Louisiana. 

"Our  firsl  business  is  to  intercept  the  rotten  expedition  at  the  moment 
when  the  crew  is  dying  of  thirst.  I  dread  the  future  naval  power  of  North 
America,  because  she  will  fight  us  with  the  best  of  our  own  sailors,  and  will 
employ  none  but  experienced  ones.  Why  could  not  we  have  given  every 
sailor  a  badge,  and  have  paid  his  arrears  weekly,  with  rather  more  than  a 
proportional  increase?  In  that  case  they  must  have  remained  with  England  ; 
they  would  have  received  somewhat  above  their  due,  and,  before  it  could 
be  exhausted,  would  have  found  new  employment  from  our  merchants,  who 
should  have  been  obliged  to  take  those  who  bore  the  badge  in  preference  to 
others. 

"  It  appears  to  me  perfectly  just  to  strip  Spain  of  Mexico  and  the  Island 
of  Chiloe.  A  declaration  of  war  against  us  could  never  have  done  us  a 
tenth  of  the  injury  we  suffer  from  the  cession  of  Florida.  The  South  Sea 
presents  a  new  world  to  our  commerce,  which  territory  alone  can  establish 
and  secure." 

CLOSE    OF    THE    LETTER. 

"I  hope  Mrs.  Southey  has  quite  recovered  from  her  confinement,  and 
that  your  little  boy  will  he  your  comfort  and  blessing. 

"  1  just  now  remember  some  verses  I  wrote  last  year  at  Nervi,  near 
Genoa  :  — 

JSstate  dulce  est,  sub  latebris  ruphrm, 

Aura  marina  mitibusque  Auctions 

Mentem  atque  corpus  otiosum  traders; 

Sed  gaudium  isto  mains  unom  <>t  gandio 

Quascunque  terras  afloat  mare,  innatana 

'IV,  patria,  tango,  et  potior  amplexn  tuo." 

At  the  approach  of  winter  Landor  turned  back  to  Pisa;  disap- 
pointed of  a  house  he  leu,,  d  t,,  have  engaged  in  Florence,  but  still 
bent  upon  finally  settling  there.  His  principal  occupation  since  he 
left  Como  had  l n  the  preparation  of  a  Latin  dissertation,  to  ac- 
company another  more  complete  collection  of  his  Latin  Poems,  On 
the  use  and  cultivation  of  the  language  by  modern  Latinists,  the  rea- 
sons why  they  were  not   read  more  widely,  and  the  advantages  that 


JET.  40-46.]  AT    PISTOIA.  279 

would  result  from  employing  Latin  universally  in  works  of  taste  and 
imagination.  Upon  this  latter  amazing  paradox  he  wasted  wonderful 
pains  and  ingenuity  ;  and  for  its  extraordinary  mastery  over  the 
language,  its  free  and  daring  criticism  of  classics  both  ancient  and 
modern,  and  its  varied  reading  not  alone  in  Greek  and '  Latin  but  in 
Italian  and  English  literature,  it  would  justify  a  mention  in  greater 
detail  than  can  be  given  to  it  here.*  I  use  it  here  only  as  an  illus- 
tration of  character.  It  was  written  under  a  persuasion,  absolute 
while  it  lasted,  that  he  might  thus  obtain  an  audience  for  what  he 
had  to  say  not  only  greatly  wider  but  far  more  enduring  than  if 
he  continued  to  write  in  his  native  tongue  ;  and  though  he  soon 
repented  of  this  purpose  to  put  forth  nothing  more  in  English  that 
was  either  critical  or  imaginative,  he  had  a  lurking  belief  to  the  very 
last,  that  he  shoidd  live  to  be  recognized  as  a  poet  by  reason  of  his 
Latin  writings,  when  not  only  his,  but  all  the  English  poems  contem- 
porary with  his,  should  with  the  language  itself  have  drifted  hope- 
lessly away.  Nor  were  the  eccentric  turns  of  his  temper  on  this 
point  without  some  advantage  in  the  end.  Never  till  he  was  making 
that  preposterous  engagement  to  use  the  brave  old  speech  no  longer, 
had  he  made  himself  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with  its  masterpieces 
even  in  tracks  quite  apart  from  his  ordinary  reading.  What  the 
character  of  his  studies  had  been  in  past  days  of  leisure  he  has 
already  related  in  his  letter  to  the  Chancellor  Eldon,f  and  his  silent 
companions  at  Llanthony  were  his  later  heroes  in  many  an  imaginary 
conversation  ;  but  besides  this  large  acquaintance  with  other  than 
English  writers,  the  latter  also  had  recently  become  more  variously  fa- 
miliar to  him.  Until  he  lived  abroad,  he  used  to  say  he  did  not  know 
what  a  library  was  ;  and  very  generally  he  had  now  enlarged  the 
circle  of  the  authors  with  whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  passing  great 
portions  of  his  time.  "  You  surprised  me,"  wrote  Walter  Birch  %  to 
him  just  before  he  quitted  Pistoia,  "  by  the  familiarity  you  displayed 
with  the  literature  of  our  old  divines  in  the  letter  I  had  from  you 
almost  a  year  ago."  Another  remark  from  the  same  letter  may  be 
added.  Landor  had  been  writing  to  his  old  school-fellow  of  the 
Latin  Essay  he  had  in  hand,  and  of  the  eulogy  it  would  contain  of 
Wordsworth  ;  and  "  woidd  you  believe  it,"  Birch  replies,  "  I  inquired 
for  the  Excursion  at  Upham's  last  year,  and  found  that  they  did  not 
even  know  that  such  a  book  had  been  published."  The  poem  had 
been  out  nearly  five  years  when  this  letter  was  written. 

*  With  some  changes  and  many  additions  it  will  be  found  at  the  close  of  his 
Poemata  et  Inscriptiones  (1847). 

t  Ante,  p.  210. 

I  In  the  same  letter  Birch  announces  to  Landor  his  marriage,  and  tells  him  he  has 
become  "rusticated  and  country-parson-fied  "  upon  a  living  in  Wiltshire  which  Lord 
Pembroke  had  given  him.  This  he  changed  three  years  later  for  a  better  living  in 
Essex  given  him  by  his  college,  and  which  he  held  to  his  death. 


280  FIRST   SIX   YEARS   IN    ITALY.  ^a??-™' 

V.    AGAIN  AT  PISA. 

A    BIRTHDAY    LETTER   TO    SOUTHEY  :    30TH   JANUARY,    1820. 

"  It  appears  to  me  an  age  since  I  heard  from  you,  nor  have  I  yet  received 
the  new  poenl  of  Wordsworth.  A  poem  given  by  him,  as  I  have  just  been 
telling  my  friend  Walter  Birch,  is  like  a  kingdom  given  by  Alexander  or 
Cyrus.  As  1  myself  have  been  confined  by  a  bilious  and  nervous  fever,  I 
lam  nil  that  something  of  the  kind  must  have  happened  to  you.  God  for- 
bid. Neither  my  time  nor  my  life  are  worth  anything;  but  yours  are  very 
precious,  and.  like  the  mines  of  Mexico,  have  many  proprietors.  I  think 
my  las!  letter  contained  a  long  extract  from  a  poem  I  have  written  called 
'Catillus  and  Salia';  but  I  have  not  begun  the  necessary  custom  of  taking 
any  note  of  what  I  write  about,  so  that  some  favorite  thought  may  occur 
two  or  three  times,  and  another,  more  necessary,  drop  altogether.  I  sup- 
pose the  intelligence  has  reached  England  that  Cicero's  book  De  Republica 
has  been  discovered  at  Rome  by  Angelo  Mai.  I  read  Cicero  with  inde- 
scribable delight  ;  but  I  would  rather  either  read  or  have  written  almost  any 
one  of  Wordsworth's  later  poems  than  the  most  celebrated  work  of  Cicero. 
I  have  often  turned  both  to  his  and  to  yours,  sometimes  to  make  my  heart, 
sometimes  my  spirits,  and  sometimes  my  body  better;  for  good  poetry  and 
perfect  solitude  I  have  always  found  the  best  nurses.  My  brother  Robert 
informs  me  that  he  has  sent,  addressed  to  you  at  Longman's,  my  poem, 
Sporuaiia  Polyxenai  ;*  and,  what  is  of  more  importance,  that  he  has  heard 
from  .Mr.  Scnhouse  that  you  are  well.  But  his  letter  is  dated  above  three 
months  ago.  I  sent  the  poem  in  .June,  and  wrote  either  in  May  or  April. 
You  told  me  in  your  last  that  Mrs.  Southey  had  just  recovered  from  a  very 
severe  and  dangerous  illness.  I  am  extremely  anxious  to  hear  how  she 
does;  and  pray  give  your  little  boy  a  kiss  for  me.  This  is  my  birthday  ; 
and  as  I  never,  as  far  as  I  can  recollect,  slept  soundly  on  its  anniversary,  I 
do  not  flatter  myself  that  I  shall  to-night.     Gray  talks  of 

'  Slumbers  light  that  fly  the  approach  of  morn.' 
Mine  are  and  always  were  light  enough,  but  instead  of  '  flying  the  approach  of 
morn.'  they  wait ,  for  it.  I  sometimes  amuse  myself  with  writing  Latin  poetry 
or  correcting  what  I  have  written,  but  I  read  little.  Some  time  or  other  I 
propose  to  finish  Dante,  which  I  began  about  eleven  years  ago,  but  wanted 
perseverance.  A  twentieth  or  thirtieth  part  of  what  I  read  was  excellent. 
You  cannot  say  the  same  of  Ariosto.  Pie  is  a  Carnival  poet;  but  he  is 
never  very  bad.  When  shall  we  see  your  Quaker  ?  Do  not  let  the  times 
make  any  impression  on  your  writings,  and  as  little  as  possible  on  your 
mind.  I  think  of  England  as  if  I  were  in  another  worid  and  had  lost  all 
personal  interest  in  it.  I  foresaw  and  predicted  the  whole  of  these  calami- 
ties when  that  madman  Pitt  united  the  French  of  all  parties  by  hostility. 
Men  reduced  1<>  poverty  must,  he  discontented.  We  wither  the  tree  and 
complain  that  it  becomes  touchwood  and  catehes  fire.  I  shall  remain  here 
all  the  winter,  all  the  spring,  and  perhaps  the  summer.  So  that  I  cherish 
the  bope  of  hearing  from  you  more  than  once  before  my  departure.  Pisa, 
January  30." 

Southey  replies  with  renewed  lamentation  over  the  misfortune  of 
his  friend's  predilection  for  Latin  verse,  of  which  he  never  thinks  but 

*  Ante,  p.  2'">7.  It  i-  the  same  "  little  pnem  "  to  which  he  refers  in  his  last-quoterl 
letter,  and  which  be  had  now  privately  printed. 


MT.  40-46.]  AGAIN   AT   PISA.  281 

as  of  a  great  loss  to  English  literature  ;  speaks  of  Byron's  imitations 
of  Frere  in  Beppo  and  Don  Juan,  the  last  of  which  he  denounces  as 
"  a  foul  blot  in  the  literature  of  his  country,  an  act  of  high  treason 
in  English  poetry,  for  which  the  author  deserves  damnation  " ;  and 
gives  news  of  Wordsworth's  doings  and  his  own. 

"  Wordsworth's  '  Peter  Bell '  has  not  been  sent  to  you  yet,  because  I  have 
been  waiting  for  other  things  to  accompany  it ;  by  itself  it  would  neither  be 
worth  carriage  nor  have  any  chance  of  reaching  you,  unless  an  opportunity 
had  offered  of  sending  it  by  a  private  hand.  It  will  have  in  company  now 
as  many  other  of  his  smaller  pieces  as  suffice,  with  it,  to  form  a  third  volume 
of  his  poems.  The  last  of  these  portions  is  now  in  the  press,  and  my  '  Life 
of  Wesley  '  will  be  forthcoming  nearly  at  the  same  time,  —  in  the  course  of 
three  or  four  weeks.  He  desires  me  to  send  the  whole,  having  as  just  a 
sense  of  your  powers  as  a  poet  as  you  have  of  his.  Wesley  and  the  third 
volume  of  Brazil  will  give  form  and  weight  to  the  parcel ;  I  do  not  how- 
ever mean  to  undervalue  them.  You  will  find  some  very  interesting  mat- 
ter in  both.  I  hope  also  that  I  shall  be  able  to  send  some  verses  of  my 
own  upon  the  king's  death.  My  taste  for  ex-officio  verses  is  not  very  unlike 
your  own.  But  you  will  not  be  apprehensive  that  I  shall  debase  myself  by 
the  matter ;  and  the  manner  will  interest  you  as  an  experiment  in  versifica- 
tion." 

In  the  same  letter,  dated  March,  1820,  there  is  a  sharp  protest 
against  Landor's  recent  praise  of  one  of  the  South  American  leaders. 
"  You  must  have  seen  some  exaggerated  accounts  of  Artigas.  He  is 
merely  one  of  the  ruffians  whom  circumstances  have  brought  for- 
ward in  that  miserable  part  of  the  world  :  those  of  Buenos  Ayres 
being  only  not  so  bad  as  those  of  Venezuela  because  they  have  not 
had  an  opportunity  as  yet  of  committing  as  many  crimes.  A  deluge 
that  should  sweep  those  countries  clean  would  be  a  merciful  visita- 
tion :  such  is  the  character  of  their  present  inhabitants,  and  such 
the  atrocity  with  which  they  carry  on  an  internecine  warfare." 

To  this  Landor  rejoined  in  May. 

"  In  a  few  days  I  shall  have  despatched  for  England  a  volume  of  Latin 
poems,  which  will  be  printed  at  the  close  of  the  ensuing  week.  Longman 
will  send  you  a  couple  of  copies,  together  with  one  for  Wordsworth.  I  beg 
that  one  of  the  copies  may  be  presented  with  my  compliments  to  your 
uncle  Mr.  Hill,  of  whom  I  have  often  thought  since  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
meeting  him  at  Bristol,  and  to  whom  the  literary  world  is  so  much  indebted 
for  the  strength  with  which  he  has  supplied  you  for  the  History  of  Brazil. 
Yet  I  wish  that  cursed  country  had  never  been  discovered,  since  it  with- 
draws your  attention  from  poetry.  The  English  consider  the  Portuguese 
and  the  negroes  in  nearly  the  same  point  of  interest,  and  all  the  genius  in 
the  world  will  never  make  your  History  a  popular  work.  Now  about  Arti- 
gas. I  never  read  anything  about  him  except  in  the  newspapers ;  but  I 
conversed  one  day  with  an  ignorant  but  acute  Swiss  who  had  resided  four 
months  at  Monte  Video  and  a  year  at  Buenos  Ayres.  He  assured  me  that 
A.  was  more  dreaded  by  the  latter  city  than  all  the  Spaniards  and  Portu- 
guese united ;  that  while  he  was  at  Monte  Video  A.  had  destroyed  nearly  a 
whole  regiment  lately  arrived  from  Portugal,  and  obliged  four  thousand 
Portuguese  to  retreat.     Yet  he  had  no  money  except  what  arose  from  the 


282  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^.JJ' 


confiscation  of  Portuguese  property  and  the  sale  of  licenses  to  capture 
their  vessels,  the  whole  amount  of  which  in  a  year  could  not  amount  to 
20,000  dollars,  The  greatest  force  he  ever  collected  was  2,800.  Surely 
then  whatever  may  be  the  moral  character,  whatever  the  political  views,  of 
this  man.  in  war  no  age  has  produced  his  superior  except  J.  Caesar  and  Ser- 
torius.  He  appears  to  possess  a  surprising  influence  over  the  near  tribes 
in  all  directions,  particularly  about  Buenos  Ayres  and  Monte  Video.  The 
troops  be  has  beaten  and  destroyed  fought  under  Lord  Wellington  and  are 
equal  to  our  own.  He  has  killed  of  Spanish  Americans  and  Portuguese 
from  seven  to  ten  thousand  at  different  times,  with  the  loss  of  about  2,000, 
and  was  never  beaten.  The  Portuguese  are  unwilling  t<>  attack  him  when 
he  commands  in  person,  but  he  is  often  forced  to  be  absent  to  collect  troops 
and  encourage  the  provinces  in  his  favor.  This  man  (the  Swiss;  was  inter- 
cepted and  plundered  by  his  soldiers,  but  supplied  with  provisions,  a  horse, 
a  guide,  and  allowed  to  go  to  Buenos  Ayres.  I  hope  the  government  of 
Buenos  Ayres  will  conciliate  an  enemy  so  formidable:  if  not,  that  he  will 
overturn  it  and  exterminate  the  Portuguese  government,  than  which  noth- 
ing ever  was  more  iniquitous  in  its  whole  system.  Foller  (the  Swiss)  cor- 
roborates all  that  Ko>ter  says  of  the  mode  of  levying  troops,  and  the  taxes 
have  since  1  icen  much  increased.  Floreat  quercus  Guernica.  Adieu.  I 
have  a  tew  hooks  which  1  want  to  send  you.  Did  not  you  say  that,  if  di- 
rected to  the  Austrian  ambassador,  books  came  to  you  free?  Give  me  the 
direction." 

Southey's  next  letter  (19th  of  August)  announced  that  the  books 
so  long  promised  by  himself  had  been  despatched  :  Wordsworth's 
Peter  Bell  and  Sonnets  on  the  River  Duddon,  with  his  own  last  vol- 
ume of  the  History  of  Brazil  and  his  Life  of  Wesley.  It  told  also 
of  his  other  labors  in  history  and  poetry,  the  Peninsular  War  and 
the  Tale  of  Paraguay  ;  the  last  retarded  by  the  Spenser  stanza,  but 
now  resumed  once  more.  It  related  some  of  the  incidents  of  the  new 
reign  ;  Scott's  baronetcy  ;  his  own  doctorate  at  Oxford,  where  nobody 
even  at  bis  own  college  remembered  him,  except  the  old  porter  and  his 
wife  ;  the  proceedings  begun  a  month  before  against  "the  modern  Mes- 
Balina,"  with  the  support  given  her  by  the  devilish  newspapers,  the  mor- 
al pestilence  of  the  age  ;  and  the  beautiheation  of  London,  which  his 
friend  will  scarcely  know  when  he  returns  to  it,  if  the  Catilines 
should  not  first  have  burnt  it  down.  Finally  it  told  of  a  Series  of 
Dialogues  which  he  proposed  to  write  upon  a  plan  suggested  by 
Boethius  ;  and  this  announcement,  as  it  turned  out,  was  a  very  mem- 
orable  one  for  Landor,  whose  reply  was  written  in  September,  and 
begins  with  allusion  to  the  books  he  in  the  foregoing  letter  had 
promised  his  friend. 

A  HATCH  OF  OLD  BOOKS  FOR  SOUTHEY. 

"My  anxiety  to  receive  your  last  volume  of  the  Brazilian  History,  the 

Life  of  Wesley,  ami  Wordsworth's  poems,  is  sharpened  if  possible  by  the 

letter  I  receive  to-day.  .  .  .  Two  of  the   hooks  I  proposed  sending  to  you 

folios  and  heavy.     One  is  Vincentii  Speculum  Eistorise,  praised  highly 

by  Scaliger,  and  in  which  he  Bays  things  are  found  which  are  found  no- 
where else.     1  have  read  a  great  deal  of  the  book  with  surprise  and  satis- 


JET.  40 -46.  J 


AGAIN   AT   PISA.  283 


faction.  Tell  me  if  you  have  it ;  and  if  not,  whether  you  think  it  worth 
the  duty.  The  other  folio  is  Paul  Hoste's  Treatise  on  Naval  Tactics,  which 
perhaps  may  amuse  your  brother.  The  French  pretend  that  it  has  taught 
us  everything  we  know  of  such  matters.  It  certainly  is  a  scientific  work, 
and  contains  some  pretty  vignettes:  commendations  which  the  French 
would  naturally  place  together.  The  other  books  are  small,  and  valueless 
in  all  other  respects  than  that  I  have  found  few  of  them  in  the  public 
libraries.  They  are  chiefly  modern  Latinists,  of  which  some  persons,  I  hear, 
begin  to  make  collections,  among  others  Mr.  Heber." 

BRAZIL    AND    THE    ROMAN    CATHOLIC    RELIGION. 

"  I  am  reading  a  second  time  your  History  of  Brazil,  —  a  totally  new 
world  to  all  the  literary  men  in  Europe,  whatever  may  be  their  pretensions. 
If  you  had  not  undertaken  the  work,  it  never  could  have  been  performed. 
If  my  opinion  is  correct,  that  barbarism  is  constituted  of  three  principal 
things,  filth,  cruelty,  and  superstition,  the  difference  is  hardly  anything  be- 
tween the  discoverers  and  the  discovered.  But  the  spirit  of  discovery, 
you  will  argue,  proves  the  superiority.  I  do  not  see  that.  The  spirit 
that  induced"  the  American  to  search  for  wild  animals  to  eat  is  more  nat- 
ural, more  laudable,  and  more  sagacious  than  that  which  propelled  the 
Spaniard  and  Portuguese  to  hazard  his  life  and  lose  his  comforts  in  search 
of  what  was  more  difficult  to  find  and  more  unsatisfactory  when  found. 
The  Roman  Catholic  superstition  appears  to  me  infinitely  worse  than  any 
other  species  of  idolatry,  because  it  has  every  evil  inherent  in  it  which  any 
one  of  those  has,  and  in  addition  is  more  prepense  to  intolerance  and  idle- 
ness. Everything  can  be  done  by  proxy.  Men  in  Catholic  countries  pray 
to  God  and  get  children  by  proxy,  and  by  proxy  are  damned  or  saved. 
The  priest  even  eats  and  drinks  for  you  at  supper,  and  helps  you  to  a  slice 
of  meat  by  putting  into  his  mouth  a  piece  of  bread.  A  cannibal  eats  you 
because  he  is  hungry  or  because  he  hates  you ;  a  Catholic  kills  you  upon  a 
full  stomach  for  your  own  good  and  to  please  God.  How  very  few  men 
are  not  barbarous !  how  very  few  are  free  from  cruel  actions  even  towards 
those  whom  they  would  be  the  happier  for  loving  !  " 

Next  he  speaks  —  with  no  more  thought  of*  Childe  Harold,  and  of 
the  mastery  of  the  Spenser  stanza  exhibited  by  its  writer,  than  if 
there  had  been  no  such  poem  or  poet  in  that  century  — 

OP    THE    SPENSER   STANZA   AND    OF   WORDSWORTH. 

"  You  delight  me  by  saying  that  you  must  take  up  the  poems  which  have 
been  so  long  on  hand.  The  stanza  of  Spenser  is  less  difficult  to  you  than  to 
any  one.  It  has  made  poets,  and  ought  not  to  deter  one.  How  infinitely 
more  pure  is  Thomson  in  his  admirable  Castle  of  Indolence  than  elsewhere 
and  Shenstone  in  his  Schoolmistress !  How  greatly  has  Wordsworth  sur- 
passed the  noblest  passages  of  Spenser  himself  in  his  Laodamia !  The  stanza 
is  not  new  to  you,  and  you  possess  a  copiousness  and  richness  of  language 
such  as  few  poets  have  possessed.  I  hope  Wordsworth  will  write  no  more 
short  poems  until  he  has  finished  his  Recluse.  If  our  country  must  fall,  let 
her  expire  in  the  arms  of  genius.  France,  in  all  her  troubles,  has  produced 
no  writers  fit  to  compose  the  title-page  of  an  almanac,  and  the  period  has 
been  thirty  years.  Athens  had  her  Demosthenes  and  her  Aristoteles,  Rome 
her  Cicero.  Modern  ages  indeed  have  produced  no  great  prose -writers,  but 
in  poets  we  far  surpass  the  ancients :  a  position  which  half  a  century  ago 


284  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IK    ITALY.  ^S^-™ 

was  untenable  is  miw  unassailable.      Let  those  who  have  rendered  it  so  add 
to  its  outworks." 

A    RECOLLECTION    OP    BATH. 

"  I  shall  never  see  London  again.  I  never  saw  it  willingly.  But  surely 
nothing  can  make  a  cold  brick-kiln  a  fine  city.  The  Circus  in  Bath  is  the 
most  perfect  thing  I  have  seen,  or  shall  see;  but  the  inhabitants  have  in- 
jured it  by  cutting  down  the  windows  to  the  floor.  The  Parades  have  been 
deprived  of  their  balusters,  and  iron  palisades  substituted.  Still,  the  rest  of 
Europe  has  nothing  equal  to  them.  The  northern  part  of  Queen's  Square 
was  never  surmounted  by  balusters  on  the  roof-wall,  and  we  see  a  broken- 
hacked  idol' called  a  Bath  root':  yet  London  and  Paris  have  nothing  so  fine. 
The  Crescent,  it'  streets  joined  the  two  extremities,  without  roads  between, 
would  be  perfect;  it  is  matchless  in  other  places.  The  architecture  of 
Pulteney  Street  does  not  quite  please  me,  and  perhaps  is  little  better  than 
Portland  Place.  I  know  not  what  they  have  been  doing  in  your  capital; 
but  unless  they  open  a  street  from  St.  Paul's  across  the  Thames,  the  whole 
width  of  the  church's  length,  they  may  as  well  do  nothing." 

SOUTHEY'S  DOCTORATE  AT  OXFORD. 

"  The  University  of  Oxford  ought  to  purchase  an  estate  for  you  in  the 
country,  as  a  reward  for  becoming  one  of  its  doctors.  How  extremely  few 
are  the  occasions  when  honorary  and  prostituted  are  not  one  and  the  same! 
Learned  bodies,  and  above  all  those  in  which  divinity  and  morals  are  pro- 
fessed, should  guard  against  this.  The  very  division  into  commoners  and 
gentleman-commoners  in  this  age  is  most  scandalous  and  offensive.  In 
Cambridge  the  name  is  less  detestable,  but  the  thing  not  less  invidious. 
Learning  and  virtue  should  alone  distinguish  young  men,  or  indeed  old  i  nes. 
.  .  .  Your  letter  lias  made  me  think  again,  not  of  Christchurch  walk,  but 
of  my  favorite  Magdalen  and  the  half-hidden  Cherwcll." 

At  the  close  of  October,  Southey  wrote  again,  and  the  whole  of  his 
letter  should  be  given.  It  is  interesting  still,  much  of  it  too  curious 
to  be  lost  ;  and  beside  what  it  tells  of  Lander's  story  or  illustrates  of 
the  character  of  both  the  friends,  it  is  necessary  to  explain  what  will 
follow. 

SOUTHEY    TO    LANTDOR  :     29TH    OCTOBER,     1820. 

"I  hope  you  have  received  the  books  long  ago ;  they  were  '  shipped  by 
the  grace  of  God  in  good  order  and  well-conditioned  in  and  upon  the 
good  ship  called  the  Cosmopolite,  George  Holland,  master,  dune  27th,'  ac- 
cording to  the  invoice,  which  has  been  sent  to  me  since  I  wrote  to  you  last. 

"Have  you  heard  of  Sir  Charles  Wolseley's  letter  to  Lord  Castlereagh ? 
1  tell  upon  it  to-day  in  the  limes,  and  copy  for  your  astonishment  this  para- 
graph: •  I  beg  leave  to  inform  your  lordship  that,  if  his  Majesty's  govern- 
ment will  allow  tne  a  month's  leave  of  absence  from  my  present  place  of 
confinement,  I  will  undertake  to  be  of  the  utmost  service  to  her  Majesty  in 
the  pending  prosecution  against  her,  by  going  from  hence  to  Como,  where 
during  the  year  1817  I  lived  several  months  with  my  family;  and  from  that 
circumstance,  and  being  acquainted  with  several  people  who  wen-  employed 

by  the  queen,  I    have   an   opportunity  of  getting  at  evidence  that  would  be 

of  the  greatesl  consequence,  thai   no  Englishman  but  myself  and  a  Mr. 

Walter  Landon,  who  is  now  in  Italy,  can  have  had  the  same  opportunity  of 


yET.  40-46.]  AGAIN   AT   PISA.  285 

knowing.'  You  probably  know  that  one  of  Brougham's  brothers  has  been 
on  the  Continent  beating  up  for  witnesses.  If  this  letter  had  appeared  in  time, 
no  doubt  he  would  have  gone  in  search  of  you,  and  I  should  like  to  have 
been  present  at  the  interview.  Sir  Ch.  W.  must  be  half  crazy.  We  may  judge 
how  capable  he  is  of  forming  a  sane  opinion  upon  any  subject,  when  he  has 
so  topsy-turvy  a  recollection  of  your  knowledge  upon  this.  His  letter,  of 
course,  has  not  obtained  the  slightest  notice,  and  therefore  none  can  be 
needful  on  your  part.  Had  the  mention  of  your  name  been  such  as  in  any 
way  to  compromise  you,  I  should  without  hesitation  have  written  to  the 
newspapers. 

"  Most  persons  seem  to  apprehend  that  this  trial  will  not  terminate  with- 
out some  violent  explosion.  Certain  it  is  that  every  possible  art  is  used  for 
making  the  mob  rise  in  open  rebellion.  But  though  it  is  very  possible  to 
foresee  the  consequence  of  public  opinions,  public  madness  must  baffle  all 
foresight ;  and  this  is  an  absolute  insanity.  It  was  well  observed  by  an 
acquaintance  of  mine  the  other  day,  upon  hearing  that  Bedlam  was  to  be 
enlarged,  '  Enlarge  Bedlam,  indeed  !  better  build  a  wall  round  London  ! ' 

"  The  course  of  events  in  Spain  and  Portugal  may  perhaps  lead  to  an 
union  of  the  two  kingdoms,  but  not  I  think  as  kingdoms.  I  have  long 
thought  that  the  tendency  of  revolution  in  the  Peninsula  was  to  break  it  up 
into  its  old  subdivisions,  give  to  each  province  its  own  cortes  and  its  own 
fueroSj  and  unite  them  in  a  federal  compact  like  the  Americans.  And  if 
there  were  no  rubs  in  the  way,  and  if  the  example  could  do  no  one  harm  in 
other  countries,  this  might  be  desired.  Alas,  neither  the  Bourbons  nor  the 
Braganzas  are  worth  a  wish.  As  yet  it  is  not  known  what  course  the  king 
of  Portugal  will  take :  probably  he  must  yield  to  what  he  cannot  oppose, 
and  what  in  fact  is  both  reasonable  and  right,  considering  the  monstrous 
misgovernment  which  has  so  long  prevailed.  But  concessions  made  under 
such  circumstances  are  only  likely  to  retard  the  catastrophe,  not  to  alter  it. 
In  the  present  state  of  Europe  the  abuse  of  monarchy  tends  to  produce 
democracy ;  and  democracy,  which  is  more  certain  to  produce  immediate 
and  more  intolerable  abuse,  brings  on  military  despotism.  The  first  book 
which  I  shall  have  to  send  you  will  contain  my  speculations  upon  the  pro- 
gress of  society,  in  the  form  of  dialogue.  This  is  evidently  one  of  the 
climacteric  periods  of  the  world.  I  am  not  afraid  of  the  issue  of  the  crisis 
in  England,  where  we  have  so  much  at  stake,  that  is,  where  we  have  most 
to  lose  and  least  to  gain.  In  Italy,  whatever  may  happen,  you  will  be  '  only 
a  lodger.'  It  is  well,  however,  that  we  are  not  as  young  as  we  were  at  the 
commencement  of  the  French  Revolution.  For  my  part  I  look  on  with  a 
wholesome  but  not  impatient  interest;  knowing  perfectly  what  end  to  wish 
for,  but  so  doubtful  respecting  the  means  that  I  am  well  content  to  trust 
Providence :  and  in  that  confidence  I  rest. 

"  I  have  none  of  the  books  which  you  mention,  and  I  shall  prize  them 
when  they  arrive.  Direct  them  to  Longman's  care.  Every  day  I  expect 
the  first  proof  of  my  Peninsular  War.  The  leaves  are  falling  fast.  We 
have  now  long  evenings,  and  I  have  a  long  season  of  uninterrupted  work 
before  me ;  with,  thank  God,  good  health  and  fair  spirits  for  the  prospect. 
God  bless  you.     Yours  affectionately,  R.  S." 

Sir  Charles  Wolseley  was  sufficiently  notorious  in  those  days,  but 
now  nobody  remembers  him.  Few  of  us  have  even  read  about  the 
meeting  of  fifteen  thousand  non-electors  in  the  summer  of  1819,  who 
elected  him  their  "  legislatorial  attorney  and  representative  for  Bir- 


1'^G  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^£5-^' 

mingham  "  ;  and  the  arrest  for  sedition  that  followed,  or  the  sentence 
of  imprisonment  he  was  still  undergoing  while  Southey  wrote,  inter- 

•  no  one  now.  But  we  know  all  of  us  still  too  well  what  generally 
had  characterized  that  infamous  year  of  Six-acts  and  Peterloo-riots  to 
be  very  tolerant  of  the  eagerness  of  one  of  its  radical  heroes  thus  to 
make  terms  with  Castlereagh  for  a  trip  out  of  jail  into  Italy  as  a 
Bpy  and  informer  in  even  the  interest  of  the  unfortunate  queen. 
Landor  -aw  the  thing  apparently  in  that  light,  and  cared  no  longer 
to  remember  what  once  lie  had  been  so  ready  to  relate  of  her  alleged 
amusements  on  the  Lake  of  Corno.  Whether  strictly  she  were  guilty 
or  innocent  had  in  truth  ceased  to  be  the  question  by  this  time.  The 
great  body  of  the  people  had  declared  upon  her  side  ;  and  whatever 
Landor's  former  statements  or  the  use  made  of  them  might  have 
been,  in  what  he  now  sent  to  one  of  her  hottest  partisans  in  society, 
to  he  .published  by  her  most  powerful  advocate  in  the  press,  he  was 
guilty  of  nothing  for  which  he  had  call  to  be  ashamed. 

His  next  letter  to  Southey,  written  in  the  month  (November, 
1820)  when  the  bill  of  pains  and  penalties  had  to  be  abandoned, 
tells  what  he  did  ;  and  as  it  was  done  at  the  moment  of  receiving 
Wolseley's  letter,  by  the  time  Southey  knew  it  all  the  readers  of  the 
Times  knew  it  too,  and  what  he  would  fain  even  then  have  prevented 
was  past  recall. 

"I  had  hardly  given  myself  time  to  read  your  letter  when  I  wrote  the 
following  to  the  editor  of  the  Times,  and  enclosed  a  copy  of  it  to  Dr.  Parr. 
A-  there  is  a  possibility  that  the  editor  of  the  Times  may  not  insert  my 
letter,  I  send  you  a  copy  of  it. 

"  '  Sir,  —  In  perfect  reliance  on  your  justice  and  integrity  I  entertain  no  doubt  that 
you  will  insert  in  an  early  number  of  your  paper  the  following  paragraph.  1  have  re- 
ed this  day  an  extract  from  a  letter  addressed  by  Sir  Ch.  Wolseley  to  Lord  Castle- 
reagh, and  inserted  in  the  Tinas,  containing  these  words:  "1  have  an  opportunity  of  get- 
ting at  evidence  that  would  be  of  the  greatest  consequence,  that  no  Englishman  but 
myself  and  a  Mi-.  Walter  Landon,  who  is  now  in  Italy,  can  have  had  the  same  opportunity 
ol  knowing."  Sir.  whatever  I  may  have  heard  relating  to  the  queen,  1  know  nothing 
positive,  and  never  made  a  -ingle  inquiry  that  could  either  inculpate  or  acquit  her  in 
tin-  cause  now  pending.     Were  she  engaged,  to  my  knowledge,  in  correspondence 

with  tl nemies  of  the  country,  it  would  he  my  duty  to  inform  the  king'-  ministers; 

hut  the  secrets  of  the  bedchamber  and  the  escritoire  have  never  been  the  subject  of  my 
investigation.  An  extreme  anxiety  to  deliver  my  name  from  all  contact  with  such 
persons  a-  either  formed  or  directed!  the  committee  at  Milan  urges  me  to  publish  this 
avowal,  no  less  than  the  l,.ft,a-  of  Sir  Ch.  Wolseley.  During  my  residence  on  the 
Lake  of  <  !omo  my  time  was  totally  occupied  in  literary  pursuits :  and  1  believe  no  man 
of  that  character  wa-  ever  thought  worthy  of  employment  by  the  present  administra- 
tion. Added  to  which.  I  was  insulted  by  an  Italian  domestic  of  the  queen,  ami  I  de- 
manded from  her  in  vain  the  punishment  of  tin-  aggressor.  This  alone,  which  might 
e\,ite  and  keep  nlive  the  most  active  resentment  in  many  other-,  would  impose  eternal 
silence  on  me.  Whether  such  i-  or  ought  to  he  my  character,  the  queen's  servants  may 
learn  from  Dr.  Parr  and  the  king's  from  Mr.  Southey,  two  friends  of  whom  I  should 
find  it  difficult  to  gay  whether  they  are  more  firmly  attached  to  me  or  more  affection- 
ately beloved.  I  desire  that  in  future  the  name  of  n  Mr.  Walter  Landon  may  not  be 
united  with  -1  Sir  Ch.  WoUeley.    I  am,  sir,  &c,  Walter  Savage  Lax 1." 

■■  I  lam. -nt  that  Parr  should  take  80  active  a  part  in  favor  of  that  woman. 

Never  did  [entertain  a  doubt  of  her  guilt  and  infamy;  hut  those  wretches 
are  more  guilty  and  more  infamous  who  employ  false' keys  in  bedrooms  and 
escritoire        :     b  is  the  intelligence  we  read  here  of  the  Milan  committee. 


JET.  40-46.]  AGAIN   AT   PISA.  2$  7 

God  forbid  that  any  Englishman  should  have  employed  this  Ompteda  on  so 
scandalous  and  abominable  an  action.  Had  Brougham's  brother  entered 
my  house,  the  interview  would  have  been  short,  and  both  standing.  I  ad- 
mire the  impudence  of  Wolseley.  He  attempted  to  defend  the  doings  of 
the  princess,  but  never  hinted  a  thought  of  her  innocence  when  I  constantly 
represented  her  what  all  Italy  knows  her  to  be,  not  indeed  with  legal 
proofs  (such  are  almost  impossible  in  similar  cases),  but  according  to  all  ap- 
pearances year  after  year.  Yet  if  a  court  of  justice  called  on  me  to  give 
evidence,  I  should  give  my  evidence  according  to  the  orders  and  spirit  of 
our  laws,  and  say  that,  not  knowing  her  guilty,  I  am  not  authorized  to 
prejudice  her :  proofs  alone  constitute  guilt.  If  you  have  interest  with  the 
editor  of  the  Courier,  and  he  admits  what  is  impartial  and  honest,  I  should 
be  heartily  glad  to  see  inserted  in  that  paper  the  letter  I  address  to  the 
editor  of  the  Times." 

In  the  same  letter  he  describes  some  of  the  results  of  the  Holy 
Alliance,  then  in  full  action  on  the  Continent ;  and  says  he  has  been 
trying  his  hand  against  it  in  an  oration  written  in  Italian ! 

THE    MOVEMENT    FOR    REPRESENTATIVE    INSTITUTIONS. 

"  I  am  delighted  both  at  the  spirit  and  the  wisdom  of  Spain,  Portugal,  and 
Naples.  They  recur  to  old  and  wise  institutions,  and  defeat  by  this  re- 
currence the  madness  both  of  monarchical  and  democratical  ambition.  I 
am  printing  at  Naples  a  paper  to  show  the  present  state  of  representative 
government.  I  lay  down  only  two  principles :  one,  that  there  are  no 
degrees  of  liberty,  and  that  few  representatives  are  enough;  the  other,  that 
whatever  nation  has  really  its  representatives  is  free,  whatever  has  not  is 
not.  Although  I  would  not,  in  England,  destroy  (for  I  tremble  at  a  void 
in  all  things)  the  House  of  Peers,  I  would  by  no  means  recommend  the 
erection  of  one  where  institutions  have  grown  up  without  it.  The  Senate 
was  the  subversion  of  Rome  by  its  cupidity  and  injustice  ;  and  the  House 
of  Lords  ruined  the  English  government  by  its  blind  acquiescence  in  the 
outrages  of  Charles  I.  I  would  wish  to  see  a  government  where  no  man  or 
body  of  men  has  interests  opposite  to  or  beyond  the  interests  of  the  people. 
But  in  politics  how  many  articles  of  faith  ought  to  be  held  in  secret !  I  will 
wTait  for  my  sheet  of  Italian,  and  send  it  with  the  other  books.  You  per- 
haps will  think  it  intemperate  ;  in  England  it  would  be  so ,  but  England 
has  a  government  to  defend,  Naples  is  creating  one ;  England  is  safe  and 
unassailable,  Naples  is  threatened  and  insecure.  Added  to  which,  it  is 
necessary  on  the  Continent  to  warn  the  representative  government  and  the 
despotic,  and  to  persuade  them,  if  possible,  to  form  a  league  for  their 
mutual  defence.  In  your  letter  you  say  nothing  of  your  little  boy,  yet 
there  is  no  intemperate  weather  that  I  do  not  think  of  him." 

AN  OBJECTION  TO  PETER  BELL. 

"  I  received  the  books  about  six  weeks  ago,  if  my  recollection  is  right, 
and  wrote  immediately  to  Wordsworth  a  letter  of  thanks,  waiting  to  hear 
from  you  whether  I  might  send  the  heavy  folios.  They  shall  be  despatched 
by  the  first  English  ship  from  Leghorn.  ...  In  whatever  Wordsworth 
writes  there  is  admirable  poetry  ;  but  I  wish  he  had  omitted  all  that  pre- 
cedes '  There  was  a  time  '  (p.  9)  in  Peter  Bell.  The  first  poet  that  ever 
wrote  was  not  a  more  original  poet  than  he  is,  and  the  best  is  hardly  a 
greater."  * 


288  FIRST    SIX    YEARS    IX    ITALY.  ^iff^a/' 


1815-21. 

One  may  sec  a  little  personal  weakness  in  that  objection.  A  whole 
half  of  the  famous  prologue  he  would  have  dropped,  and  among  the 
lines  so  condemned  are  these  :  — 

"  Swift  Mercury  resounds  with  mirth, 
Great  Jove  is  lull  of  stately  bowers; 
But  these,  and  all  that  they  contain, 
What  are  they  bo  that  tiny  grain, 
That  little  earth  of  ours?"" 

Very  much  were  they  still,  just  now  indeed  the  little  earth  itself 
not  nearly  so  much,  to  a  man  who  lived  his  life  in  the  remote  far 
more  than  in  the  near  ;  whose  mind  habitually  dwelt  in  those  regions 
of  imagination  which  the  homelier  poet  here  designedly  had  aban- 
doned ;  who  in  his  ardor  for  classic  forms  was  even  ready  to  restrict 
himself  to  classic  speech  ;  and  whose  volume  of  poems  and  idyls 
a  I  Mint  ancient  deities  and  heroes,  composed  in  one  of  the  languages 
of  antiquity  and  despatched  to  England  before  that  letter  was  writ- 
ten, reached  Keswick  almost  at  the  very  time  when  Peter  Bell  and 
his  adventures  with  his  ass  made  their  entrance  into  Pisa.  Southcy 
was  writing  at  the  time  the  preface  to  his  Vision  of  Judgment  in 
which  lie  made  his  onslaught  on  the  satanic  school,  and  a  passage 
from  Landor's  Latin  essay  came  in  with  apt  enforcement  of  his  bitter 
charges  against  Byron.*  Yet  neither  Latin  essay  nor  Latin  poems 
were  grateful  to  him.  At  both  of  them,  as  at  his  friend's  objection 
to  the  Wordsworth  prologue,  he  doubtless  gravely  shook  his  head, 
and  gave  expression  once  again  to  his  never-ceasing  regret  that  Lan- 
dor  could  write  so  well  in  a  language  not  comparable  to  his  own. 

Some  of  these  matters  find  allusion  in  his  next  letter,  which  bears 
date  the  8th  February,  1821,  and  which  I  shall  probably  be  thanked 
for  not  suppressing. 

"I  have  received  your  Latin  volume,  and  in  cutting  open  the  leaves 
(while  tlir  oilier  contents  of  the  parcel  are  left  unexamined)  I  find  my  own 
name  mentioned  in  prose  and  verse  in  that  manner  which  brings  with  it 
the  greatest  gratification  at  present,  and  will  bear  with  it  the  greatest 
weight  hereafter. 

"  I  am  printing  my  History  of  the  Peninsular  War.  And  I  am  endeavor- 
ing to  find  how  to  semi  you  a  poem  which  will  be  published  in  about  a  fort- 

*  I  will  quota  the  passage.  Tt  is  interesting  in  itself;  underlying  its  reference  to 
Byron  and  his  eulogists  is  an  important  truth  too  often  disregarded;  and  it  is  a  pood 
specimen  of  the  Btyie  as  well  as  matter  of  the  essay.  "  Summi  poetsa  in  omni  poetarum 
Bssculo  viri  fuerunt  probi:  in  nostria  id  vidimus  et  videmus;  neque  alius  est  error  a 
veritate  longius  quam  magna  ingenia  magnis  necessario  comunpi  vitiis.  Secundo 
plerique  posthabent  primum,  hi  malignitate,  illi  ignoranti&;  et  qnum  aliquera  inveniunt 
styli  morumque  vitha  notatum,  nee  inficetnm  tamen  nee  in  libna  edendis  parcum,  cum 
predicant,  Btipant,  occupant,  amplectuntur.  Si  mores  aJiquantulum  vellet  corrigere, 
si  Btylum  curare  paululum,si  fervido  ingenio  temperare,  si  mora  tantillum  interponere. 
turn  ingens  nescio  quid  et  vere  epicum,  quadraginta  annus  natus,  procuderet.  Ignorant 
verb  febriculis  non  indicari  vires,  impatientiam  ab  imbecillitate  non  differre:  ignorant 

a  levi  homine  et  m< stante  multa   fortasse  scribi  posse  pluaquam  mediocria,  nihil 

compositum,  arduum,  aeternum."  Poemntn  et  Iruenptione$  (1847),  pp.  285,  286.  The 
title  of  the  essay  Landor  changed  in  the  later  edition  firom"De  Cultu  atque  Usu 
Latini  Stnnonia"  to  "Qusestio  quamobrem  Poetsa  Latini  Iieccutiores  minus  legan- 
tur." 


.ffiT.  40-46.]  AGAIN   AT   PISA.  289 

night.  The  title  is  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  the  personage  brought  to  judg- 
ment is  the  late  king ;  and  the  verse  is  a  metre  constructed  in  imitation  of 
the  hexameter.  The  principle  of  adaptation  is,  that,  as  by  the  Germans, 
the  trochee  is  used  for  the  spondee  ;  with  the  further  alteration  of  employ- 
ing any  foot  of  one  or  two  or  three  syllables  in  the  first  place  in  the  verse 
(for  the  sake  of  beginning  with  a  short  syllable),  and  occasionally,  but  with 
a  rarer  license,  in  the  second,  third,  or  fourth  place.  I  have  satisfied  my 
own  ear,  and  that  of  every  person,  learned  or  unlearned,  upon  whom  the 
measure  has  as  yet  been  tried.  There  is  no  one  of  whose  opinion  I  stand  so 
much  in  doubt  as  of  yours,  for  you  have  made  yourself '  an  antique  Roman ' 
in  these  things ;  take,  however,  the  opening  of  the  poem  :  — 

'  'T  was  at  that  sober  hour  when  the  light  of  day  is  receding, 
And  from  surrounding  things  the  hues  wherewith  day  has  adorned  them 
Fade,  like  the  hopes  of  youth,  till  the  beauty  of  earth  is  departed,'  &c. 

You  have  here  a  sample  *  of  the  measure.  The  poem  is  long  enough  for 
the  reader  to  become  accustomed  to  it,  and  lose  the  first  sense  of  its 
Strangeness.  It  is  something  more  than  six  hundred  lines.  I  expect  a  hur- 
ricane of  abuse,  —  hurricane-like,  from  all  quarters  ;  for  among  the  worthies 
of  the  late  reign  I  have  placed  neither  Pitt  nor  Fox.  The  spirits  whom  I 
have  confronted  with  the  king  are  Wilkes,  Junius,  and  Washington.  If  you 
can  tolerate  the  measure,  the  rest  will  be  sufficiently  in  accord  with  your 
feelings.  I  shall  see  if  I  can  get  a  copy  sent  to  you  through  the  Foreign 
Office. 

"My  family,  thank  God,  are  well;  but  I  have  recently  sustained  a  great 
shock  in  the  death  of  my  poor  friend  Nash,  who  was  with  me  at  Como,  and 
who,  at  home  and  abroad,  had  spent  more  than  one  year  out  of  the  last  four 
with  me.  My  little  boy  thrives,  and  is  a  fine  creature.  These  are  such  pre- 
carious blessings  that  I  do  not  inquire  concerning  yours  without  some  de- 
gree of  fear. 

"Your  letter  was  inserted  in  the  Times.  Some  parts  of  it  you  would 
have  altered  if  you  had  seen  fair  statements  of  the  case.  The  madness  is 
now  abating ;  still,  this  is  the  time  for  the  Catholics  to  attempt  the  re-estab- 
lishment of  their  religion ;  for  if  the  people  of  England  choose  to  have  such 
a  queen,  they  cannot  possibly  object  to  the  whore  of  Babylon.  Our  minis- 
ters want  decision  and  firmness,  but  I  believe  it  is  not  possible  for  men  to 
act  with  better  intentions,  nor  more  uprightly.  The  Whigs  are  acting  as 
basely  as  they  did  in  the  days  of  Titus  Oates.     God  bless  you.     R.  S." 

Landor  replied  on  the  12th  of  March,  and  refers  to  another  child, 
a  daughter,  recently  born  to  him.  This  event  had  been  announced  to 
his  mother  on  the  6th  of  the  March  preceding  (1820)  as  having  taken 
place  at  seven  o'clock  that  evening.  "  It  is  the  custom  at  Pisa  to 
carry  the  children  to  be  baptized  the  very  day  of  their  birth,  but  I 
shall  not  pay  any  attention  to  such  foolery."  He  delayed  it,  as  we 
shall  see,  till  after  the  date  of  his  present  letter  to  Southey. 

•     HIS    CHILDREN  :    MARCH,    1821. 

"  I  hear  with  great  delight  that  your  little  boy  thrives.  My  two  crea- 
tures have  caught  a  cough  from  a  servant-maid,  but  are  recovering,  dear 
hearts.     I  caught  it  from  them." 

*  Thirty-two  lines  are  thus  given;  but  as  they  do  not  differ  from  the  opening  of  the 
poem  as  printed,  it  was  not  necessary  to  repeat  them  here. 

19 


290  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IX    ITALY.  ^8.5 -£' 

SOUTHEY'S  VISION  OF  JUDGMENT  :    GEORGE  III.,  JUNIUS,  AND  WASHINGTON. 

"  Your  hexameters  have  sharpened  my  appetite  for  the  remainder.  As  I 
know  nothing  of  G-erman,  it  is  the  first  time  I  ever  read  any,  and  only  re- 
member  that  you  once  repeated  a  single  sentence.  I  am  afraid  the  poetry 
ha-  made  me  a  convert  to  the  measure.  You  manage  it  with  wonderful 
addnss.  and  there  is  only  one  verse  that  I  found  necessary  to  read  twice: 
'For  it  tells  of  mortality  always,'  &c. 

"  I  pitied  more  sincerely  than  many  of  the  courtiers  the  dreadful  affliction 
of  the  late  king,  but  I  never  felt  much  respect  or  esteem  for  him:  first, 
because  he  was  too  prompt  in  undertaking  the  American  and  French  war, 
the  one  mosl  nefarious,  the  other  most  impolitic;  and  because  he  pocketed 
from  the  duchy  of  Cornwall  the  property  of  his  son,  and  permitted  the  affair 
to  come  before  Parliament  under  so  shallow  a  pretext  as  that  of  a  claim  for 
the  expenses  of  his  education.  He  was  also  insincere.  The  Marquis  of 
Rockingham  told  Lord  Shelburne,  Lord  Shelburne  told  Colonel  Barry,  ami 
Colonel  Barry  told  me,  the  following  anecdote.  Lord  Buckingham  had* 
never  been  cordially  or  indeed  more  than  coldly  received  by  him,  and  was 
greatly  surprised  and  gratified  at  a  favorable  change  of  manner.  A  few 
days  afterwards  he  was  deprived  of  office.  He  mentioned  (I  forget  to 
whom)  the  king's  cordiality  on  such  a  day,  and  it  was  discovered  that  on 
that  very  morning  it  was  resolved  to  deprive  him  of  his  place.  Parr  told 
me  that  he  had  heard  the  same  anecdote,  and  I  think  he  added  from  Fox. 
I  believe  Junius  to  be  Burke,  well  knowing  the  versatility  of  his  style,  and 
observing  that  neither  he  nor  his  friends  are  mentioned  in  the  letters.  The 
objection  that  they  are  too  uniformly  correct  and  elegant  weighs  lightly 
with  me.  He  had  not  room  for  extravagance  in  the  compass  of  a  letter;  he 
was  forced  into  consistency  and  compactness.  It  is  reported  with  great 
confidence  that  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  prevailed  with  him  to  correct  his  dis- 
courses. Now  anyone  of  these  is  surely  worth  all  the  letters  of  Junius  both 
for  material-  and  workmanship.  I  tremble  at  the  vicinity  of  such  a  rascal  as 
Wilkes  to  Washington.  I  believe  Washington  to  excel  both  in  political  and 
military  wisdom  all  men  except  Gustavus  Adolphus.  Surely  never  had 
human  being  such  difficulties  to  overcome;  and  how  difficult,  how  nearly 
impossible,  how  utterly  so  to  any  but  himself,  to  give  ductility  to  such 
drossy  materials!  " 

ROMAN"    CATHOLIC    EMANCIPATION    AND    RADICAL    REFORM. 

"I  entertain  no  fear  whatever  that  the  woman  of  Cernobldo  will  intro- 
duce her  Bister  of  Babylon.  That  bloated  ringdropper,  that  bastard  of  milli- 
ner and  perfumer,  has  long  ago  lost  her  charms  for  Englishmen.  Surely  it 
IS  absurd  to  deprive  men  of  a  seat  in  Parliament  because  they  believe  in 
transubstantiation.     It  is  quite  enough  if  they  swear  that  they  will  obey  no 

?m  whatever  in  any  act  opposing  the  authority  of  king  and  Parliament. 
or  my  own  part  I  could  jusl  as  easily  believe  that  I  seal  this  letter  with  a 
god.  as  that  1  eat  and  drink  one.  Now  the  English  Church  -ays  that  'the 
Body  and  blood  of  Christ  are  verily  and  indeed  taken  in  the  Lord's  Supper.' 
1  childish  to  draw  any  line  between  two  absurdities  so  enormous.  I  am 
firmly  of  opinion  that  no  danger  whatever  can  arise  to  England  from  the 
reception  of  the  Catholics  into  Parliament,  nor  (however  odious  the  name 
has  become)  from  a  radical  reform.  In  the  last  years  of  the  war  I  would 
have  opposed  such  a  measure  as  Strenuously  as  any  of  the  ministers,  know- 
ing the  infatuation  of  Bome  men  in  favor  of  Bonaparte,  and  the  indifference 
of  others  to  any  calamity  or  disgrace  that  the  nation  might  sutler,  provided 


MT.  4O-46.] 


AGAIN    AT    PISA.  291 


they  could  come  into  the  possession  of  wealth  and  power.  I  rejoiced  in  the 
Battle  of  Waterloo,  but  I  dreaded  from  that  moment  the  reaction  under 
which  the  Continent  groans.  Austria  promised  to  Lombardy  a  representa- 
tive government,  and  Prussia  promised  it  to  all  the  states  of  that  crown. 
How  basely  have  the  people  been  deceived !  Sicily  had  begun  to  respire 
under  a  liberal  government.  The  king  abrogated  the  whole  system.  His 
troops,  who  saw  the  good  effects  of  it,  no  sooner  returned  into  Italy  than 
the  whole  body  of  the  officers  united  with  those  they  had  lately  fought 
against,  and  at  present  there  are  not  ten  families  in  Naples  even  suspected 
of  any  propensity  towards  despotism." 

ORATIONS  IN  ITALIAN  AGAINST  THE  HOLY  ALLIANCE. 
"  I  have  written  three  orations  exposing  the  duplicity  of  the  Alleati  Sanii 
(as  the  Neapolitans  call  them),  the  danger  to  which  all  constitutional  gov- 
ernments are  exposed,  and  the  inexpediency,  not  to  say  impossibility,  of 
forming  a  House  of  Lords.  With  due  praises  to  the  moral  character  of  the 
English  aristocracy,  I  have  remarked  that  their  two  most  memorable  acts  are 
then  opposition  to  the  repeal  of  the  slave-trade,  and  their  miserable  weak- 
ness and  indecision  in  the  affair  of  the  queen.  I  have  observed  that  to  form 
a  House  of  Lords  materials  are  required  which  are  not  to  be  found  anywhere 
in  Europe,  out  of  England,  not  even  in  Venice ;  that  they  must  be  of  long 
growth,  strong  fibre,  great  girth,-  and  well  seasoned.  Much  of  the  two 
first  editions  was  omitted  by  a  most  indiscreet  and  foolish  editor.  I  have 
ordered  another  to  be  printed,  with  a  third  letter.  The  first  edition  was 
distributed  gratis ;  of  the  second  I  know  nothing  but  its  mere,  existence  in 
the  same  incomplete  form.  I  was  surprised  and  vexed  that  the  box  of 
books  had  not  left  Leghorn,  and  am  now  pleased  that  I  may  enclose  some 
copies  of  this  work." 

That  is  one  of  his  works  of  which  there  is  now  no  trace,  except  in 
passages  of  his  later  dialogues  ;  and  the  letter  closes  with  mention  of 
another  of  his  perished  undertakings.  Upon  the  questions  of  poetry 
and  criticism  opened  up  in  Wordsworth's  prefaces  he  had  planned  a 
Latin  essay  supplementary  to  the  treatise  prefixed  to  his  Latin  poems  ; 
and  "  I  have  finished,"  he  tells  Southey,  "  my  translation  of  Words- 
worth's criticisms,  saying  in  the  preface  that  I  had  taken  whatever  I 
wanted  from  him,  with  the  same  liberty  as  a  son  eats  and  drinks  in 
his  father's  house  ...  I  wish,"  he  abruptly  adds,  "  I  had  some  thou- 
sand pounds  to  spare,  as  I  had  when  the  Spaniards  rose  against  Bo- 
naparte, that  what  I  offered  to  them  I  might  offer  to  the  Neapolitans." 
The  revolt  at  Naples,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  add,  was  but  one  of 
the  series  of  demands  for  representative  government  that  arose  in  va- 
rious parts  of  the  Continent  in  that  and  the  preceding  year,  and  to 
which  Lander's  sympathy  had  been  eagerly  offered  in  the  "  orations  " 
composed,  printed,  and  circulated  during  the  last  weeks  of  his  resi- 
dence at  Pisa.  It  was  a  natural  reaction  against  the  repressive  sys- 
tem established  on  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  and,  though  in  itself  short- 
lived, was  not  without  permanent  results.  Very  soon  thrust  down 
again  in  Spain,  in  Portugal,  in  Naples,  in  Piedmont,  even  in  Turkey, 
to  which  the  movement  had  extended,  it  led  directly  to  the  indepen- 
dence of  Brazil,  to  the  recognition  by  England  of  the  South  American 


292  FIRST   SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^aS-*1/' 


:Si5-2I. 


republics,  and  to  the  Greek  revolution.     In  the  excitements  caused 
by  these  events  no  man  shared  more  largely  than  Landor. 

VI.   ON  THE   WAY   TO   FLORENCE. 

In  April,  1821,  resolved  not  to  pass  that  summer  at  Pisa,  Landor 
had  come  to  Florence  in  search  of  a  house.  A  letter  from  his  mother 
hul  readied  him  as  he  started  on  his  journey,  and  from  Florence  he 
answered  it.  She  had  told  him  that  there  could  not  now  be  many 
more  days  for  her  at  Ipsley,  which  would  soon  have  to  prepare  for  its 
new  master.  But  he  says  nay  to  that,  and  prays  that  many  more 
summers  there  may  yet  be  hers. 

"  The  misery  of  not  being  able  to  see  you  is  by  far  the  greatest  I  have 
ever  suffered.  Never  shall  I  forget  the  thousand  acts  of  kindness  and 
affection  I  have  received  from  you  from  my  earliest  to  my  latest  days.  I 
have  deferred  the  christening  of  my  little  daughter  because  I  wished  to 
have  one  to  be  named  after  you,  and  to  whom  I  might  request  you  to  be 
godmother.  As  perhaps  I  may  never  have  another,  I  shall  call  my  little 
Julia  by  the  name  of  Julia  Elizabeth  Savage  Landor,  and  with  your  per- 
mission  will  engage  some  one  of  Julia's  English  friends  to  represent  you. 
This  is  the  first  time  I  was  ever  a  whole  day  without  seeing  Arnold.  I  won- 
der  what  his  thoughts  are  upon  the  occasion.  Mine  are  a  great  deal 
more  about  him  than  about  the  house  I  must  look  for.  He  is  of  all  living 
creatures  the  most  engaging,  and  already  repeats  ten  of  the  most  beautiful 
pieces  of  Italian  poetry.  The  honest  priest  his  master  says  he  is  a  miracle 
and  a  marvel,  and  exceeds  in  abilities  all  he  ever  saw  or  heard  of.  lie 
turns  into  ridicule  every  person  that  speaks  bad  Italian.  What  a  pity  it  is 
thai  such  divine  creatures  should  ever  be  men  and  subject  to  regrets  and 
sorrows!  Julia  is  thin  and  weak,  but  is  without  any  particular  complaint, 
and  is  recommended  to  change  the  air  for  the  summer,  as  Pisa  lies  low  and 
is  abandoned  by  all  the  inhabitants  in  the  warm  season.  There  are  some 
Austrian*  in  Florence,  but  not  many.  They  are  a  great  annoyance  wdiere- 
ever  they  Lr>>;   in  tint,  foreign  soldiers  are  nowdiere  favorites." 

Well  might  he  so  acknowledge  the  letter  she  had  written  to  him, 
for  it  told  him  what  the  result  had  been  of  her  always  tender  and 
proud  thought  of  him,  as  well  as  of  all  her  prudent  savings  in  the  six 
years  thai  bad  passed  since  he  quitted  England.  "Whenever  I  die 
you  will  find  by  my  will  that  the  arrears  which  belong  to  me  from 
the  Llanthony  property  I  have  given  up  to  you,  as  it  may  the  sooner 
Lessen  your  embarrassment  ;  and  1  hope  in  time  you  will  come  and 
spend  the  remainder  of  your  life  in  this  country  where  you  have 
many  well-wishers,  which  some  time  or  other  you  will  be  convinced 
of.  By  my  retired  way  of  living  I  have  been  enabled  to  provide  com- 
fortably  for  vmir  sisters;  and  whenever  I  leave  this  world  you  will 
find  your  property  improved  by  my  having  kept  all  in  good  repair." 
She  describes  the  most  recent  purchases  made  by  her  for  the  various 
farms,  and  pleasantly  adds  ■  "Asl  cut  no  timber  for  the  repairs,  I 
depend  on  you,  for  my  sake,  not  to  cut  any  down,  as  the  timber  is 
the  beauty  of  [psley."     This  was  a  point  of  character  with  her.     Re- 


JET.  40-46.]  ON    THE    WAY    TO    FLORENCE.  293 

plying  afterwards  to  that  Florence  letter  of  his,  she  hopes  the  place 
may  suit  him  better  than  Pisa  ;  and  indeed  she  thinks  it  may  be  a 
healthy  situation  enough  ;  but  as  for  beauty,  "  no  place  can  be  truly 
beautiful  without  fine  trees,  which  I  suppose  in  Italy  you  seldom 
see." 

Her  letters,  shrewd  in  all  they  observe  upon,  and  homely  in  m^st 
of  their  applications,  are  full  of  character  of  this  kind.  Excellent  in 
their  descriptions  of  the  country,  and  models  of  good  sense  and  clev- 
erness in  everything  pertaining  to  the  cultivation  of  her  farms,  they 
contain  little  politics  and  less  literature ;  yet  never  anything  as  to 
either  that  her  son  might  not  read  with  a  smile.  "  Doctor  Parr," 
she  says  in  one  of  them,  after  describing  with  a  whimsical  good- 
humor  the  excitement  about  the  queen,  —  "  Doctor  Parr  is  made  her 
domestic  chaplain.  I  think  at  his  time  of  life  he  might  have  been 
quiet  at  home."  In  another  she  relates  her  having  met  "  Mr.  Moore 
the  poet,  who  speaks  very  highly  of  your  Count  Julian,  which  he  had 
been  reading  and  was  quite  delighted  with."  In  a  third  she  tells 
him  of  the  king's  death  and  of  the  Duke  of  Kent's,  reading  him  a 
motherly  lecture  on  the  fact  that  the  duke's  had  been  caused  by 
"  sitting  in  wet  boots  and  taking  cold."  She  never  names  Llanthony 
as  by  possibility  to  be  ever  his  future  home,  but  dwells  always  upon 
Ipsley.  There  is  a  very  pleasing  letter  where  she  describes  the  gar- 
dens there  and  the  beauty  of  them,  and  in  which  she  hopes,  it  being  so 
much  more  retired  than  Tachbrooke,  it  will  be  his  residence  for  a 
part  of  every  year  when  he  returns.  Some  of  the  pictures  at  Llan- 
thony he  had  been  fondest  of,  she  tells  him,  had  been  bought  for  him 
by  his  brother  Henry,  and  they  were  now  placed  at  Ipsley  as  heir- 
looms. "  For  I  do  so  wish  you,  dear  Walter,"  she  adds  with  a 
touching  simplicity,  "  some  time  hence  to  be  able  to  return  and  find 
as  much  pleasure  here  as  I  have  done  these  many  years."  That  was 
two  years  before  she  announced  to  him  the  result  of  her  generous 
savings  ;  and  in  the  letter  of  the  present  year  containing  it  and  lately 
quoted,  there  is  a  mention  of  the  last  book  he  had  sent  over  to  her 
which  in  its  homely  way  might  have  convinced  him,  as  he  was  already 
beginning  even  to  think  for  himself,  that  what  he  gained  bore  no  pro- 
portion to  what  he  lost  by  writing  his  poetry  in  the  Latin  tongue. 
After  telling  him  that  she  expects  at  her  age  soon  to  leave  the  world, 
that  she  is  now  seventy-seven,  and  had  enjoyed  health  so  long  she  could 
not  expect  it  much  longer,  she  tells  him  the  book  he  had  sent  her 
had  arrived  safely,  "  and  is  thought  by  the  learned  to  be  a  very 
delightful*  book ;  but  one  cannot  read  it,  to  understand  it,  one's 
self." 

Landor  wrote  two  more  letters  to  Southey  before  he  finally  pitched 
his  tent  in  Florence,  and  from  these  the  following  extracts  are  given. 
The  "  little  work  "  referred  to,  of  which  I  have  found  no  other  exist- 
ing trace,  was  a  copy  in  English  of  his  Italian  orations  against  the 
Holy  Alliance. 


294  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^Bi^-a™ 

MmVIMKNT    against   the   continental   despotisms:   rising    of    the 

GREEKS. 

At  lasl  the  box  of  books  is  on  its  way  to  England,  after  a  parcel,  con- 
taining twenty-four  volumes,  had  been  robbed  from  the  house  at  Leghorn  to 
which  they  were  consigned     There  wen'  some  suspicions  as  to  the  thief, 

and  ten  of  the  worst  are  since  discovered.  Nistri,  who  bound  them,  saw 
them  in  a  shop  at  Pisa,  too  late,  however,  to  send  them  with  the  rest.  I 
ha\c  requested  Longman  to  open  the  box,  and  to  print  what  T  have  written 
on  the  present  state  of  constitutional  governments.  The  system  of  Bona- 
parte seems  to  be  adopted  by  Russia  and  Austria;  and  I  am  convinced  that, 
unless  our  government  is  both  more  energetic  and  more  liberal,  no  particle 
of  sound  and  rational  government  will  remain  in  Europe.  I  hope  no  differ- 
ence of  opinion  will  prevent  Longman  from  publishing  my  little  work,  al- 
though a  part  of  its  interest  may  be  lost  by  the  sudden  change  in  the  affairs 
of  Naples.  I  distrusted  the  people  in  ftffice  there;  my  praises  were  exhor- 
tations. I  did  not  think  it  proper  to  omit  anything  I  had  written.  What 
is  durable  may  l>e  founded  on  what  is  transitory.  There  are  at  Pisa  nearly 
two  hundred  young  Greeks  studying  medicine,  or  what  is  called  humanity, 
but  mostly  medicine.  One  of  these  visited  me,  after  reading  what  I  had 
written  on  the  affairs  of  Naples,  and  he  alone  was  intrusted  with  the  secret 
of  the  Greek  insurrection.  I  allude  to  it  in  a  sentence  in  the  second  or 
third  part.  No  other  man  in  Italy  knew  anything  of  the  design.  Few  of 
the  Greeks  are  younger  than  twenty-five  or  thirty,  and  they  are  remarkably 
studious.  From  what  I  can  collect,  the  Greeks  were  treated  bj  the  Turk- 
ish government  with  great  humanity  and  justice,  and  their  impositions 
were  extremely  light.  Woe  betide  them  if  they  fall  under  Austria,  Russia, 
or  any  other  power.  I  am  told  that  the  people  of  the  Adriatic  Islands  are 
extremely  discontented  under  England.  I  know  not  how  it  happens,  but 
England  certainly  is  more  hated  than  any  other  power,  ancient  or  modern, 
by  her  colonies  and  dependencies.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  rage  of  the 
Italian-  at  what  they  call  the  perfidy  of  England  towards  Naples.  I  see 
no  perfidy;  I  see  much  cowardice  and  baseness,  and  such  as  will  end  in 
war.  If  Russia  is  permitted  to  possess  anything  either  in  the  Adriatic  or 
Mediterranean,  she  will  be  able  to  turn  the  balance  of  power  against  us  in 
thai  quarter.  And  that  she  would  have  permitted  the  aggrandizement  of 
Austria  without  the  certainty  of  an  equivalent  is  improbable  in  the  last  de- 
gree. To  have  permitted  this  collusion  is  one  among  the  crimes  against 
humanity  which  will  cause  the  downfall  of  England.  The  people  of  Tus- 
cany are  contented;  they  live  under  a  mild  and  most  amiable  prince.  Yet 
Austria  semis  1.0,000  troops  to  live  at  Florence,  and  the  number  for  all  Italy 
IS  to  be  125,000.  Five  regiments  are  enough  to  keep  all  Italy  in  subjec- 
tion :   nothing  can  exceed  the  cowardice  of  this  people." 

southey's  proposed  dialogues. 

"I  have  not  received  your  dialogues,  which  I  look  for  anxiously.     We 

are  sailing,  1  think,  in  different  directions.     "Vela  dare  atque  iterare  cursus 

or  relictos,'  by  the  winds  that  predominate  here.     God  grant  that  one  or 

the  other  of  us  may  be  able  to  do  some  g 1.     All  hope  that  England  can 

ever  be  what  she  was  before  the  administration  of  Pitt  is  vain  and  futile. 
There  never  was  a  tune  when  tier  inhabitants  were  more  vicious,  more  un- 
happy, or  more  divided.  They  ad  with  till  the  folly  and  desperation  of  men 
who  have  nothing  left,  neither  goods  nor  credit.     Your  judgments,  formed 


/ET.  40-46.]  ON   THE   WAY   TO   FLORENCE.  295 

on  the  spot,  must  be  more  correct  than  mine.  What  is  going  on  throughout 
the  Continent  seems  to  be  intended  by  Providence  for  the  population  of 
America." 

INSECURITY    OP    LETTERS. 

"  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  you  have  written  to  me  since  my  last  from 
Pisa,  not  however  without  some  suspicion  that  this  among  others  may  have 
miscarried.  The  Neapolitan  war  is  a  sufficient  plea  for  the  roguery  of  cer- 
tain men  here,  who  indulge  their  curiosity  and  malice  under  the  mask  of 
duty.  There  is  not  a  viler  scoundrel  than  a  certain  Fossombronio,  formerly 
a  surveyor,  now  minister  of  the  foreign  affairs.  I  have  collected  various 
anecdotes  of  this  fellow,  formerly  a  violent  partisan  of  the  French,  and 
among  the  rest  his  habit  of  detaining  the  letters  of  those  foreigners  who, 
from  their  acquirements  or  virtues,  may  reasonably  be  suspected  of  the 
power  and  inclination  to  treat  him  as  he  deserves.  Remittances,  from  bank- 
ers have  been  detained  a  month  or  more  at  his  office." 

SUPPRESSION    OP    HIS    ORATIONS    AGAINST    THE    HOLY   ALLIANCE. 

"  Longman  has  not  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  give  me  any  information 
about  the  work  I  sent  to  be  printed.  I  am  very  sorry  for  it,  as  it  contains 
remarks  of  great  utility  and  perfect  novelty,  useful  indeed  at  all  times,  but 
most  materially  so  at  the  present.  I  am  informed  that  I  should  have  done 
better  if  I  had  sent  it  to  Mawman,  who  would  have  executed  it  gladly." 

GEORGE  THE  FOURTH'S  CORONATION. 

"  I  am  happy  to  understand  that  the  coronation  has  been  performed  with- 
out any  popular  disturbance.  Surely  if  that  woman  whom  the  ministers 
are  pleased  to  call  queen  continues  to  excite  disturbances,  she  will  be  at  last 
coerced.  Were  I  a  magistrate,  I  should  not  hesitate  to  commit  her  to 
Bridewell.  I  hope  to  hear  that  you  have  written  an  ode  on  the  coronation. 
In  itself  a  coronation  can  raise  but  small  enthusiasm  in  a  poet :  the  circum- 
stances are  everything,  and  never  were  they  so  momentous  as  now." 

COURT    OP    THE    GRAND    DUKE    OP    TUSCANY. 

"  I  cannot  sleep  for  the  Greeks.  They  disturb  my  rest  more  than  the 
Sultan's,  but  with  very  different  sensations.  On  the  news  of  Bonaparte's 
death  the  festivities  at  court  were  suspended.  His  brother-in-law,  Borghese, 
did  not  however  put  on  mourning.  He  resides  entirely  at  Florence.  The 
grand  duke  was  persuaded  by  his  ministers  to  marry  the  sister  of  his  son's 
wife,  who  was  also  desirous  that,  if  he  married  any  one,  it  should  be  her. 
She  is  far  from  beautiful,  and  the  bridegroom  appears  melancholy.  In  fact 
he  loved  the  Duchess  of  Lucca's  daughter,  a  sweet,  amiable,  and  lovely 
girl.  The  ministers  must  have  been  fools,  or  something  worse,  to  persuade 
him :  for  neither  his  son's  wife,  nor  her  sister  the  Queen  of  Spain,  has  chil- 
dren. Yet  they  pretended  it  was  to  secure  the  succession  in  his  family,  the 
hereditary  prince  being  sickly.  In  fact,  it  was  to  secure  their  own  power,  — 
the  secret  of  policy  in  all  ministers." 

PUBLIC    AFFAIRS    AND    SALARIES    IN    ENGLAND. 

"  We  have  had  a  few  days  of  intense  heat,  but,  I  thank  God,  it  has  not 
affected  the  children.     I  wish  to  hear  what  you  are  doing.     All  the  accounts 


296  FIRST   SIX   YEARS   IN    ITALY.  ^SS^S' 

I  received  from  England  are  distressing,  particularly  the  report  made  by  the 
committee  of  the  Souse  of  Commons  on  the  state  of  the  landed  interest. 
A  reduction  is  spoken  of  in  the  payment  of  public  offices  of  fifteen  per  cent 
in  the  quarter.  Now  provisions  being  fifteen  per  cent  cheaper  than  when 
these  places  were  given,  this  is  no  reduction  at  all.  My  opinion  is  that  no 
•  ■s,  except  the  kingly  and  the  judges,  should  exceed  £1,500  a  year. 
I  would  give  the  chancellor  £3,000,  the  judges  £2,500.  Ambassadors 
should  be  chosen  from  elevated  and  wealthy  men,  as  elsewhere.  That  com- 
missaries and  consuls  should  be  better  paid  than  admirals  and  generals  would 
be  utterly  incredible,  if  anything  like  reason  were  admitted  into  our  expen- 
diture. Farewell,  and  pray  let  me  hear  soon  from  you.  When  will  Words- 
worth publish  the  remainder  of  his  great  poem  ?  " 

Before  Southey  replied  on  that  latter  point,  "Wordsworth  had  himself 
answered  Lander's  question.  His  letter  was  dated  at  the  beginning  of 
September,  1821,  and  spoke  of  both  the  published  and  the  unpublished 
portion  of  his  celebrated  poem.  "  The  Excursion  is  proud  of  your  ap- 
probation. The  Recluse  has  had  a  long  sleep,  save  in  my  thoughts. 
My  manucripts  are  so  ill-penned  and  blurred  that  they  are  useless 
to  all  but  myself :  and  at  present  I  cannot  face  them.  But  if  my 
stomach  can  be  preserved  in  tolerable  order,  I  hope  you  will  hear  of 
me  again,  in  the  character  chosen  for  the  title  of  that  poem."  Not 
simply  to  tell  Landor  this,  however,  but  to  speak  of  the  Latin  poems 
and  dissertation,*  and  explain  why  they  had  not  earlier  been  ac- 
knowledged, was  the  principal  intent  of  Wordsworth's  letter.  He  had 
been  suffering  from  an  irritation  in  his  eyes  that  had  disabled  him 
lately  from  reading  and  writing,  but  he  had  not  been  unmindful  or 
ungrateful ;  and  chary  as  he  was  of  praising  even  those  among  con- 
temporary poets  who  had  the  strongest  claims  on  his  personal  re- 
gard, we  are  entitled  fairly  to  accept  as  of  peculiar  significance  and 
weight  what  he  now  said  to  Landor  of  the  author  of  Gebir  and 
Count  Julian. 

"  It  is  high  time  I  should  thank  you  for  the  honorable  mention 
you  have  made  of  me.  It  could  not  but  be  grateful  to  me  to  be 
praised  by  a  poet  who  has  written  verses  of  ivhich  I  would  rather  have 
been  the  author  than  of  any  produced  in  our  time.  And  what  I  now 
thus  write  to  you  I  have  frequently  said  to  many." 

Of  the  Latin  poems  he  afterwards  speaks,  and,  with  a  simple 
gravity  not  unamusing,  upholds  as  a  time-honored  custom  the  habit 
of  writers  writing  in  their  native  tomme.  He  had  felt  himself 
greatly  honored  by  the  present  of  Landor's  book.  "It  arrived  at  a 
time  when  I  had  the  use  of  my  eyes  for  reading,  and  with  great 
pleasure  did  I  employ  them  in  the  perusal  of  the  dissertation  an- 
nexed, which  I  read  several  times.  The  poems  themselves,  however, 
I  have  not  been  able  to  look  into,  for  I  was  seized  with  a  fit  of  com- 
position at  that  time,  and  deferred  the  pleasure  to  which  they  invited 
me  till  I  could  give  them  an   undivided  attention.     But  alas !  the 

*  See  ante,  pp.  278,  279,  288. 


MT.  40-46.]  ON    THE   WAY   TO    FLORENCE.  297 

complaint  in  my  eyes,  to  which  I  have  been  occasionally  subject  for 
several  years  past,  suddenly  returned  ;  and  I  have  since  suffered 
from  it  as  already  mentioned."  Referring  then  to  the  somewhat  sin- 
gular circumstances  in  which  they  were  living  at  Rydal  Mount,  in 
solitude  during  nearly  nine  months  of  the  year,  and  for  the  rest  in  a 
round  of  engagements,  he  says  that  having  nobody  near  him  that 
reads  Latin  he  can  only  speak  of  the  essay  from  recollection  ;  but  Landor 
will  not  perhaps  feel  surprised  to  be  told  that  he  differs  in  opinion  as 
to  the  propriety  of  the  Latin  language  being  used  by  moderns  for 
■works  of  taste  and  imagination.  "  Miserable  would  have  been  the 
lot  of  Dante,  Ariosto,  and  Petrarch,  if  they  had  preferred  the 
Latin  to  their  mother  tongue  (there  is,  by  the  by,  a  Latin  translation 
of  Dante  which  you  do  not  seem  to  know  )  ;  and  what  could  Milton, 
who  was  surely  no  mean  master  of  Latin,  have  made  of  his  Paradise 
Lost,  had  that  vehicle  been  employed  instead  of  the  language  of 
the  Thames  and  Severn  !  Should  we  even  admit  that  all  modern 
dialects  are  comparatively  changeable,  and  therefore  limited  in  their 
efficacy,  may  not  the  sentiment  which  Milton  so  pleasingly  ex- 
presses when  he  says  he  is  content  to  be  read  in  his  native  isle  only, 
be  extended  to  durability  1  and  is  it  not  more  desirable  to  be  read  wTith 
affection  and  pride  and  familiarity  for  five  hundred  years  by  all 
orders  of  minds  and  all  ranks  of  people,  in  your  native  tongue,  than 
only  by  a  few  scattered  scholars  for  the  space  of  three  thousand  % 
My  frequent  infirmity  moreover  gives  me  an  especial  right  to  urge 
this  argument.  Had  your  Idylliums  been  in  English,  I  should  long 
ere  this  have  been  as  well  acquainted  with  them  as  with  your  Gebir 
and  with  your  other  poems  ;  and  now  I  know  not  how  long  they 
may  remain  to  me  a  sealed  book." 

Particular  points  in  the  dissertation  then  recur  to  him,  as,  warned 
by  his  failing  sight,  he  proceeds  to  dictate  the  remainder  of  his  let- 
ter to  Mrs.  Wordsworth.  A  hundred  things  he  had  met  with  in 
it  which  fell  in  with  his  own  sentiments  and  judgments  ;  but  there 
were  also  many  he  should  like  to  talk  over  with  Landor.  He  thinks 
the  arrangement  or  "  ordonnance  "  of  the  essay  might  be  improved  ; 
and  that  several  of  its  separate  remarks,  though  perfectly  just,  as  in 
particular  those  upon  Virgil,  being  yet  details  that  obstruct  the 
view  of  the  whole,  would  perhaps  have  been  better  placed  in  notes 
or  an  appendix.  "  Vincent  Bourne  surely  is  not  so  great  a  favorite 
with  you  as  he  ought  to  be.  Though  I  acknowledge  there  is  ground 
for  your  objection  upon  the  scoi'e  of  ultra-concinnity  (a  queer  word 
for  a  female  pen,  Mrs.  Wordsworth  has  boggled  at  it),  yet  this  ap- 
plies only  to  a  certain  portion  of  his  longs  and  shorts.  Are  you  not 
also  penurious  in  your  praise  of  Gray  %  The  fragment  at  the  com- 
mencement of  his  fourth  book  in  which  he  laments  the  death  of 
West,  in  cadence  and  sentiment  touches  me  in  a  manner  for  which  I 
am  grateful.  The  first  book  also  of  the  same  poem  appears  to  me 
as  well  executed  as  anything  of  that  kind  is  likely  to  be.     Is  not 


298  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IX    ITALY.  ^j&s-^T' 

there  a  speech  of  Solon  to  which  the  concluding  couplet  of  Gray's 
Bonnet  bears  a  inure  pointed  resemblance  than  to  any  of  the  passages 
vc.n  have  quoted  !  Be  was  told  not  to  grieve  for  the  loss  of  his  son, 
us  tears  would  be  of  no  avail.  'And  for  that  very  reason,'  replied 
he,  '  do  I   wee]).'" 

Not  many  days  after  receiving  this  letter*  Landor  had  succeeded 
in  settling  himself  in  the  Palazzo  Medici  in  Florence,  and  was  now 
to  rest  awhile  from  his  wanderings.  To  the  cities  he  has  lived  in 
during  the  six  unsettled  years,  and  to  incidents  not  recorded  in  the 
letters  quoted  above,  allusions  are  scattered  through  his  writings 
that  need  not  here  be  reproduced.  The  little  children  in  the  cart  on 
the  campo  santo  at  Pisa,  the  dispute  about  the  damp  walls  in  the 
lodgings  at  Pistoia,  the  visit  to  the  palace  of  the  Odeschalchi  at 
(  (nno,  will  be  remembered  by  readers  familiar  with  the  Conversations. 
Suffice  it  only  to  add  that  Como  seems  to  have  been  his  favorite 
resting-place  before  he  found  his  home  in  Florence,  and  that  with 
the  little  turreted  city  he  had  associations  he  was  always  fond  of 
recalling.  There  he  had  received  the  visits  of  Southey,  of  Bekker, 
and  of  the  brave  descendants  of  the  Jovii  ;  there,  in  talking  daily 
with  one  of  its  residents,  "the  calm  philosophical  Sironi,"  he  had 
found  what  seemed  to  him  no  imperfect  type  of  the  Roman  of  an- 
tiquity ;  and  there,  or  as  he  had  made  his  first  journey  there,  he  had 
Been  the  most  venerable  object  in  the  most  interesting  spot  of  an- 
cient Italy,  the  cypress  standing  on  the  spot  where  Hannibal  fought 
bis  first  battle  with  Scipiq.  This,  he  would  say,  was  one  of  the  two 
things  best  worth  seeino-  in  all  the  country,  the  other  being  the 
statue  at  the  base  of  which  Csesar  fell. 


VII.     RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT:  A  NEW  LITERARY  UNDER- 
TAKING. 

Southey's  project  of  writing  a  Book  of  Dialogues,  first  mentioned 
not  many  letters  back  and  since  more  than  once  referred  to,  had  con- 
tinued Landor  in  a  project  of  his  own  entertained  for  a  longer  time. 
It  was  not  a  new  thought  with  him  :  but  the  circumstances  in  which 
he  now  took  it  up,  and  the  particular  form  it  assumed,  had  a  result 
very  memorable. 

The  bent  of  his  genius,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  lay  in  the 
direction  of  Dialogue,  and  the  peculiarities  of  his  temperament  led 
him  the  same  way.      It  was  his  first  design  after  trial  of  his  strength 

*  T  pivc  its  closing  sentences.  "Were  T  able  to  recur  to  your  book,  I  should  tres- 
pass further  upon  your  time,  which  however  might  prove  little  to  your  advantage.  I 
saw  Mr.  Southey  yesterday  at  his  own  house.  He  lias  not  had  li is,  usual  portion  of  re- 
laxation this  rammer,  and  looked,  I  thought,  a  little  pale  in  consequence.  His  little 
boy  i-  a  stout  and  healthy  child,  and  his  other  children  have  in  general  good  health, 
though  at  present  a  little  relaxed  by  the  few  'lays  of  extreme  heat.  With  best  wishes 
for  your  health  and  happiness,  1  remain,  my  dear  sir,  must  sincerely  yours,  Wm. 

WORDBWOBTH." 


JET.  4O-46.]  RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT.  299 

in  Gebir.  He  had  projected  a  series  of  tragic  scenes  in  his  early 
days  of  friendship  with  Mocatta.  His  Count  Julian  was  a  succession 
of  dialogues  in  verse,  as  was  doubtless  also  the  tragedy  sacrificed  to 
appease  its  ill-fortune,  Ferrante  and  Giulio*  In  his  comedy  of  the 
Charitable  Dowager  he  had  given  himself  the  same  indulgence  in 
prose.  The  very  form,  as  of  an  ancient  oration  or  address  in  the 
pnyx  or  agora,  into  which  he  had  thrown  his  recent  commentaries  on 
home  and  foreign  politics,  whether  written  in  English  or  Italian,  ex- 
pressed still  that  direction  of  his  mind.  At  the  bottom  of  it  all  was 
the  strong  sense  of  his  own  individuality  which  made  so  large  a  part 
of  his  character,  and  which  he  thus  with  the  greatest  advantage 
could  bring  into  play.  For  the  same  form  of  writing  most  often  used 
to  conceal  one's  personality  is  also  that  which  may  be  employed  with 
the  greatest  success  to  indulge  in  peculiarities  intensely  personal 
without  the  ordinary  conditions  or  restraints. 

When  a  man  writes  a  dialogue  he  has  it  all  to  himself,  the  pro  and 
the  con,  the  argument  and  the  reply.  Within  the  shortest  given 
space  of  time  he  may  indulge  in  every  possible  variety  of  mood.  He 
may  contradict  himself  every  minute.  In  the  same  page  without 
any  sort  of  violence  the  most  different  shades  of  sentiment  may  find 
expression.  Extravagance  of  statement  which  in  other  forms  could 
not  be  admitted  may  be  freely  put  forth.  Dogmas  of  every  descrip- 
tion may  be  dealt  in,  .audaciously  propounded  or  passionately  opposed, 
with  a  result  all  the  livelier  in  proportion  to  the  mere  vehemence  ex- 
pended on  them.  In  no  other  style  of  composition  is  a  writer  so  free 
from  orderly  restraints  upon  opinion,  or  so  absolved  from  self-control. 
Better  far  than  any  other  it  adapts  itself  to  eagerness  and  impatience. 
Dispensing  with  preliminaries,  the  jump  in  medias  res  may  at  once 
be  taken  safely.  That  one  thing  should  be  unexpectedly  laid  aside, 
and  another  as  capriciously  taken  up,  is  quite  natural  to  it ;  the  sub- 
jects being  few  that  may  not  permissibly  branch  off  into  all  the 
kindred  topics  connected  with  them,  when  the  formalities  held  ordi- 
narily necessary  in  the  higher  orders  of  prose  composition  have  dis- 
appeared in  the  freedom  of  conversation. 

How  far  such  a  style  or  method  would  be  found  suitable  to  the 
weakness  as  well  as  the  strength  of  the  character  depicted  in  these 
pages,  the  reader  has  the  means  of  judging.  By  many  it  may  be 
thought  that  I  have  supplied  such  means  too  amply.  But  if  the 
wish  for  whose  gratification  the  papers  here  printed  were  given  me 
by  my  old  friend  was  to  be  complied  with  at  all,  I  could  not  con- 
sent so  to  use  them  as  to  convey  an  imperfect  or  a  false  impression. 
Thus  far,  up  to  his  forty-fifth  year,  through  the  full  half  of  a  life 
prolonged  far  beyond  the  allotted  term,  Landor  stands  before  the 
reader,  not  perhaps  completely  yet  not  partially  or  unfairly  depicted, 
and  in  the  main  by  himself.  He  desired  nothing  so  much  as  that 
some  record  having  claim  to  be  remembered  of  his  early  intercourse 


Ante,  pp.  183,  184.    See  also  pp.  173,  174. 


300  FIRST   SIX   YEARS   IN   ITALY.  ^£S££' 


1815-21. 


with  Southey,  and  as  for  as  possible  of  the  letters  they  interchanged, 
should  be  made  by  ine ;  and  with  the  materials  afforded  I  have  done 
my  best  in  Buch  a  manner  to  comply,  as,  while  it  satisfied  that  wish, 
should  do  offence  as  little  to  the  patience  of  the  living  as  to  the  mem- 
ory of  the  dead. 

Upon  the  latter  point  my  chief  hesitation  has  been  whether  it  was 
advisable  to  revive  the  Llanthony  disputes  or  to  tell  again  the  story 
of  the  Bethams.  But  by  omission  of  the  former  I  should  have  lost 
some  illustrations  of  character  important  in  their  bearing  on  the  later 
passages  of  Landor's  career;  the  other  narrative  was  necessary  to 
explain  his  sudden  exile  from  England  ;  and  in  giving  effect  to  his 
own  wish  that  both  should  be  retained,  I  have  been  careful  to  take  no 
part  in  the  quarrels  they  involve.  Such  also  would  have  been  to  him 
the  course  most  pleasing ;  for  he  was  never  indifferent  to  the  truth 
even  at  the  times  when  he  failed  with  accuracy  himself  to  recollect 
it,  and  he  thought  always  he  could  afford  to  have  it  frankly  told  bet- 
ter than  any  imperfect  or  garbled  representation  of  it.  I  remember 
his  anger  at  some  remarks  upon  him  by  Mr.  De  Quincey  in  which 
the  "  fiery  radiations  "  of  his  spirit  were  enlarged  upon,  and  he  was 
described  as  a  man  intended  by  nature  to  be  a  leader  in  storms,  a 
martyr,  a  national  reformer,  or  an  arch-rebel,  but  whom  the  accident 
of  possessing  too  much  wealth  had  turned  into  a  solitary  unsympa- 
thizing  exile.  Nor  was  his  anger  less  at  reading  an  anecdote  of  him- 
self, I  think  by  the  same  writer,  wherein  he  was  said  to  have  sold, 
out  of  mere  offence  at  the  conduct  of  some  of  his  tenants,  what  his 
ancestors  had  held  as  their  patrimony  for  700  years.  In  both  state- 
ments, as  in  many  similar  ones  made  since  his  death,  fact  and  fiction 
had  become  so  oddly  intermixed  as  only  to  be  clearly  separable  by 
such  detail  as  1  have  given. 

What  there  is  in  either  that  has  a  bearing  on  his  real  character 
will  be  to  any  who  has  read  these  pages  obvious  enough  ;  and  he 
would  himself  have  been  the  last  to  object  to  any  one  who  said  of 
him,  that  whether  better  or  worse  than  his  fellows  it  had  at  least 

1 n  too  much  his  boast  to  be  other  than  they.     From  the  days  of 

hie  boyhood  this  was  his  fault.  At  school,  at  home,  at  college,  con- 
scious always  of  powers  that  doubtless  received  but  scant  acknowl- 
edgment, he  contracted  such  a  habit  of  looking  down  upon  every- 
body that  he  lost  alto-ether  the  power,  which  the  very  wisest  may 
least  afford  to  Lose,  of  occasionally  looking  down  upon  himself.  Ev- 
erything  was  to  begin  or  to  be  altered  anew  for  him,  he  was  to  he 
more  sagacious  than  his  elders,  judge  better  than  anybody  what  was 
best  for  himself,  indulged  unchecked  wliatever  humors  pleased  him, 
and  glorying  that  he  was  not  east  in  the  mould  of  other  men's  opin- 
ions. Hud  nothing  that  it  became  him  to  object  to  in  his  own.  provided 
only  they  were  sufficiently  wild,  irregular,  singular,  and  extreme.  The 
contradictions  in  such  a  character  as  this,  its  generous  as  well  as  its 
selfish  points,  its  comic  and  its  tragic  incidents,  are  necessarily  marked 


JET.  40-46.]  BETROSPECT   AND   PROSPECT.  301 

with  more  prominence  than  in  the  ordinary  run  of  men  ;  and  almost 
everything  will  depend  upon  the  side  you  approach  it  from* 

Those  Llanthony  disputes  it  is  impossible  to  review  altogether 
with  gravity,  though  they  are  a  comedy  with  a  very  tragical  fifth  act. 
But  until,  by  Betham's  utter  failure  and  break-down  in  his  payments, 
the  serious  element  comes  in  suddenly,  we  can  only  see,  in  the  entire 
tenor  of  that  life  at  Llanthony,  another  phase  or  development  of  a 
career  curiously  consistent  in  its  inconsistencies.  It  began  with  the 
old  difficulty  of  co-operating  in  the  ordinary  way  with  ordinary 
human  beings.  He  doubtless  had  the  best  designs  in  the  world 
when  he  persisted  in  claiming  the  right  as  a  grand-juryman  to  act  in- 
dependently of  his  fellow-jurors  in  presenting  for  investigation 
alleged  crimes  in  no  way  previously  the  subject  of  charge  or  inquiry  ; 
but,  in  contesting  such  a  claim,  his  fellow-jurors  had  common  sense 
as  well  as  custom  on  their  side.  Every  reason,  public  and  private, 
supported  his  demand  to  be  placed  in  the  commission  of  the  peace ; 
but  those  who  had  to  act  with  him  in  such  a  capacity  might  not  un- 
reasonably object  to  an  impracticable  colleague.  No  one,  in  short, 
was  half  "the  trouble  to  him  at  Llanthony  that  he  began  by  being  to 
himself.  Everything  that  followed  had  this  for  its  source.  In  pri- 
vate and  in  public  affairs  his  plan  of  proceeding  was  on  the  same  ec- 
centric principle  of  differing  as  widely  as  he  could  from  everybody 
else.  He  was  never  beyond  the  control  of  the  mood  that  possessed 
him  for  the  moment ;  and  though  it  was  easy,  by  humoring  this,  to 
continue  friendly  with  him,  it  was  yet  easier  to  quarrel  with  him  by 
opposing  it,  in  however  slight  a  degree.  Of  course  he  began  by  exhib- 
iting an  unwise  excess  of  kindness  and  concession  to  Betham.  To 
Southey's  friend  he  could  not  do  less.  He  never  refused  him,  as  he 
says,  any  request  however  unreasonable  ;  he  conceded  them  more- 
over in  that  grand  style  which  makes  the  receiver  seem  to  be  confer- 
ring the  favor  ;  and  it  was  the  man's  own  complaint,  when  the  un- 
reasonableness had  arrived  at  the  point  of  not  paying  anything  he 
was  under  obligation  to  pay,  that  there  was  no  conceivable  indul- 
gence he  had  not  been  taught  to  rely  upon  at  Landor's  hands.  Then 
came  discovery  on  both  sides  ;  on  the  one  that  some  rent  must  be 
paid  or  the  farms  given  up,  on  the  other  that  there  was  a  limit  to 
those  wonderful  resources  of  which  an  impression  so  boundless  had 

*  "  I  doubt  whether  among  all  your  acquaintances,"  wrote  Mr.  Robert  Landor  to  me, 
"  you  have  ever  known  any  two  men  more  unlike  each  other  than  my  brother  as  he 
appeared  when  paying  his  customary  visits  to  you  or  Mr.  Kenyon,  so  joyous,  so  benev- 
olent then,  and  as  he  proved  to  be  in  his  father's  house  while  young,  or  in  his  own 
when  twenty  years  older.  Where  there  was  no  disrespect,  but  only  a  difference  of 
opinion  on  some  subject  of  no  consequence  whatever,  I  once  heard  him  tell  an  old  lady 
(my  father's  guest,  but  in  my  father's  absence)  that  she  was  a  damned  fool.  If  you 
ask  why  such  an  anecdote  should  be  related  by  me,  I  must  reply  that  there  may  be 
still  living  many  persons,  beyond  his  own  family,  who  still  remember  such,  and  would 
contradict  any  narrative  of  yours  in  which  the  best  qualities  were  remembered,  the 
worst  forgotten."  I  had  not  waited  for  this  appeal  to  resolve,  that,  if  this  memoir 
■were  written  at  all,  it  should  contain,  as  far  as  might  lie  within  my  power,  a  fair  state- 
ment of  the  truth. 


302  FIRST    SIX    TEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^f^'" 

been  conveyed  ;  and,  in  the  differences  that  followed,  all  the  advan- 
tage  went  to  the  Bide  of  him  who  had  the  coolness  to  retain  it  when 
it  tell  to  him.  It  never  tails  in  such  cases  to  the  irritable  temper 
and  the  habit  of  hasty  language,  no  matter  for  the  consciousness  of 
right  that  has  provoked  them,  or  for  the  freedom  from  everything 
ungenerous  that  may  accompany  them. 

Nor  should  this  subject  he  quitted  in  its  connection  with  Landor's 
character  without  the  remark  that,  when  we  now  look  hack  to  the 
most  part  of  what  we  find  that  he  intended  to  do,  and  measure  it  by 
the  means  that  alone  he  possessed  of  doing  it,  absurd  as  in  some  re- 
spects the  impression  is,  there  is  yet  more  in  the  retrospect  to  please 
and  to  excuse,  at  times  even  to  excite  admiration,  than  to  offend. 
Few  of  his  infirmities  are  without  something  kindly  or  generous 
about  them  :  and  we  are  not  long  in  discovering  there  is  nothing  so 
wildly  incredible  that  he  will  not  himself  in  perfect  good  faith  be- 
lieve.  When  he  published  his  first  hook  of  poems  on  (putting  Ox- 
ford, the  profits  were  to  he  reserved  for  a  distressed  clergyman. 
When  he  published  his  Latin  poems,  the  poor  of  Leipzig  were  to 
have  ill'1  sum  they  realized.  When  his  comedy  was  ready  to  he 
acted,  a  Spaniard  who  had  sheltered  him  at  Castro  was  to  he  made 
richer  by  it.  When  he  competed  for  the  prize  of  the  Academy  of 
Stockholm,  it  was  to  go  to  the  poor  of  Sweden..  If  nobody  got  any- 
thing from  any  one  of  these  enterprises,  the  fault  at  all  events  was 
not  his.  With  his  extraordinary  power  of  forgetting  disappoint- 
ments, he  was  as  prepared  at  each  successive  failure  to  start  afresh  as 
if  each  had  been  a  triumph.  I  shall  have  to  .delineate  this  peculiar- 
ity as  strongly  in  the  last  half  as  in  the  first  half  of  his  life,  and  it 
was  certainly  an  amiable  one.  He  was  ready  at  all  times  to  set  aside 
out  of  his  own  possessions  something  for  somchody  who  might  please 
him  for  the  time  ;  and  when  frailties  of  temper  and  tongue  are  noted, 
this  other  eccentricity  should  not  he  omitted.  He  desired  eagerly 
tin'  love  as  well  as  the  good  opinion  of  those  wdiom  for  the  time  he 
esteemed,  ami  no  one  was  more  affectionate  while  under  such  influences. 
It  is  not  a  small  virtue  to  feel  such  genuine  pleasure  as  he  always 
did  in  giving  ami  receiving  pleasure,  for  one  half  cannot  he  selfish. 
His  generosity,  too,  was  bestowed  chiefly  on  those  who  could  make 
small  acknowledgment  in  thanks  and  no  return  in  kind. 

The  similarity  in  habits  of  mind  hetween  himself  and  Southcy  was 
pointed  out  in  a  previous  part  of  this  memoir,  and  has  since  had 
illustration  from  their  correspondence.  But  it  will  have  been  seen 
that  while  both  have  continued  to  display  the  same  peculiarity  of 
putting  in  the  place  of  reason  their  imagination  and  their  passions, 
and  of  thinking  thus  and  thus  by  mere  force  of  their  will  or  pleas- 
ure, a  wide  difference  has  been  declaring  itself  hetween  the  tastes 
and  desires  which  have  thus  so  largely  constituted  opinion  in  each. 
Landor's  wishes  have  expanded,  while  those  of  Southey  have  con- 
tracted, under  the  same   influences.      It  was  not  ill  said,  by  an  acute 


MT.  40-46.]  EETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.  303 

observer  who  knew  them  both,  that  their  fault  was  not  that  of  blind- 
ness to  the  truth  so  much  as  that  of  indifference  to  give  it  welcome 
unless  as  a  discovery  or  possession  of  their  own ;  and  that,  with  the 
possession  of  what  they  so  desired,  satiety  ever  followed  quickly. 
Napoleon  did  what  they  talked,  and  they  hated  him.  They  were 
themselves  ready  enough  to  pull  down  sovereignties,  but  for  the  man 
who  by  his  own  might  trampled  on  the  necks  of  sovereigns  they  had 
nothing  but  contempt  and  dislike.  With  some  modification  this  was 
true,  up  to  Napoleon's  fall ;  but  what  followed  put  wide  differences 
between  them.  Every  protest  against  repression  at  home,  every  ris- 
ing against  reaction  abroad,  had  from  Landor  as  hearty  a  sympathy 
as  it  had  bitter  opposition  from  Southey.  The  men  had  not  altered 
in  temperament ;  but,  from  altering  circumstances,  while  self-opinion 
in  the  one  had  been  opening  itself  to  impressions  more  permanent 
and  universal,  in  the  other  it  had  narrowed  itself  more  and  more  to 
what  in  his  position  was  merely  accidental  and  personal.  The  dis- 
tinction marks  what  had  thus  far  been  Landor's  advantage  in  his 
exile,  in  his  removal  from  sordid  cares,  in  his  freer  observation  of  the 
life  of  the  present,  and  in  his  less  restricted  commsrce  with  the  wis- 
dom of  the  past.  It  shows  also,  as  to  both,  that  whatever  might 
continue  to  be  their  impetuosities  of  opinion,  there  was  more  in  Lan- 
dor than  in  Southey  of  a  stronger  spirit  of  the  understanding  to  give 
body  and  consistency  to  such  better  judgments  as  he  might  form. 
He  was  indeed  preparing  himself  in  banishment  and  adversity  for 
what  probably  never  would  have  come  to  him  in  happier  fortune,  and 
the  result  will  soon  be  seen. 

That  his  opinions  were  meanwhile  separating  widely  from  those  of 
his  friend  he  seems  to  have  been  anxious  that  Southey  himself  should 
know.  "  We  are  sailing,  I  think,  in  different  directions,"  is  his  re- 
mark in  the  letter  last  quoted,  making  allusion  to  the  dialogues  on 
which  both  were  engaged ;  and  Southey,  replying  on  almost  the  same 
day  to  what  he  had  said  in  a  preceding  letter  *  of  the  line  of  argu- 
ment taken  by  him  against  including  a  House  of  Lords  in  the  consti- 
tution he  was  recommending  for  the  Italians,  gave  illustration  himself 
of  their  growing  differences.  "  I  have  read  with  all  the  attention 
in  my  power  what  you  say  against  a  House  of  Lords.  Perhaps  the 
most  difficult  of  all  things  is  to  establish  a  free  government  among  a 
people  altogether  unused  to  freedom  ■  and  if  they  are,  as  in  France 
and  Italy,  a  corrupt  people,  the  difficulty  becomes  still  greater. 
Where  you  have  a  representative  government,  two  houses  have  at 
least  the  advantage  of  interposing  delay  in  times  of  popular  excite- 
ment ;  they  afford  something  more  than  an  appeal  from  Philip  drunk 
to  Philip  sober.  The  House  of  Lords,  since  its  cowardly  conduct  in 
the  Queen's  business,  which  indicated  the  same  want  of  fibre  that 
proved  fatal  to  it  in  the  days  of  the  Long  Parliament,  has  performed 
the  service  of  stopping  the  question  of  Catholic  emancipation  after  it 

*  Ante,  pp.  290,  291. 


30-4  FIRST    SIX    TEARS    IX    ITALY.  I*(£i!J 

had  passed  the  Commons.  This  is  the  most  important  act  that  it  has 
ever  performed.  For  the  sure  consequences  of  that  emancipation 
would  be  a  religious  war  in  Ireland  upon  the  demand  for  a  dominant 
Roman  Catholic  establishment,  which  is  the  next  step:  and  in  Eng- 
land, the  repeal  of  the  Test  Act;  the  intrusion  of  the  dissenters  into 
all  corporations,  their  predominancy  in  all  town  elections,  where  the 
election  is  not  purely  popular  ;  the  sale  of  the  tithes;  and  so,  in  sure 
progress  through  the  overthrow  of  the  Church  establishment,  to  gen- 
eral anarchy  and  spoliation."  *  To  say  that  upon  every  allusion  here 
made  Landor's  views  were  as  extreme  in  the  opposite  direction,  would 
express  the  truth  quite  moderately. 

Nevertheless  in  essential  points  of  temperament  they  continued 
marvellously  alike ;  and  pausing  thus  between  the  two  divisions  of 
Landor's  life,  in  the  hope  of  drawing  from  what  is  gone  some  help  to 
the  better  understanding  of  what  is  to  come,  there  is  one  subject  on 
which  a  word  may  properly  be  said.     Both  friends  had  fallen  into  a 
habit  of  applying  heathen  doctrines  and  precedents  in  a  manner  alarm- 
ingly unsuitable  to  a  Christian  commonwealth  ;  and  we  see  how  often 
it  has  gravely  recurred  that  they  could  hit  upon  no  better  remedy 
than  the  dagger  of  Brutus  for  the  treacheries  of  Ferdinand  or  the 
tyrannies  of  Bonaparte.      The  same  vehement  extravagance  of  speech, 
for  such  only  it  was,  both  of  them  indulged  to  the  end  ;  it  was  a  part 
of  the  weakness  of  temperament,  of  the  '  believing  without  reason  and 
hating  without  provocation,'  into  which,  while  as  to  other  subjects 
time  had  mollified  them,  special  subjects  always  betrayed  them  ;  yet 
if  Landor's  life  had  been  prolonged  but  a  few  months,  no  man,  at  the 
murder  which  then  astonished  the  civilized  world  and  for  a  time  recon- 
ciled all  opinions,  would  have  been  more  shocked  than  he,  and  no  man 
more  indignant  to  be  told  that  on  more  than  one  occasion,  without 
even  the  poor  excuse  of  the  excitement  of  civil  war  or  of  the  madness 
arising  from  political  defeat  and  ruin,  he  had  himself  seemed  to  give 
his  sanction  to   the  same  crime.      Nor  would  his   indignation  have 
been  unreal.     A  man  must  be  judged,  at  first,  by  what  he  says  and 
does.      But  with  him  such  extravagance  as  1  have  referred  to  was  lit- 
tle more  than  the  habitual  indulgence  (on  such  themes)  of  passionate 
feelings  and  language,  indecent  indeed  but  utterly  purposeless  ;  the 
mere  explosion  of  wrath  provoked  by  tyranny  or  cruelty;  the  irregu- 
larities of  an  overheated  steam-engine  too  weak  for  its  own  vapor.     It 
is  v.  ,\  certain   that   no  one  corTld  detest  oppression  more  truly  than 
Landor  did   in  all  seasons  and  times;  and  if  no  one  expressed  that 
BCOrn,  that   abhorrence  of  tyranny  and  fraud,  more  hastily  or  more 
intemperately,  all   his  fire  and  fury  signified  really  little  else  than  ill- 
temper  too  easily  provoked.     Not  to  justify  or  excuse  such  language, 
but   to  explain    it,  this   consideration   is    urged.     If  not    uniformly 

*  Southey  to  Landor,  10th  Deroiriher,  1S21.  This  fa  on?  of  the  letters  printed  in  the 
/  /,'',  mill  Oorrupofuknct  (V.  106-107),  but  the  whole  of  the  passage  in  the  text  has 
been  suppressed  (with  many  others),  and  is  now  printed  for  the  lirst  time. 


JET.  40-46.]  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.  305 

placable,  Landor  was  always  compassionate.  He  was  tender-hearted 
rather  than  bloody-minded  at  all  times,  and  upon  only  the  most  par- 
tial acquaintance  with  his  writings  could  other  opinion  be  formed.  A 
completer  knowledge  of  them  would  satisfy  any  one  that  he  had  as 
little  real  disposition  to  kill  a  king  as  to  kill  a  mouse. 

In  fact  there  is  not  a  more  marked  peculiarity  in  his  genius  than 
the  union  with  its  strength  of  a  most  uncommon  gentleness,  and  in 
the  personal  ways  of  the  man  this  was  equally  manifest.  When,  in 
the  year  following  that  to  which  this  narrative  has  arrived,  Leigh 
Hunt  went  to  Italy  and  saw  him,  he  endeavored  to  convey  the  im- 
pression produced  by  so  much  vehemence  of  nature  joined  to  such 
extraordinary  delicacy  of  imagination  by  likening  him  to  a  stormy 
mountain  pine  that  should  produce  lilies.  "  After  indulging  the  par- 
tialities of  his  friendships  and  enmities,  and  trampling  on  kings  and 
ministers,  he  shall  cool  himself,  like  a  Spartan  worshipping  a  moon- 
beam, in  the  patient  meekness  of  Lady  Jane  Grey."  This  is  antici- 
pating somewhat,  for  though  imaginary  conversations  in  manuscript 
lie  already  in  his  desk,  none  have  as  yet  emerged  from  it.  But  from 
letters  to  his  family,  from  papers  preserved  by  him  of  this  date,  and 
from  some  enclosures  in  his  letters  to  Southey,  I  have  discovered  that 
this  was  the  precise  date  of  some  of  the  smaller  of  his  poetical  pieces 
which  will  illustrate  the  remark  just  made  as  well  as  almost  any  of 
his  writings. 

At  Swansea  in  former  years  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  some 
ladies  of  Lord  Aylmer's  family,  one  of  whom,  regarded  by  him  always 
with  a  very  tender  sentiment,  went  shortly  afterwards  to  India  and 
died  suddenly  while  yet  very  young. 

"  Ah,  what  avails  the  sceptred  race, 

Ah,  what  the  form  divine ! 
What  every  virtue,  every  grace ! 

Rose  Aylmer,  all  were  thine. 
Rose  Aylmer,  whom  these  wakeful  eyes 

May  weep  but  never  see, 
A  night  of  memories  and  of  sighs 

I  consecrate  to  thee." 

The  deep  and  tender  pathos  of  that  little  poem  could  hardly  be 
surpassed,  and  in  delicacy  and  sweetness  of  expression  it  is  perfect.  It 
was  first  printed  in  its  present  form  some  years  after  this  date,  and  has 
since  affected  many  readers  with  the  same  indefinable  charm  ascribed 
to  it  by  Charles  Lamb  in  an  unpublished  letter  to  Landor  of  the  date 
of  1832.  "  Many  things  I  had  to  say  to  you  which  there  was  not 
time  for.  One  why  should  I  forget]  'T  is  for  Rose  Aylmer,  which 
has  a  charm  I  cannot  explain.     I  lived  vipon  it  for  weeks." 

I  subjoin  other  brief  pieces  (all  of  them  subsequently  printed) 
from  his  letters  during  the  first  years  of  his  residence  in  Italy.  In 
some  of  them  we  meet  again  a  heroine  of  former  years,  as  to  whom 
further  allusion  may  be  made  hereafter ;  but  the  passion  is  now  a 
playful  tenderness,  and  sorrow  or  reproach  has  passed  into  very  gen- 
tle pathos. 

20 


306  FIRST  SIX  TEARS   IN    ITALY.  IrtS-»" 


"  A  provident  and  wakeful  fear 
Impels  me,  while  I  read,  to  say, 

When  Poesy  invites,  forbear 
Sometimes  to  walk  her  tempting  way: 

Beadier  is  she  to  swell  the  tear 
Thau  its  sharp  tinglings  to  allay." 


"  No,  my  own  love  of  other  years ! 

No,  it  must  never  be. 
Much  rests  with  you  that  yet  endears; 

Alas,  hut  what  with  me? 
Could  those  bright  years  o'er  me  revolve 

So  gay,  o'er  you  so  fair. 
The  pearl  of  life  we  would  dissolve. 

And  each  the  cup  might  share. 
You  show  that  truth  can  ne'er  decay, 

Whatever  fate  befalls; 
I,  that  the  myrtle  and  the  bay 

Shoot  fresh  on  ruined  walls." 


"  Why,  why  repine,  my  pensive  friend, 
At  pleasures  slipt  away  V 
Some  the  stern  Fates  will  never  lend, 
And  all  refuse  to  stay. 

"  I  see  the  rainbow  in  the  sky, 
The  dew  upon  the  grass : 
I  see  them,  and  I  ask  not  why 
They  glimmer  or  they  pass. 

"  With  folded  arms  I  linger  not 

To  call  them  back;  't  were  vain; 
In  this,  or  in  some  other  spot, 
I  know  they  '11  shine  again." 


"  My  hopes  retire;  my  wishes  as  before 
Struggle  to  find  their  resting-place  in  vain: 
The  ebbing  sea  thus  beats  against  the  shore; 
The  shore  repels  it;  it  returns  again." 


"  All  tender  thoughts  that  e'er  possest 
The  human  bram  or  human  breast 

Centre  in  mine  for  thee  .  .   . 
Excepting  one  .  .  and  that  must  thou 
Contribute:  come,  confer  it  now: 
Grateful  I  fain  would  be." 


"  Proud  word  you  never  spoke,  but  you  will  speak 
F<mr  not  exempt  from  pride  some  future  day. 
Ri    ting  on  one  white  hand  a  warm  wet  cheek 

Over  my  open  volume  you  will  say. 
'  This  man  loved  me  ! '  then  rise  and  trip  away." 


"  Pleasure!  why  thus  desert  the  heart 
In  it-  Bpring-tide ? 

I  could  have  seen  her,  I  could  part, 
And  but  have  sighed! 

"  O'er  every  youthful  charm  to  stray, 
I  i     i/e,  to  touch  .  .   . 
Pleasure!  why  take  so  much  away, 
Or  give  so  much?  " 


jET.  40-46.]  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.  307 

"  Poet.  Thus  do  you  sit  and  break  the  flowera 
That  might  have  lived  a  few  short  hours, 
And  lived  for  you !    Love,  who  o'erpowers 

My  youth  and  me, 
Shows  me  the  petals  idly  shed, 
Shows  me  my  hopes  as  early  dead, 
In  vain,  in  vain  admonished 

By  all  I  see. 
Lady.  And  thus  you  while  the  noon  away, 
Watching  me  strip  my  flowers  of  gay 
Apparel,  just  put  on  for  May, 

And  soon  laid  by! 
Cannot  you  teach  me  one  or  two* 
Fine  phrases  ?  if  you  can,  pray  do. 
Since  you  are  grown  too  wise  to  woo, 

To  listen  I. 
Poet.  Lady,  I  come  not  here  to  teach ; 
But  learn,  the  moods  of  gentle  speech; 
Alas !  too  far  beyond  my  reach 

Are  happier  strains. 
Many  frail  leaves  shall  yet  lie  pulled, 
Many  frail  hopes  in  death-bed  lulled, 
Or  ere  this  outcast  heart  be  schooled 

By  all  its  pains." 


"  In  Clementina's  artless   mien 
Lucilla  asks  me  what  I  see, 
And  are  the  roses  of  sixteen 
Enough  for  me  ? 

"  Lucilla  asks,  if  that  be  all, 

Have  I  not  culled  as  sweet  before: 
Ah  yes,  Lucilla,  and  their  fall 
I  still  deplore. 

"  I  now  behold  another  scene, 

Where  Pleasure  beams  with  heaven's  own  light, 
More  pure,  more  constant,  more  serene, 
And  not  less  bright : 

"  Faith,  on  whose  breast  the  Loves  repose, 
Whose  chain  of  flowers  no  force  can  sever, 
And  Modesty,  who,  when  she  goes, 
Is  gone  forever." 


"  From  you,  Ianthe,  little  troubles  pass 
Like  little  ripples  down  a  sunny  river; 
Your  pleasures  spring  like  daisies  in  the  grass 
Cut  down  and  up  again  as  blithe  as  ever." 


"  I  often  ask  upon  whose  arm  she  leans, 

She  whom  I  dearly  love, 
And  if  she  visit  much  the  crowded  scenes 

Where  mimic  passions  move. 
There,  mighty  powers!  assert  your  just  control, 

Alarm  her  thoughtless  breast, 
Breathe  soft  suspicion  o'er  her  yielding  souk 

But  never  break  its  rest. 
O,  let  some  faithful  lover,  absent  long, 

To  sudden  bliss  return; 
Then  Landor's  name  shall  tremble  from  her  tongue, 

Her  cheek  through  tears  shall  burn." 


308  FIRST   SIX   YEARS   IN    ITALY.  ItfS*£T' 

"  She  leads  in  solitude  her  youthful  hours, 

Her  nights  lire  restlessness,  her  days  are  pain. 

0,  when  will  Health  and  Pleasure'come  again, 
Adorn  her  brow  and  strew  her  path  with  flowers, 
And  wandering  wit  relume  the  roseate  bowers, 

And  turn  and  trifle  with  his  festive  train? 
Grant,  me,  0,  grant  this  wish,  ye  heavenly  Powers! 

All  other  hope,  all  other  wish*,  restrain." 

At  Pistoia  he  saw  the  hair  of  Lucretia  Borgia,  on  which  he  wrote 
a  quatrain  solemn  yet  fantastic  in  its  beauty  as  the  subject  that  sug- 
gested it. 

"  Borgia,  thou  once  wert  almost  too  august 
And  high  for  adoration;  now  thou  'rt  dust: 
All  that  remains  of  thee  these  plaits  unfold, 
Calm  hair  meandering  in  pellucid  gold." 

On  his  way  to  Florence  these  were  written  :  — 

"  I  leave  with  unreverted  eye  the  towers 
Of  Pisa  pining  o'er  her  desert  stream. 
Pleasure  (they  say)  yet  lingers  in  thy  bowers, 
Florence,  thou  patriot's  sigh,  thou  poet's  dream! 

"  0,  could  I  find  thee  as  thou  once  wert  known, 
Thoughtful  and  lofty,  liberal  and  free ! 
But  the  pure  Spirit  of  thy  wreck  has  flown, 
And  only  Pleasure's  pnantom  dwells  with  thee." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  surpass  the  delicacy  and  beauty  of  writing 
in  all  these  pieces.  If  indeed  they  have  here  and  there  a  fault,  it 
will  be  found  in  something  of  an  over-choiceness  and  conciseness  of 
expression,  at  times  allying  itself  rather  to  subtlety  of  thought  than 
simplicity  of  sentiment.  But  for  the  most  part,  as  even  the  few  thus 
presented  will  show,  they  are  both  in  feeling  and  style  as  nearly  per- 
fect as  such  things  can  be,  and  the  most  famous  of  the  short  pieces 
in  the  Greek  Anthology  have  not  a  more  pervading  and  indescribable 
air  of  refinement  and  grace.  Southey  had  now  to  confess,  jealous  as 
he  was  of  the  time  given  by  his  friend  to  composition  after  the  an- 
cient models,  that  he  did  not  write  his  own  language  worse  for  having 
becni in-  more  thoroughly  practised  in  theirs.  He  told  Grosvenor 
Bedford  of  Landor's  improvement  from  his  years  of  exile,  and  that 
his  wonderful  genius  was  freeing  itself  rapidly  from  everything  harsh 
or  obscure.  But  he  spoke  of  him  still  as  a  man  born  pre-eminently 
a  poet ;  and  could  indeed  have  had  small  conception  that  he  was  at 
this  moment  engaged  on  any  prose  literary  labor  of  which  the  sud- 
den and  wide  Buccess  would  go  far  even  to  dismiss  from  men's  fur- 
ther remembrance  hisGebir&nd  his  Julian.  The  letter  received  by 
Southey  immediately  before  the  allusion  to  the  "dialogues"  reached 
him  which  is  printed  in  the  last  section,  had  enclosed  what  in  especial 
I  suppose  to  have  at  this  time  raised  his  hope  so  high  for  his  friend's 
chances  at  last  of  being  admitted  to  the  highest  rank  among  poets. 
This  was  two  dramatic  pieces :  one  taken  from  the  story  of  Ines  de 
Castro;  and  the  other,  under  the  title  of  "  Ippolito  di  Este,"  a  re- 
written version  of  a  couple  of  scenes  from  his  burnt  Ferrante  and 


JET.  40-46.]  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.  309 

Giulio*  out  of  which  one  or  two  brief  extracts  will  not  be  inappro- 
priate here,  as  well  to  justify  what  South ey  built  upon  it,  as  for  the 
light  it  throws  upon  the  other  work  its  author  then  was  busy  with. 

It  has  been  said  of  the  Imaginary  Conversations  that  it  is  never 
possible  to  read  them  without  feeling  that  whatever  may  be  their 
truth  to  the  circumstances  and  times  in  which  their  supposed  speak- 
ers lived,  they  are  still  more  true  to  Landor  himself ;  that  we  always 
feel  it  is  he  who  is  speaking ;  and  that  he  has  merely  chosen  charac- 
ters whom  he  considered  suitable  to  develop  particular  phases  of  his 
own  mind.  There  is  something  in  this,  but  it  is  far  from  expressing 
on  the  particular  point  all  that  requires  to  be  said.  If  the  conver- 
sations had  been  only  this,  they  would  not  have  differed  in  result 
from  the  many  similar  undertakings  by  writers  of  that  and  the  pre- 
ceding century.  Their  distinction  and  their  success  was  the  combi- 
nation with  the  intense  individuality  to  which  I  have  alluded  at  the 
opening  of  this  section  of  some  of  the  subtlest  arts  of  the  drama- 
tist and  of  the  highest  poetical  imagination.  So  calm  a  judgment  as 
Julius  Hare's  found  creations  in  them  comparable  only  to  Sophocles 
or  Shakespeare  :  f  and  to  so  keen  a  criticism  as  Hazlitt's  it  appeared 
that  the  historical  figures  they  evoked  were  transfused  with  nothing 
short  of  the  very  truth  and  spirit  of  history  itself.  %  Applied  to 
some  few  of  the  conversations  neither  praise  is  in  excess ;  and  even 
where,  as  in  by  far  the  greater  number,  that  is  said  from  time  to 
time  which  the  speaker  in  life  would  not  be  likely  to  have  said  or  to 
have  been  in  the  position  to  say,  the  man  may  thus  be  forgotten,  but  the 
character  remains.  True  or  false,  the  character  conceived  by  Landor 
is  in  the  forms  of  thought  and  speech  there  still.  The  dramatic  con- 
ditions continue  to  be  observed.  Landor  may  be  discoverable  where 
we  ought  to  be  conscious  only  of  Cicero,  but  it  is  in  a  difference  be- 
tween the  fact  as  known  to  us  and  the  conception  formed  of  it,  not 
in  any  falsehood  to  that  conception  or  in  any  merely  personal  intru- 
sion. If  it  had  been  otherwise,  the  defect  would  have  shown  itself 
in  his  poetical  as  in  his  prose  conversations ;  and  it  is  to  exhibit  the 
same  spirit  animating  both  that  I  now  speak  of  the  scenes  of  Ferrante 
and  Giulio,  They  are  not  more  perfect  than  those  which  accompa- 
nied them  ;  but  in  a  brief  space  they  illustrate  with  surprising  force 
Landor's  management  of  a  dialogue  bringing  the  extremes  of  passion 
and  tenderness  into  play. 

The  first  scene  is  in  a  cathedral,  the  second  in  a  prison  ;  and  the 
position  of  the  persons  introduced  in  a  few  words  is  this.  The  Duke 
Alfonso  and  his  brother  the  cardinal  have  two  brothers  by  their 
father's  side,  Ferrante  and  Giulio,  whom  they  refuse  to  acknowledge. 
The  duke  is  jealous  of  Ferrante's  power  over  his  subjects,  and  the 
cardinal  of  his  influence  over  the  girl  beloved  by  his  eminence  him- 

*  See  ante,  pp.  183,  184. 

t  London  Magazine,  IX.  523,  538,  539. 

X  Edinburgh  Jieview,  March,  1824. 


310  FIRST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^-a™ 

self.  The  prince  is  a  tyrant  of  the  approved  type  of  mediseval  Italy, 
and  the  priest  very  exactly  foreshadows  Victor  Hugo's  famous  arch- 
deacon. The  first  scene  shows  him  in  the  cathedral,  maddened  by 
the  rejection  of  his  love. 

"  Surely  no  air  is  stirring;  every  step 
Tiresme;  the  columns  shake,  the  ceiling  fleets, 
The  floor  beneath  me  slopes,  the  altar  rises. 
Stay!  here  she  stept:  what  grace!   what  harmony! 
It  seemed  that  every  accent,  every  note 
Of  all  the  choral  music,  breathed  from  her: 
From  her  celestial  airiness  of  form 
I  could  have  fancied  purer  light  descended. 
Between  the  pillars,  close  and  wearying, 
I  watcht  her  as  she  went:  I  had  rusht  on; 
It  was  too  late ;  yet  when  I  stopt,  I  thought 
I  stopt  full  soon:  I  cried,  Is  she  not  there  f 
She  had  been :  I  had  seen  her  shadow  burst 
The  sunbeam  as  she  parted :  a  strange  sound, 
A  sound  that  stupefied  and  not  aroused  me, 
Filled  all  my  sense-:  such  was  never  felt 
Save  when  the  sword-girt  Angel  struck  the  gate, 
And  Paradise  wailed  loud  and  closed  forever." 

His  passion  in  all  its  forms  only  repels  its  object.  Seeing  her  weep 
after  leaving  Ferrante,  he  builds  upon  it  a  kind  of  hope  which  she  at 
once  destroys,  comparing  him  with  the  brother  that  she  loves. 

"All  tears  are  not  for  sorrow:  many  swell 
In  the  warm  depths  of  gratitude  and  bliss; 
But  precious  over  all  are  those  that  hang 
And  tremble  at  the  tale  of  generous  deeds. 
These  he  relates  when  he  might  talk,  as  you  do, 
Of  passion  :  but  he  sees  my  heart,  he  finds 
What  fragrance  most  refreshes  it. 

How  high, 
0  Heaven !  must  that  man  be,  who  loves,  and  who 
Would  still  raise  others  higher  than  himself 
To  interest  his  beloved! 

All  my  soul 
I-  but  one  drop  from  his,  and  into  his 
Fall-,  as  earth's  dew  falls  into  earth  again." 

"What  follows  is  the  dialogue  in  prison  to  which  I  have  more  espe- 
cially referred,  and  in  which  is  expressed  what  the  Italian  legend  dryly 
tells  us,  that  the  cardinal  obtained  an  order  from  the  duke  to  deprive 
Ferrante  of  his  eyes  because  the  girl  beloved  by  his  eminence  had 
praised  the  beauty  of  them.  Ferrante  had  been  imprisoned  for 
sanctioning  some  popular  tumult,  and  his  brother  Giidio  had  come  to 
solace  him,  when  the  cardinal  brother  enters  suddenly,  and  after  bit- 
ter words  of  reproach  and  defiance  thrusts  a  paper  upon  Giulio  and 
goes.  Ferrante,  ignorant  that  this  paper  contains  the  sentence  de- 
priving him  (if  Bight,  wonders  to  see  Giulio,  after  glancing  at  it,  rush 
round  "  the  wide  light  chamber"  in  uncontrollable  agony. 

"  Ferrante.     O  my  true  brother  Giulio!  why  thus  hang 
Around  my  neck  and  pour  forth  prayers  for  me? 
Where  there  are  priests  and  kinsmen  such  as  ours, 
God  hears  not,  nor  is  heard.     I  am  prepared 
For  death. 


MT.  40-46.]  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.  311 

Giulio.        Ah !  worse  than  death  may  come  upon  you, 
Unless  Heaven  interpose. 

Ferrante.  I  know  the  worst, 

And  bear  one  comfort  in  my  breast  that  fire 
And  steel  can  ne'er  force  from  it:  she  I  love 
Will  not  be  his,  but  die  as  she  hath  lived. 
Doubt  you  ?  that  thus  you  shake  the  head  and  sigh. 

Giuho.     Far  other  doubt  was  mine :  even  this  shall  cease. 

Ferrante.     Speak  of  it. 

Giulio.  I  must :  God  pardon  me ! 

Ferrante.  Speak  on. 

Giulio.     Have  we  not  dwelt  in  friendship  from  our  birth, 
Told  the  same  courtier  the  same  tale  of  joy, 
And  pointed  where  life's  earliest  thorn  had  pierced 
Amid  the  sports  of  boyhood,  ere  the  heart 
Had  aught  of  bitter  or  unsound  within? 

Ferrante.     We  have  indeed. 

Giulio.  Has  my  advice  been  ill  ? 

Ferrante.     Too  often  ill-observed,  but  always  good. 

Giulio.     Brother,  my  words  are  not  what  better  men 
Would  speak  to  you ;  and  yet  my  love,  I  think, 
Must  be  more  warm  than  theirs  can  ever  be. 

Ferrante.     Brother's,  friend's,  father's,  when  was  it  like  yours? 

Giulio.     Which  of  them  ever  said  what  I  shall  say  ? 

Ferrante.     Speak ;  my  desires  are  kindled,  my  fears  quencht. 

Giulio.     Do  not  delay  to  die,  lest  crueller 
Than  common  death  befall  you." 

The  intensity  of  anguish  in  those  quiet  words  could  not  be.  sur- 
passed. For  dramatic  language  and  expression,  in  the  sense  for- 
merly contrasted  with  stage  dialogue,*  the  scene  is  indeed  a  master- 
piece. Ferrante  cannot  yet  take  in  the  horrible  truth.  But  gradually 
as  it  dawns  upon  him  he  loses  faith  in  all  things,  —  in  everything  but 
her  for  whose  love  he  is  to  suffer. 

"  Giulio.  Talk  not  so. 

Pity  comes  down  when  Hope  hath  flown  away. 

Ferrante.     Illusion! 

Giulio.  If  it  were,  which  it  is  not, 

Why  break  with  vehement  words  such  sweet  illusion  ? 
For  were  there  naught  above  but  empty  air, 
Naught  but  the  clear  blue  sky  where  birds  delight, 
Soaring  o'er  myriad  worlds  of  living  dust 
That  roll  in  columns  round  the  noontide  ray, 
Your  heart  would  faint  amid  such  solitude, 
Would  shrink  in  such  vacuity :  that  heart 
(Ferrante!  can  you  hide  its  wants  from  me?) 
Rises  and  looks  around  and  calls  aloud 
For  some  kind  Being,  some  consoling  bosom, 
Whereon  to  place  its  sorrows,  and  to  rest. 

Ferrante.      0,  that  ivas  here  .  .  I  cannot  look  beyond." 

A  gleam  of  hope  then  suddenly  rises.  The  discontent  of  the  peo- 
ple at  Ferrante's  imprisonment  being  heard  in  a  clamor  beneath  the 
dungeon  window,  Giulio  passionately  urges  his  brother  to  show  him- 
self to  his  friends  ;  but  the  other,  knowing  that  failure  will  destroy 
both,  invents  a  reason  to  evade  the  risk  of  sacrificing  his  brother. 
The  scene  closes  as  the  lights  approach  by  which  the  sentence  is  to 
be  executed  ;  and,  from  the  brother  whose  life  has  been  one  act  of 
love  for  him,  Ferrante  receives  the  dagger  with  which  he  stabs  him- 

*  See  ante,  pp.  162,  163. 


312  FIRST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  [*£?£™' 

self.  No  stage  directions  are  wanted  here.  Everything  is  visible  to 
us,  as  well  of  the  outward  form  and  movement  of  the  speakers  as  of 
the  sonl  that  throbs  and  burns  beneath. 

"Giulio.    Hark  !  hear  you  not  the  people?  to  the  window  ! 
They  Bhout  and  clap  their  hands  when  first  they  meet  you 
After  short  absence;  what  shall  they  do  now? 
I  ]»!  seize  the  moment ;  show  yourself. 

Ferrante.  Stay,  Giulio! 

Draw  me  not  thither;  speak  not  of  my  wrongs; 
I  would  await  but  not  arouse  their  vengeance, 
And  would  deserve  but  court  not  their  applause. 
Little  of  good  shall  good  men  hope  from  them, 
Nothing  shall  wiser. 

[Asi<le\  0,  were  he  away! 

But  if  I  fail,  he  must  die  too,  being  here. 

Giulio.     Let  me  call  out :  they  are  below  the  grate ; 
They  would  deliver  you :  try  this  one  chance. 
Obdurate!  would  you  hold  me  down?     They 're  gone! 

Ferranle.     Giulio,  for  shame!  weep  not,  or  here  I  stay 
And  let  vile  hands  deform  me. 

(liulio.  They  shall  never. 

Ferrante.     What  smoke  arises?  are  there  torches  under? 
Surely  the  crowd  has  passed:  'tis  from  the  stairs. 

Giulio.     Anticipate  the  blow. 

Ferranle.  One  more  must  grieve ! 

And  will  she  grieve  like  you,  too  tender  Giulio! 
Turn  not  away  the  head,' the  hand.     What  hold  you? 
Give,  give  it  to  me.     'T  is  keen.     They  call  you  forth. 
Tell  her  .  .  no,  say  not  we  shall  meet  again, 
For  tears  flow  always  faster  at  those  words  .  . 
May  the  thought  come,  but  gently,  like  a  dream !  " 

As  a  matter  of  mere  literary  skill  this  dialogue  deserves  careful 
study.  Here  no  action  requires  to  be  written  in,  no  stage  direction 
to  be  given,  no  index  or  finger-post  to  be  set  up,  for  what  the  reader 
seems  actually  to  see  with  his  eyes  even  before  the  pain  of  it  touches 
his  heart.  The  marvel  is  that  a  man  who  could  write  in  this  way 
should  have  lived  considerably  beyond  the  term  of  middle  age  without 
haying  won  for  himself  any  name  or  reputation  in  a  world  to  whose 
good  opinion  he  never  was  indifferent,  even  when  loudest  in  professing 
not  to  care  for  it.  Some  will  also  think  it  perhaps  the  greater  marvel 
that  he  was  now  to  succeed  after  failure  during  all  those  years,  yet 
without  abatement  in  the  smallest  particular  of  the  wilfulness,  the 
eccentricity,  or  the  impatience  which  before  had  made  success  so  diffi- 
cult.    The  scene  we  have  quoted  may  help  us  to  a  brief  explanation. 

One  obvious  advantage  of  his  new  undertaking  was,  that,  avoiding 
further  competition  on  a  ground  now  seized  and  held  in  absolute  pos- 
ion  by  Byron,  it  was  to  lie  written  in  prose;  but  another  and 
greater  consisted  in  the  fact,  that  while  the  dialogue  form  not  only 
left  him  scope  for  humors  indulged  so  long  as  to  have  become  part 
of  his  nature,  but  brought  under  some  kind  of  discipline  both  the 
strenirth  and  weakness  that  were  part  of  his  genius,  the  general  de- 
sign was  at  the  same  time  such  as  to  display  in  their  most  perfect 
development  his  choicest  accomplishments  as  a  master  of  style,  and 
his  most  refined  power  as  a  dramatic  writer.     His  five-act   dramas 


MT.  40-46.]  RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT.  313 

had  been  dialogues,  but  his  dialogues  were  to  be  one-act  dramas  ; 
and,  placed  in  future  to  a  certain  extent  under  dramatic  conditions, 
there  was  to  be  hereafter  some  purpose  in  even  the  most  violent  of 
the  caprices  by  which  he  had  abused  his  strength,  and  in  the  idlest 
of  the  paradoxes  on  which  he  had  wasted  it.  For  whatever  he  had 
yet  to  say,  he  was  to  get  appropriate  utterance  at  last ;  his  mind  was 
to  find  a  settled  place  in  which  it  might  rest  and  expatiate  ;  and  his 
life  was  not  to  be  a  failure  altogether. 

"  I  shall  rejoice  to  see  your  Dialogues,"  wrote  Southey  to  him  in 
the  letter  (May,  1822)  following  that  just  quoted.     "  Mine  are  con- 
secutive, and  will  have   nothing  of  that  dramatic  variety  of  which 
you  will  make  the  most.     My  plan  grew  out  of  Boethius,  though  it 
has  since  been  so  modified  that  the  origin  would  not  be  suspected. 
The  personage  who  visits  me  is  Sir  Thomas  More,  as  one  who  recog- 
nizes in  me  some  dis-pathies,  but  more  points  of  agreement.     This 
age  is  as  climacteric  as  that  in  which  he  lived ;  and  you  see  what  a 
canvas  I  have  taken,  if  I  can  but  fill  up  the  sketch."     It  is  an  ill 
canvas  for  dialogue  which  takes  a  road  so  narrow,  "  where  but  one 
goes  abreast " ;  and  such  was  Southey's,  as  it  had  been  Hurd's  and 
Lyttelton's   in  similar  books ;   mere  monologues  cut  up  into  short 
sentences   uttered    with    equal  appropriateness   by    A    and    B;   the 
main   object    being  to  recommend   particular    systems   or   lines   of 
thought,    special    opinions,    or    social    changes.     Far   different   was 
Landor's.     His  plan  had  taken  a  range  as  wide  as  life  and  history. 
All  the  leading  shapes  of  the  past,  the  most  familiar  and  the  most 
august,  were  to  be  called  up  again.     Modes  of  thinking  the   most 
various  and  events  the  most  distant,  all  that  had  made  the  greatness 
or  the  littleness  of  mankind,  were  proposed  for  his  theme.     Beside 
the  fires  of  the  present,  the  ashes  of  the  past  were  to  be  rekindled, 
and  to  shoot  again  into  warmth  and  brightness.     The  scene  was  to 
be  shifting  as  life,  but  continuous  as  time.     Over  it  were  to  pass  suc- 
cessions of  statesmen,  lawyers,  and  churchmen  ;  wits  and  men  of  let- 
ters ;  party  men,  soldiers,  and  kings ;  the  most  tender,  delicate,  and 
noble   women ;    figures  fresh  from   the   schools  of  Athens  and  the 
courts  of  Rome  ;  philosophers  philosophizing  and  politicians  discuss- 
ing questions  of  state  ;  poets  talking  of  poetry,  men  of  the  world  of 
matters  worldly,  and  English,  Italians,  or  French  of  their  respective 
literatures  and  manners.*     The  very  extent  of  such  a  design,  if  suc- 
cess were  to  be  obtained  at  all,  was  a  security  for  its  fair  execution. 
With  a  stage  so  spread  before  him,  whether  his  immediate  purpose 
were  expression  of  opinion  or  representation  of  character,  he  could 
hardly  help  breaking  through  the  "  circumscription   and  confine  "  of 
his  own  small  round  of  likings  and  dislikings.     His  plan  compelled 
it ;  and  what  else  it  exacted  no  man  living  could  have  supplied  so 
well.     The  requisites  for  it  were  such  as  no  other  existing  writer 

*  If  I  have  here  used  occasionally  an  expression  to  be  found  in  a  paper  in  the 
Edinburgh.  Review  on  Landor's  collected  works,  this  may  perhaps  be  forgiven,  as  I 
wrote  that  paper. 


314  FIRST   SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  [?2S-™ 

possessed  in  the  same  degree  as  he  did.  Nothing  had  ever  been  in- 
differenl  to  him  that  affected  humanity;  poetry  and  history  had  de- 
livered up  to  him  their  treasures ;  and  the  secrets  of  antiquity  wei-e 
hi.s. 

The  first  beginnings  of  his  enterprise  were  mentioned  to  Southey 
in  a  letter  from  Florence  of  the  date  of  the  9th  of  March,  1822. 
"  It  is  long  ago,"  he  writes,  "since  you  first  told  me  that  you  were 
writing  sonic  dialogues.  I  began  to  do  the  same  thing  after  you,  hav- 
ing formerly  written  two  or  three  about  the  time  when  the  first  income- 
tax  was  imposed.  I  have  now  written  fifteen  new  ones,  throwing 
into  the  fire  one  between  Swift  and  Sir  William  Temple,  and  another 
between  Addison  and  Lord  Somers;  the  former  because  it  was  demo- 
cratical,  the  latter  because  it  was  composed  maliciously,  and  con- 
tained all  the  inelegances  and  inaccuracies  of  style  I  could  collect 
from  Addison.  The  number  would  surpass  belief.  The  two  earlier 
ones,  the  first  between  Lord  Grenville  and  Burke,  the  other  between 
Henry  the  Fourth  and  Sir  Arnold  Savage,  were  written  more  than 
twenty  years  ago,  which  no  person  would  believe  of  the  former ;  but 
I  gave  the  substance  of  it  to  Robert  Adair  to  get  inserted  in  the 
Morning  <  'kronicle,  and  a  part  of  it  (now  omitted)  was  thought  too  per- 
sonal, and  it  was  refused,  I  hope  your  dialogues  are  printed,  that 
they  may  give  some  credit  and  fashion  to  this  manner  of  composition." 

Thus  employed,  we  leave  him  at  the  close  of  the  first  half  of  his 
life  happier  upon  the  whole  than  he  has  been  since  its  outset  in  the 
Tenly  and  Swansea  days,  with  a  better  outlet  than  has  yet  been 
open  for  bis  powers  and  faculties,  and  with  even  a  little  gleam  of 
sunshine,  from  his  mother's  care  and  sacrifices,  again  lighting  up  his 
personal  fortune.  In  the  letter  to  Southey  just  quoted  he  tells  him 
of  his  hope  to  be  able,  some  day  soon,  to  fix  himself  permanently, 
not  in  Florence  itself,  but  in  a  villa  in  its  neighborhood;  and 
he  says  that  he  sliall  add  a  garden  to  it  by  converting  a  vineyard  into 
one,  which  "  1  cannot  do  unless  I  purchase  it;  and  (a  thing  I  never 
expected)  tins  too  is  in  my  power."  Another  thing  as  unbooked  for 
lie  was  soon  also  to  find  within  his  power.  He  never  expected,  that, 
if  any  considerable  number  of  people  were  found  to  praise  or  admire 
him,  he  should  be  able  to  entertain  other  than  a  mean  opinion  of 
himself  ;  and  of  this  excuse  for  every  eccentricity,  this  foolish  principle 
which  has  dominated  over  so  much  of  his  past  life,  he  will  very  shortly 
be  deprived.  Be  will  discover  that  when  people  praise  him  they  do 
not  necessarily  lower  him  to  their  level ;  that  they  do  not  prove  him  to 
be,  for  thai  reason,  only  so  much  more  like  themselves;  and  that  it 
is  not  therefore  essentially  a  base  or  unworthy  thing  to  desire  or  to 
deserve,  nay  even  in  some  small  degree  to  obtain,  popularity.  We 
may  not  be  sanguine  indeed  that  this  wiser  experience  will  be  per- 
manent, or  that  old  errors  and  extravagances  will  not  Still  be  abun- 
dant ;  but  the  promise  is  fairer  than  it  has  been,  and  from  the  last 
half  of  Landor's  life  there  is  at  least  the  prospect  of  better  results 
than  have  attended  the  years  that  are  gone. 


BOOKS     V.-VIII. 


landor's  villa  at  fiesole. 


1821-1864. 


BOOK    FIFTH. 

1822-1828.     JET.  47-53. 

THE  IMAGINARY  CONVERSATIONS. 

I.  Friends  in  Italy  and  England. —II.  The  Manuscript  on  its  Way.  — III.  A 
Publisher  found. —IV.  What  the  First  Volume  contained.  —  V.  What  the 
Second  Volume  contained.  —  VI.  How  the  Book  was  received.  —  VII.  The 
Southev  Correspondence.  —  VIII.  Family  Letters.  —  IX.  New  Series  of  Con- 
versations.—  X.  Contents  of  the  New  Series. 

L     FRIENDS  IN  ITALY  AND  ENGLAND. 

"  Julius  Hare  will  have  the  kindness  to  put  this  letter  into  the 
post-office  when  he  reaches  London.  I  have  long  expected  to  see 
Mr.  Kenyon  in  hopes  of  reading  your  new  poem,  of  which  I  have 
heard  not  indeed  many  but  very  high  eulogies."  These  are  the 
opening  lines  of  the  first  letter  written  to  Southey  by  Landor,  early 
in  1822,  after  Florence  had  ^become  his  settled  abode;  and  in  the 
whole  of  his  later  life  there  are  not  two  pleasanter  figures  than  the 
friends  it  names. 

It  was  not  however  Julius,  but  Augustus  Hare,  to  whom  the  letter 
was  intrusted,  as  appears  from  a  later  passage  in  it  correcting  the 
mistake  ;  for  it  was  not  till  towards  the  close  of  the  year  that  Julius 
was  returning  to  his  law  studies  in  the  Temple,  after  that  visit  to  his 
brothers  Francis  and  Marcus  at  Milan  in  the  preceding  winter  when 
he  first  made  acquaintance  with  the  name  and  writings  of  Landor, 
to  whom  all  the  brothers  Hare,  as  we  shall  see,  became  ultimately 
known,  Augustus  and  Marcus,  as  well  as  Francis  and  Julius ;  but 
the  latter  two  most  familiarly.  Hare-brained,  Southey  called  them 
all ;  and  there  was  sufficient  truth  in  the  playful  imputation  to  recom- 
mend them  especially  to  this  new  friend,  to  whom  the  impetuosity 
and  eagerness  as  well  as  various  information  of  Francis,  and  the 
scholarly  acquirements  and  speculative  turn  of  Julius,  might  have 
seemed  but  the  reflection  of  a  part  of  his  own  larger  and  more  va- 
rious nature.  "The  Hares,"  he  wrote  to  his  sisters  in  1833,  "are 
beyond  all  comparison  the  most  pleasant  family  of  men  I  ever  was 
acquainted  with." 

His  knowledge  of  them  began  with  Francis,  with  whom  he  be- 
came intimate  soon  after  establishing  himself  in  the  palazzo  Medici 
in  Florence  ;  from  whose  society,  he  often  said,  he  derived  the  ani- 
mation and  excitement  that  had  helped  him  most  in  the  composition 


318  THE   IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  1?&£^a" 

of  his  imaginary  conversations ;  and  with  whom  his  friendly  relations 
continued  to  the  close  of  Hare's  life  at  Palermo.*  Not  indeed  with- 
out occasional  interruption  from  that  excess  or  over-vehemence  of 
speech  from  which  neither  was  free,  and  which  their  common  friend, 
Lord  Blessington,  seems  to  attribute  more  especially  to  Hare,  in 
writing  of  his  marriage  in  1827  that  il  Signor  Francesco  had  been 
so  much  improved  by  it  that  he  at  last  allowed  other  people  to  talk. 
There  is  even  a  hint  of  the  failing  in  Lander's  tender  allusion  to 
the  friend, 

"...  Who  held  mute  the  joyous  and  the  wise 
With  wit  and  eloquence,  whose  tomb,  afar 
From  all  his  friends  and  all  his  countrymen, 
Saddens  the  light  Palermo." 

And  by  nearly  the  last  remaining  of  the  English  residents  of  those 
days  in  Florence,  where  his  own  name  will  always  be  remembered 
with  love  and  honor,  it  has  been  lately  mentioned  to  me.  "  I  used," 
says  Mr.  Seymour  Kirkup,  "  to  see  him  and  his  friend  Francis  Hare 
together ;  and  it  was  a  constant  struggle  of  competition  and  dis- 
play between  them ;  both  often  wrong,  although  men  of  strong 
memory.  They  used  to  have  great  disputes,  mostly  on  questions 
of  history.  Hare  avoided  the  classics  and  Landor  the  sciences, 
above  all  the  '  exact,'  and  all  relating  to  numbers,  except  dates, 
where,  owing  to  his  prodigious  memory,  he  had  generally  the  ad- 
vantage when  the  other  gave  him  the  chance.  Hare  was  often  as- 
tounded at  being  corrected.  He  was  thought  infallible ;  and  I  re- 
member our  consul-general  at  Rome  calling  him  a  monster  of  learn- 
ing." But  only  the  pleasantest  side  of  all  this  was  remembered 
when,  on  going  to  England  with  his  wife  in  1827,  Francis  had  asked 
for  an  introduction  to  Southey,  and  Landor  described  him  as  among 
the  kindest  and  most  intimate  friends  he  ever  had,  to  say  nothing  of 
his  learning,  his  wit,  and  the  inexhaustible  spirit  and  variety  of  his 
conversation.  "  I  owe  him  as  much  pleasure  as  I  can  give  him,  and 
none  will  be  a  greater  than  what  these  few  lines  will  procure  him." 

To  Wordsworth,  the  real  bearer  of  the  letter  of  1822  had  become 
known  some  years  earlier ;  and  there  is  interesting  mention  of  both 
Augustus  and  Julius  in  a  letter  of  Wordsworth's  to  Landor  early  in 
lSi'4,  where  he  says  he  has  a  strong  desire  to  become  acquainted  with 
the  Mr.  Hare  whom  his  friend  had  mentioned,  and  who,  to  the  honor 
of  Cambridge,  was  in  the  highest  repute  there  for  his  sound  and  ex- 
tensive learning.  This  was  Julius,  who  corresponded  with  Landor 
most  intimately  many  years  before  he  personally  knew  him.  '  1  am 
happy  to  say,''  continues  Wordsworth,  "that  the  Master  of  Trinity 
College,  my  brother,  was  the  occasion  of  his  being  restored  to  the 

*  T  will  quote,  as  honorable  to  both,  one  of  Hnre's  last  letters  from  Palermo:  "My 
dear  Landor,  —  It  did  not  require  this  fresh  proof  of  your  friendship  to  convince  me  that 
you  were  one  of  the  most  disinterested,  one  of  the  most  zealous  and  constant  of  friends. 
That  I  have  long  known.  Quulis  ubincepto."  Laudor  had  been  making  some  exertion 
for  Hare's  children. 


jET.  47-53.]  FRIENDS   IN   ITALY   AND   ENGLAND.  319 

Muses  from  the  Temple  ;  and  to  Mr.  Julius's  brother  Augustus  *  I 
am  under  great  obligation  for  having  volunteered  the  tuition  of  my 
elder  son,  who  is  at  New  College,  Oxford,  and  who,  though  he  is  not 
a  youth  of  quick  parts,  promises  from  his  assiduity  and  passionate 
love  of  classical  literature  to  become  an  excellent  scholar.  By  the 
by,  he  seems  very  proud  of  your  Idyls  and  the  accompanying  Essay, 
as  an  honor  to  modern  times." 

The  expectation  of  seeing  that  other  friend  who  has  been  named, 
Mr.  John  Kenyon,  had  to  wait  several  more  years  for  fulfilment  ;  and 
for  so  long  it  was  a  loss  to  Landor  of  the  joyousest  and  pleasantest 
of  all  his  associates.  "  Probably  Mr.  Kenyon  has  resigned-  all  idea 
of  coming  into  Italy,"  he  wrote  to  Southey,  a  few  weeks  after  Au- 
gustus Hare  left;  "for  it  was  only  a  few  days  ago  that  I  received 
a  letter  from  Wordsworth  which  he  had  put  into  some  French  post- 
office  ;  it  bore  the  usual  postmark  of  Chambery."  This  was  the 
letter  I  have  already  quoted  as  partly  written  by  Mrs.  Wordsworth 
because  of  her  husband's  failing  sight ;  and  it  had  greatly  alarmed 
Landor.  "  I  replied  directly,  telling  him  what  I  had  formerly  done, 
and  with  great  success,  —  in  about  a  fortnight.  Sea-bathing  and 
early  hours  were  my  remedies.  I  am  convinced  that  those  who  read 
much  and  think  little  do  not  suffer  ;  and  that  thinking  has  a  greater 
share  in  the  malady  than  reading,  though  perhaps  neither  would 
alone  produce  it."  Southey  is  adjured  at  the  end  of  the  letter  to 
tell  what  he  is  doing  in  the  way  of  poetry.  Spring  being  always  his 
own  idle  season,  he  is  himself  doing  nothing.  He  has  not  courage 
even  to  ripple  the  current  of  his  thoughts  with  a  pencil  as  he  walks. 

Southey's  reply  was  more  about  Wordsworth's  than  his  own  poe- 
try ;  and  in  everything  he  wrote  at  this  time  about  that  greater 
master,  whose  slow  but  steady  advance  was  all  but  overshadowing 
such  small  enjoyment  of  poetical  fame  as  Byron's  supremacy  had  left 
to  himself,  there  is  a  generous,  manly  spirit.  He  has  honest  pleasure 
in  bringing  Landor  to  Wordsworth's  side.  His  letters  are  filled  with 
praise  of  the  poet  of  Rydal  Mount.  His  merits,  he  rejoices  to  think, 
are  getting  wider  acknowledgment  every  day,  in  spite  of  the  duncery 
that  cannot  understand  him,  in  spite  of  the  personal  malignity  that 
assails  him,  and  in  spite  of  the  injudicious  imitators  who  are  his  worst 
enemies.  "  He  is  composing  at  this  time  a  series  of  sonnets  upon  the 
religious  history  of  this  country  ;  and  marvellously  fine  they  are.  At 
the  same  time,  not  knowing  his  intention  and  he  not  being  aware  of 
mine,  I  have  been  treating  the  same  subject  in  prose,  so  that  my  vol- 
ume will  serve  as  a  commentary  upon  his.  Mine  will  go  to  press 
almost  immediately  ;  and  I  hope  to  send  you  both,  with  the  first 
volume  of  the  Peninsular  War,  early  in  the  spring." 

Not    many  weeks   later,   a   letter  from  Wordsworth  himself  an- 

*  "  Augustus  Hare,"  writes  Southey  to'Landor  in  May,  1822,  "  showed  me  yesterday 
what  you  had  written  of  Wordsworth  in  a  letter  to  his  brother.  It  is  a  great  pleasure 
to  me  when  I  meet  with  a  person  who  knows  your  writings,  and  can  talk  with  me  about 
them  and  about  you." 


320  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ?&??*&,' 


nounced  two  books  as  on  their  way  to  Florence  :  "Ecclesiastical  Sketch- 
es, or  a  sort  of  a  Poem  in  the  Sonnet  stanza  or  measure;  and  Mano- 
rial* of  a  Tour  on  the  Continent  in  1820.  This  tour  brought  me  to 
Como  ;  a  place  that,  with  the  scenery  of  its  lake,  had  existed  in  my 
most  lively  recollection  for  upwards  of  thirty  years.  What  an  addi- 
tion it  would  have  been  to  my  pleasure  if  I  had  found  you  there  ! 
Time  did  not  allow  me  to  get  farther  into  Italy  than  Milan,  where  I 
was  much  pleased  ;  with  the  cathedral  especially  ;  as  you  will  collect, 
if  ever  you  see  these  poems,  from  one  of  them  entitled  the  Eclipse  of 
the  .Sun." 

The  letter  went  on  to  announce  but  small  improvement  in  the  in- 
firmity which  made  its  writer  so  dependent  on  others,  abridged  his 
enjoyments  so  much  by  cutting  him  off  from  the  power  of  reading, 
and  involved  such  large  losses  of  time.  What  was  local  in  the  disor- 
der had  indeed  been  aggravated  lately  by  ill-regulated  application,  and 
by  what  was  described  as  a  weakness  caused  by  feelings  stronger  than 
the  writer's  frame  could  bear.  But  he  had,  in  one  of  his  intervals  of 
better  sight,  been  reading  Landor's  Latin  poems  again,  and  he  speaks 
in  detail  of  some,  especially  the  Polyxena,*  as  full  of  spirit  and  ani- 
mation. Still  he  feels  that  he  ought  to  tell  his  friend  that  he  is  him- 
self no  judge  of  Latin  poetry,  except  upon  general  principles.  He 
never  himself  practised  Latin  verse,  not  having  been  educated  at  one 
of  the  public  schools.  His  acquaintance  with  Virgil,  Horace,  Lucre- 
tius, and  Catullus  was  intimate  ;  but  as  he  never  read  them  with  a 
critical  view  to  composition,  great  faults  in  language  might  be  com- 
mitted that  would  escape  his  notice.  Any  opinion  of  his  on  points  of 
classical  nicety  therefore  would  be  of  no  value,  should  he  be  so  incon- 
siderate as  to  offer  it. 

Wordsworth  appears  nevertheless  to  have  received  real  pleasure 
from  the  Latin  poems,  though,  like  Southey,  he  was  impatient  of 
time  given  to  them  which  he  thought  might  be  better  given  to  Eng- 
lish poetry.  "Still  1  must  express  the  wish  that  you  would  gratify 
us  by  writing  in  English  In  all  that  you  have  written  in  your  native 
tongue  there  are  stirring  and  noble  things,  and  that  is  enough  for 
me.  In  a  tract  of  yours  which  I  saw  some  years  ago  at  Mr.  Southey's, 
I  was  struck  by  a  piece  on  the  War  of  the  Titans, f  aud  1  was  pleased 

*  See  nnie.  p.  267;  also,  pp.  241  and  280. 

t  This  allusion  i-  to  Chrysaor  (republished  in  Hellenics,  pp.  105-  111),  a  poem  of 
which  the  treatment  as  well  as  subject  is  Titanic.  Southey  equally  admired  it; 
Bingling  i>ut  the  impious  address  to  Jove,  "  Whom  nations  kneel  to,  not  whom  nations 
know";  and  the  giant  rebel's  angry  horror  at  his  overthrow:  — 

"...  The  Sacrilege 
Raised  up  hi*  liorul  astounded,  and  accurst 
The  star*,  the  destinies,  the  gods  .  .  . 
But  answer  heard  he  none.     The  men  of  might 
Who  gathered  round  him  formerly,  the  men 
Whom,  frozen  at  ;i  frown,  a  smile  revived. 
Were  far:  enormous  mountains  interposed, 

Nor  ever  bad  the  veil-huiiLT  pine  outspread 

O'er  Tethys  then  her  wandering  leafless  shade." 
That  last  image  of  the  sail  has  a  wonderful  beauty  in  it. 


^T.  47-53-]  FRIENDS   IN    ITALY   AND   ENGLAND.  321 

to  find  also  rather  an  out-of-the-way  image  in  which  the  present  hour 
is  compared  to  the  shade  on  the  dial.*  It  is  a  singular  coincidence 
that  in  the  year  1793,  when  I  first  became  an  author,  I  illusti-ated 
the  same  sentiment  precisely  in  the  same  manner."  A  comment  of 
still  more  striking  interest  follows  upon  a  passage  in  another  book  of 
Landor's,  his  Simonidea,^  seen  also  on  Southey's  table. 

Landor's  observation  was  to  the  effect  that  the  sonnet  was  a  struct- 
ure of  verse  incompatible  with  the  excursive  genius  of  our  com- 
manding language.  "You  commend,"  says  Wordsworth  upon  this, 
"the  fine  conclusion  of  Russell's  sonnet  upon  Philoctetes,j  and  depre- 
ciate that  form  of  composition.  I  do  not  wonder  at  this.  I  used  to 
think  it  egregiously  absurd,  though  the  greatest  poets  since  the  revi- 
val of  literature  have  written  in  it.  Many  years  ago  my  sister  hap- 
pened to  read  to  me  the  sonnets  of  Milton,  which  I  could  myself  at 
that  time  repeat  ;  but  somehow  or  other  I  was  then  singularly  struck 
with  the  style  of  harmony,  and  the  gravity  and  republican  austerity 
of  those  compositions.  In  the  course  of  the  same  afternoon  I  pro- 
duced three  sonnets,  and  soon  after  many  others;  and  since  that 
time,  and  from  want  of  resolution  to  take  up  anything  of  length,  I 
have  filled  up  many  a  moment  in  writing  sonnets  which,  if  I  had  nev- 
er fallen  into  the  practice,  might  easily  have  been  better  employed." 

In  the  same  letter  Wordsworth  cleared  up  the  mystery  of  the  miss- 
ing Mr.  Kenyon.  He  had  left  Rydal  Mount  in  the  previous  Septem- 
ber  with   the    intention   of  proceeding   directly    to    Italy,  but   had 

*  I  have  quoted  the  piece,  ante,  p.  109. 

t  The  Simonidea,  a  half-crown  pamphlet  of  98  pages  (ante,  p.  154)  printed  at  Bath 
in  February,  1806,  was  so  called  because  its  opening  short  pieces  were  dedicated  to  the 
memory  of  the  dead,  a  species  of  composition  in  which  Simonides  excelled.  Among 
them,  for  example,  were  a  portion  of  the  lines  to  Rose  Aylmer's  memory,  which  I  did 
not  believe  to  have  been  printed  so  early  (this  exquisite  poem  I  have  given  in  a  more 
perfect  state  from  his  later  letters,  ante,  p.  305);  those  on  Mrs.  Lambe  (p.  121)  and 
others  to  Nancy  Jones,  the  lone  of  his  youth  (p.  120).  The  sonnet  referred  to  by 
Wordsworth  is  characterized  in  the  preface  as  "  a  poem  on  Philoctetes  by  a  Mr.  Rus- 
sell, which  would  authorize  him  to  join  the  shades  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides."  By 
what  slight  touches  delightful  effects  can  be  missed,  or  be  produced,  will  be  shown  by 
mention  of  Charles  Lamb's  favorite  little  poem  as  published  in  this  volume.  The  charm 
of  the  repetition  of  the  words  "Rose  Aylmer"  at  close  of  the  first  and  opening  of  the 
second  stanza  has  no  existence  here,  "  For,  Aylmer,  all  were  thine,"  being  the  original 
text,  "  Sweet  Aylmer  "  immediately  following;  and  the  fulness  of  meaning  which  is 
given  to  the  "  night  of  memories  and  of  sighs  "  exhibits  no  trace  in  the  tautology  of  the 
"  night  of  sorrows  and  of  sighs  "  as  printed  in  the  original.  The  (anticipated)  profits  of 
the  volume  were  of  course  given  away,  with  a  remark  in  the  preface  too  characteristic 
to  be  lost.  "  I  bear  no  disrespect  towards  men  who  write  for  emolument,  although  I 
never  did ;  even  when  I  was  rather  extravagant  and  very  poor.  For  I  always  found 
enough  anxiety  attending  composition,  without  the  voluntary  penance  of  supporting  at 
the  end  of  my  exertions  an  outstretched  expectation  of  gain.  If  anything  of  profit 
should  arise  from  these  trifles,  the  printer  will  give  it  to  the  hospital.  This  1  think 
proper  to  mention,  that  the  prudes  of  both  sexes,  who  may  discover  or  imagine  certain 
sins  in  them,  may  also  consider  that  something  has  been  done  for  atonement  and  abso- 
lution." His  last  allusion  anticipates  the  attack  on  some  of  the  Latin  verses  which 
Byron  subsequently  made,  and  which  the  writer  of  Don  Juan  might  hardly  have  been 
expected  to  make  if  Landor  had  not  been  Southey's  friend.  The  volume  ended  with 
six  pages  of  hexameters  "  Ad  Robertum  Fratrem,"  in  which  a  certain  critic  who  had 
made  the  brothers  the  subject  of  remark  was  mercilessly  assailed. 

J  See  ante,  p.  117. 

21 


322  THE  IMAGINARY  CONVERSATIONS.  [T^J' 


changed  his  purpose  and  taken  a  wife  instead  ;  forgetting  to  send  on 
to  its  destination  the  letter  that  was  to  introduce  him  to  Landor.  He 
was  again  talking  of  starting  for  the  Continent  with  his  wife,  but 
only  for  the  summer,  so  that  this  promised  visitor  would  probably  not 
reach  Florence.  But  there  were  other  visitors  his  friend  would  hear 
of  soon.  "  It  is  reported  here  that  Byron,  Shelley,  Moore,  and  Leigh 
Hunt  (I  do  not  know  if  you  have  heard  of  all  these  names)  are  to 
lay  their  heads  together  in  some  town  of  Italy  for  the  purpose  of 
conducting  a  journal  to  be  directed  against  everything  in  religion,  in 
morals,  and  probably  in  government  and  literature,  which  our  fore- 
fathers have  been  accustomed  to  reverence.  The  notion  seems  very 
extravagant,  but  perhaps  the  more  likely  to  be  realized  on  that  ac- 
count." Could  he  only  see  what  was  now  the  popular  literature  of 
London  !  His  sojourn  in  Italy  had  at  least  removed  him  from  the 
presence  of  the  trash  which  issued  hourly  from  the  press  in  England, 
and  tended  to  make  disgusting  the  very  name  of  writing  and  bonks. 
Wordsworth  was  himself  so  situated  as  to  see  little  of  it,  but  he 
could  not  stop  his  ears,  and  he  sometimes  envied  Landor  the  distance 
that  separated  him  altogether  from  the  intrusion. 

News  of  Southey  was  not  forgotten.  He  had  left  Rydal  Mount 
after  a  visit  of  two  or  three  days,  just  before  Landor's  last  letter 
reached  it.  He  was  well,  and  making  continued  progress  in  many 
works,  —  his  History  of  the  Peninsula?-  War;  a  Book  on  the  Church 
of  England;  two  Poems;  "  with  regular  communications  in  the 
Quarterly  Review  into  the  bargain."  Had  Landor  heard  of  the  attack 
of  Byron  upon  him,  and  his  answer]  His  lordship  had  lost  as  much 
by  that  affair  as  Southey  had  gained,  whdse  letter  was  circulated  in 
almost  every  newspaper  in  England.  Southey's  son,  too,  continued 
to  thrive,  promising  well ;  and  the  rest  of  his  family  were  flourishing. 
"I  am  glad,"  Wordsworth  adds,  "that  you  also  are  a  father,  and  I 
wish  for  a  peep  at  your  boys,  with  yourself  to  complete  the  trio." 

But  beside  his  boys  there  was  another  production  of  Landor's  of 
which  his  fellow-poet  had  lately  heard,  and  wished  also  to  pee])  at, 
perhaps  more  eagerly.  Not  only  had  Southey  told  him  of  the  .Manu- 
script Conversations  si tortly  before,  but  that  it  was  Landor's  inten- 
tion to  offer  to  himself  the  dedication  of  them  when  printed  ;  and 
thus  ran  the  closing  words  of  his  present  letter:  "J  expect  your 
book  with  impatience.  I  shall  at  all  times  be  glad  to  hear  from  you, 
and  shall  lie  proud  to  receive  any  public  testimony  of  your  esteem." 

Almost  at  the  same  moment  Landor  was  writing  to  Southey  of 
such  of  the  Conversations  as  he  had  completed  :  "  I  have  waited  sev- 
eral weeks,  hoping  to  find  an  opportunity  of  sending  them  to  Long- 
man. If  anything  should  prevent  him  from  undertaking  the  publi- 
cation, the  terms  of  which  1  leave  at  his  discretion,  1  would  offer 
them  to  Mawman,  to  whose  house  I  once  went  in  company  with 
Parr."  The  old  swift  impatience  !  Before  he  has  even  sent  them  to 
one  publisher  he  is  thinking  of  another,  and  multiplying  all  the  pos- 


;ET.  47-53-]  THE    MANUSCRIPT    ON    ITS    WAT.  323 

sible  sources  from  which  disappointment  or  vexation  could  arise  to 
him.     With  what  results  we  shall  see. 


II.     THE  MANUSCRIPT  ON  ITS  WAY. 

Writing  on  the  3d  of  June  to  Southey,  Landor  tells  him  that, 
some  little  time  before,  Wordsworth  had  written,  giving  better  account 
of  him  than  of  himself,  and  that  his  friend  Dr.  Richards  had  arrived 
since  then,  "  and  we  conversed  a  good  deal  together  about  both  of 
you.  On  his  asking  me  what  I  had  written  of  late  or  was  occupied 
in  writing,  1  could  only  say  that  I  had  sent  a  manuscript  to  London, 
which  ought  to  have  arrived  on  the  eighteenth  of  April,  by  Captain 
Vyner  of  the  Life  Guards,  but  that  Longman,  to  whom  it  was  ad- 
dressed, had  given  me  no  account  of  it." 

This  MS.  was  the  first  portion  of  the  Imaginary  Conversations. 
But  a  post-letter  between  Florence  and  London  took  then  from  eleven 
to  fourteen  days,  and  if  the  captain  had  dropped  his  precious  freight 
in  Paternoster  Row  at  the  instant  of  arrival,  Landor  could  not  by  the 
promptest  conceivable  despatch  have  learnt  this  any  earlier  than  the 
first  week  in  May.  Yet  some  days  before  even  that  date  he  had 
swiftly  and  decisively  informed  the  Longmans  by  post  in  what  way 
four  copies  of  the  book  might  be  sent  to  him.  Four  copies  of  the 
printed  book  while  yet  the  types  to  be  vised  in  composing  it  were 
without  form  or  place  !  It  was  the  old  impetuous  way  ;  but  though 
it  probably  surprised  Paternoster  Row  a  little,  no  sign  was  made  from 
that  respectable  quarter.  There  was  absolute  silence  up  to  the  time 
when  this  letter  of  the  3d  of  June  described  the  torments  that  the 
silence  had  occasioned. 

"  I  left  entirely  to  Longman  the  conditions  on  which  he  might  pub- 
lish my  book,  and  I  wrote  again  a  fall  month  ago  to  him  informing 
him  how  he  might  forward  to  me  four  copies.  He  has  taken  no  notice 
whatever  either  of  my  manuscript  or  my  letters.  Will  you  do  me 
the  kindness  to  request  him  to  send  the  former  to  Mawman,  who  I 
believe  will  undertake  it,  leaving  it  at  his  discretion.  This  disap- 
pointment has  brought  back  my  old  bilious  complaint,  together  with 
the  sad  reflection  on  that  fatality  which  has  followed  me  through  life, 
of  doing  everything  in  vain.  I  have  however  had  the  resolution  to 
tear  in  pieces  all  my  sketches  and  projects,  and  to  forswear  all  future 
undertakings.  I  try  to  sleep  away  my  time,  and  pass  two  thirds  of 
the  twenty -four  hours  in  bed.  I  may  speak  of  myself  as  of  a  dead 
man.  I  will  say,  then,  that  these  Conversations  contained  as  forcible 
writing  as  exists  on  earth.  They  perhaps  may  come  out  after  my  de- 
cease, aiad  the  bookseller  will  enrich  some  friend  of  his  by  attributing 
them  to  him,  and  himself  by  employing  him,  as  the  accredited  author 
of  them,  on  any  other  subjects.  If  they  are  not  really  lost,  or  set 
aside  for  this  purpose,  I  may  yet  have  the  satisfaction  of  reading 
them  here  at  Florence,  and  perhaps  they  may  procure  me  some  slight 
poi'tion  of  respect." 


324  TIIE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  V%£-a 


Such  perverted  ingenuity  of  self-torment  even  Rousseau  might 
have  envied,  nor  has  the  wonderful  Confessions  a  more  curious  page. 
Beginning  and  ending  not  unhopefully,  hope  lias  entirely  vanished  in 
the  interval.  He  thinks  his  venture  wrecked  ;  accepts  the  ill-luck  as 
part  of  a  fatality  that  attends  him;  and  throws  up  everything.  All 
the  projects  he  had  formed  he  abandons,  and  all  the  sketches  connected 
with  his  lost  achievement  he  destroys.  He  takes  to  his  bed,  and  will 
Bleep  away  the  rest  of  his  time.  As  in  future  therefore  he  can  only 
regard  himself  in  the  light  of  a  dead  man,  he  thinks  he  may  say  how 
good  the  perished  Conversations  were  ;  and  with  this  arises  suddenly 
another  not  unnatural  thought,  that  perhaps  they  were  too  good  to 
be  lost.  What  if  they  have  fallen  among  thieves  instead,  and  the 
thieves  are  only  waiting  the  chance  of  their  authors  death  to  make 
out  of  them  a  harvest  of  monev  as  well  as  fame  1  A  fancv  he  finds 
so  aggravating  that  he  turns  suddenly  the  other  side  of  the  picture, 
puts  otf  his  intention  of  dying,  and  hopes  he  may  yet  have  the  satis- 
faction, not  merely  of  reading  his  printed  book  in  Florence,  but  of 
getting  out  of  it  a  little  fame  for  himself. 

Xor  has  this  better  mood  subsided  on  the  21st  of  the  same  month, 
the  date  of  his  next  letter  to  Southey,  when,  though  he  is  still 
without  certain  tidings  of  the  manuscript,  and  not  without  misgiv- 
ings, he  is  far  from  despair.  He  is  at  work  to  recover  a  copy,  but 
believes  the  original  may  yet  turn  up  in  London,  and  mentions  a  cir- 
cumstance extenuatory  if  not  exculpatory  of  the  Longmans.  "  In 
the  few  lines  I  wrote  to  you  the  other  day  I  expressed  the  grief  I  had 
experienced,  I  know  not  whether  from  Longman  entirely,  or  from 
Captain  Vyner  of  the  Guards  to  whom  my  parcel  was  intrusted  by  a 
Mr.  Olivieri  of  Florence.  I  afterwards  wrote  to  Longman  requesting 
he  would  inform  me  whether  he  had  received  the  parcel  ;  but  he  re- 
turned no  answer.  These  fellows  are  ignorant  and  indifferent  how 
much  suffering  they  may  occasion.  I  shall  request  a  friend  of  mine 
to  demand  the  manuscript;  and  shall  try  some  other  means  of  hav- 
ing it  printed  next  year.  I  have  passed  the  last  eighteen  days  and 
nights  in  trying  to  recover  all  parts  of  it.  I  am  afraid  1  have  lost 
several,  as  a  great  deal  was  written  on  scraps  of  paper.  I  have  lost 
my  patience  at  all  events,  and  the  remainder  of  my  health  by  it.  I 
am  afraid  no  exertion  will  enable  me  to  complete  this  most  toilsome 
of  all  labors  before  my  friend  Dr.  Richards  leaves  Tuscany." 

The  mystery  was  not  cleared  up  till  nearly  three  months  later, 
when,  writing  to  Southey  on  the  16th  of  September,  Landor  tells 
him  that  the  manuscript  which  he  had  so  bitterly  bewailed  for  not 
arriving  in  the  bow  l>y  the  18th  of  April,  had  not  actually  arrived 
there  till  the  P.>th  of  August,  and  that  the  reproaches  he  had  heaped 
on  the  Longmans  for  unanswered  letters  were  at  least  equally  divis- 
ible between  them  and  himself.  Longman,  in  a  letter  I  received  last 
week,  informs  me  that  the  parcel  containing  my  MS.  reached 
him   only  on  the   19th  of  August;  and  that,  in  both  mine,  I  had 


^T.  47-53-]  THE  MANUSCRIPT   OX    ITS   WAT.  325 

only  requested  him  to  inform  me  when  it  arrived.  If  so,  both  he 
and  I  were  equally  stupid ;  I  for  not  being  more  explicit,  he  for  not 
being  aware  that  its  delay  was  far  more  important  than  the  hour  of 
its  arrival.  Meantime  after  much  agitation  I  had  intrusted  Mr. 
Hare,  brother  of  Augustus  Hare  whom  you  have  seen,  with  the  care 
of  delivering  it  to  Mawman  for  printing.  Hare  is  very  anxious  to  be 
presented  to  you.  He  is  a  most  acute  and  well-read  man.  I  told 
him  I  would  mention  him  to  you,  which  I  have  done  in  my  other 
letter.  Among  my  scraps  and  projects  I  had  filled  a  couple  of  sheets 
(I  think)  with  a  conversation  between  you  and  Porson.  In  my  bitter 
vexation  at  the  miscarriage  of  my  MS.  I  threw  away  whatever  I  could 
lay  my  hands  on.  Some  days  ago  I  found  an  old  letter  with  part  of 
it,  in  which  were  some  remarks  on  Wordsworth's  poetry.  I  enlarged 
on  these,  and  there  is  now  a  dialogue  between  you  and  him  on  this 
subject." 

A  point   of  some   delicacy  is  afterwards  touched  upon.     He  had 
offered  the  dedication  of  his  book  to  Wordsworth,  and  the  offer,  as 
we  have  seen,  had  been  accepted  with  pride.     But  it  was  not  to  be. 
"  I  had  intended  to  inscribe  the  dialogues  to  Wordsworth,  knowing 
that  he  has  felt  pain  from  his  unprincipled  adversaries,  and  wishing 
to  remove   it  by  the  expression  of  opposite   opinions  from   a  man 
whose  judgment  in  these  matters  he  would  value  more  than  theirs. 
The  language  of  Porson  indeed  is  not  without  its  sharpness.     I  have 
made  him  escape  from  you  rather  than  yield  ;  though  I  have  extorted 
from  him  a  compliment  to  you,  such  as  I  think  I  could  have  extorted 
even  if  he  wrere  alive.     I  have  however  written  with  such  asperity  and 
contemptuousness  of  the   people  in  power,  that  a  sense  of  delicacy 
would  not  permit  me  to  place  Wordsworth's  name  before  the  volume." 
And  now  comes  his  reason  for  having  handled  so  sharply  the  people 
in  power.     "  Why  have  these  rascals  suffered  me  to  be  insulted  by 
their  agents  1  —  me,  who  never  asked  them  for  anything,  and  who 
was  silent  when  I  thought  them  wrong  in  their  measures  '?     Out  of 
four  thousand  English  here  I  was  selected  for  slight  and  contempt ! 
the  only  man  in  all  the  four  thousand  who  ever  acted  with  disinter- 
estedness for  the  public  good,  or  who  will  be  remembered  a  year  after 
his  death.     Under  no  other  system  could  this  have  happened.     It 
could  not  have  happened  in  Russia  or  in  Turkey.     In  those  countries 
men  who  are  superior  to  others  in  virtue  and  intelligence  are  pro- 
moted and  rewarded.     I  wanted  neither.     I  did  not  even'  claim  re- 
spect.    I  would  only  have  avoided  dis^sspect,    disdain,  and  insult. 
So  long  as  such  wretches  are  in  power  and  employment,  I  am  the 
avowed  and  unmitigable  enemy  of  those  who  countenance  them,  and 
of  the  government  that  allows  it.     My  peace  and  health  have  suf- 
fered ;  and,   what  is  worse,  my  compositions.     These  bitter  waters 
soak  through  their  most  solid  parts,  and  thei-e  is  hardly  a  plant  that  does 
not  taste  of  them.     It  appears  to  me  that  there  will  be  about  thir- 
teen sheets  in  duodecimo.     If  Mawman  begins  to  print  on  the  5th 


32G  TIIE   IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ^a™.^- 


of  October  (ho  will  receive  the  MS.  on  the  1st),  they  will  he  finished 
by  the  end  of  the  month  ;  and  1  have  ordered  a  CODy  to  be  sent  to 
you,  with  one  for  Wordsworth,  at  Longman's.  There  are  now  twen- 
ty-three *  !onversations." 

Recovering  breath  from  this  philippic,  which  was  but  the  expres- 
sion given  by  his  wild  irascibility  to  a  commonplace  dispute  with 
Borne  members  of  the  British  Legation  in  Florence,  who  will  read  the 
lines  added  about  Mawman  without  laughter  mingling  with  pain] 
Nothing  literally  is  known  to  the  writer  hut  that  the  MS.  will  he 
taken  to  that  publisher  ;  yet  upon  this  frailest  of  foundations  is  built 
at  once  not  only  its  acceptance,  but  a  series  of  operations  on  the  part 
of  all  to  be  concerned  in  producing  it,  of  such  unequalled  vigor  as 
will  insure  a  printed  book  in  five-and-twenty  days.  Thus  with  head- 
long eagerness  was  Landor  ever  raising  up  inexhaustible  provision  for 
disappointment  and  trouble.  Sisyphus  was  nothing  to  a  self-torturer 
who  might  at  any  time  of  his  own  accord  have  taken  his  hand  from 
the  stone. 

III.    A   PUBLISHER  FOUND. 

Mawman  declined  the  book  as  Longman  had  declined  it.  It  was 
next  taken  to  a  publisher  named  Martin,  and  by  him  also  refused. 
Then  it  was  taken  to  Valpy,  who  proposed  terms  that  could  not  be 
acceded  to.  In  these  negotiations  nearly  six  months  passed ;  and  it 
was  March,  1823,  when  Landor  again  wrote  to  Southey,  soon  after  he 
had  instructed  Julius  Hare  to  carry  the  manuscript  for  another  chance 
to  Ridgway.  Busied  in  all  the  interval  with  additions  and  improve- 
ments, interested  more  than  at  first  in  the  variety  of  subjects  he  has 
opened,  adding  and  inventing  daily  from  unsuspected  riches  of  re- 
source,  and  with  every  fresh  demand  upon  his  power  finding  its  en- 
ergy ami  productiveness  unfailing,  Landor  was  by  this  time  so  satisfied 
with  his  progress,  so  confident  in  the  value  of  his  amendments,  and 
so  occupied  in  the  task  of  transmitting  them  to  Hare,  that  he  had 
happily  not  over-tormented  himself  with  the  succession  of  unsympa- 
thizing  publishers  who  have  churlishly  refused  his  hook,  and  was 
even  ready  himself  to  pay  for  a  printer  if  no  one  else  would  do  it. 
But  he  was  in  some  trouble  as  to  Wordsworth. 

"So  long  is  it  since  I  have  heard  from  you  that  it  appears  as  if  we  lived, 
conversed,  and  corresponded  in  some  happier  and  past  state  of  existence. 
Wordsworth,  \  hope.  i>  not  offended  that  I  have  changed  my  intention  of 
dedicating  my  projected  work  to  him.  While  it  contained  for  the  greater 
pari  subjects  unconnected  with  politics,  I  could  do  it  withoul  the  tear  of  in- 
juring him  ;  hut  as  I  have  now  doubled,  and  more  than  doubled,  the  quan- 
tity of  matter,  and  ;>~  the  political  opinions  of  many  characters  introduced 
are  widely  different  from  those  in  fashion.  [  feared  lest  any  one  should 
attempt  to  wrong  him  by  presuming  that  he  favored  the  opinions  by  accept- 
ing the  dedication,  [ntroducing  a  conversation  on  his  works  between  you 
and  Porson,  I  could  praise  him  with  more  delicacy  and  more  discretion. 
Among  my  new  conversations  are  Bacon  and  Hooker,  Marcus  Cicero  and 


JET.  47-53.]  A.   PUBLISHER    FOUtfD.  327 

his  brother  Quinctus;  and  to  you  I  need  not  express  the  difficulty  of  my 
task.  The  dialogue  between  the  latter  two  takes  place  on  the  eve  of  Cicero's 
death,  at  his  Formian  villa.  Mr.  Hare  tells  me  you  have  assisted  him  in  his 
attempts  to  obtain  me  a  printer.  I  desire  no  profits,  if  any  should  arise 
from  the  publication ;  and  I  would  take  upon  myself  half  the  loss,  provided 
that  only  three  hundred  and  fifty  copies  were  printed  in  octavo.  There  will 
be  about  twenty-two  sheets.  It  appears  to  me  that  all  important  questions 
should  be  fairly  and  fully  discussed.  I  invite  criticism  and  defy  power.  It 
will  vex  me  if  I  am  at  last  obliged  to  employ  a  printer  who  publishes  only 
pamphlets  for  the  mob,  conscious  as  I  am  that  in  two  thousand  years  there 
have  not  been  five  volumes  of  prose  equal  in  their  contents  to  this.  By 
volumes  I  mean  the  entire  works  of  one  author.  I  have  wearied  my  excel- 
lent friend  Mr.  Hare  to  death  with  perpetual  corrections  and  insertions.  He 
never  even  saw  me.  He  does  not  complain  of  his  trouble,  occupied  as  he 
is  in  other  literary  labors ;  but  reproves  my  attacks  on  Catholicism,  to  which 
he  appears  more  than  moderately  inclined.  There  is  no  religion  or  party  to 
which  he  would  not  be  an  ornament  and  a  support.  I  have  not  yet  received 
your  books,  —  these  alone  can  lessen  the  anxiety  I  feel  about  mine.  It  is 
not  improbable  that  I  forgot  to  tell  you  I  had  another  son  born  five  months 
ago.  I  gave  him  my  names,  Walter  Savage.  He  is  strong  and  quiet,  and 
disposed  to  be  as  lively  and  laughing  as  the  others.  This  is  all  Ave  want  for 
the  present,  and  the  foundation  of  all  we  shall  want  for  the  future." 

Another  month  was  hardly  gone  when  the  publisher  was  found  at 
last.  Landor's  suggestion  of  the  "  printer  who  publishes  only  pam- 
phlets for  the  mob  "  having  ended  like  the  rest  by  Mr.  Ridgway's 
politely  declining,  Julius  Hare  was  left  to  his  own  judgment.  He 
had  now  quitted  the  Temple  for  a  classical  tutorship  in  Cambridge, 
upon  the  joint  persuasion  of  Whewell  and  Wordsworth's  brother, 
then  Master  of  Trinity  ;  but,  having  contributed  to  the  London  Maga- 
zine in  his  Temple  days,  he  had  a  favorable  knowledge  of  its  proprie- 
tor, John  Taylor,  and  to  him  he  made  application.  "  I  considered  him," 
he  says,  "  the  most  honorable  man  in  the  trade  ;  and  after  no  small 
difficulties,  arising  however  altogether  from  conscientious  scruples 
and  in  no  degree  from  considerations  of  profit,  we  came  to  an  agree- 
ment ;  or  I  ought  rather  to  say,  I  was  so  weary  of  soliciting  publisher 
after  publisher,  and  so  anxious  to  put  the  work  into  the  hands  of  a 
respectable  man,  that  I  forced  Taylor  to  undertake  it."  Landor's  in- 
struction as  to  terms  had  been  that  the  publisher  was  to  receive  all 
the  profits,  and  he  would  himself  engage,  provided  the  impression 
were  limited  to  500  copies,  to  make  up  any  loss  at  the  end  of  one  or 
two  years.  Making  sure  however  of  a  larger  sale  than  this,  Hare  pro- 
posed, as  a  compromise  between  Landor's  offer  and  the  usual  half- 
profits  plan,  that  both  the  loss  and  the  gain  should  be  shared.  And 
it  was  so  settled. 

But  the  difficulties  were  not  over.  The  printing  had  hardly  begun 
when  Taylor's  "  conscientious  scruples  "  broke  out  strongly  at  some 
passages  which  he  held  to  be  objectionable.  He  required  a  too  plain- 
spoken  word  put  in  Cromwell's  mouth  to  be  removed,  and  Hare,  hav- 
ing heard  from  Southey  that  Landor  would  certainly  not  give  way  on 


328  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  [fs£-28.' 

the  point,*  resisted.  Upon  this  Taylor  said  its  retention  would  make 
the  difference  between  his  printing  a  thousand  copies  or  two  hundred 
and  fifty  less ;  and  Hare  replying  that  he  had  no  alternative,  the 
word  held  its  place  and  the  impression  was  limited  to  seven  hundred 
and  fifty. 

More  serious  discussion  then  arose  upon  a  passage  in  the  conversa- 
tion between  Middleton  and  Magliabechi,  the  result  of  which  was  a 
reference  by  Hare  to  Southey  to  ask  if  either  he  or  Wordsworth 
would  consent  to  look  over  the  proofs,  Taylor  undertaking  to  be 
bound  by  the  decision  if  either  of  them  approved  what  he  con- 
demned. Whereupon  Southey  wrote  this  to  Landor  (8th  May, 
1823)  ;  and  after  declaring  his  belief  that  Taylor  was  a  man  very  supe- 
rior to  most  of  his  trade,  and  that  he  had  demurred  really  on  grounds 
of  principle,  said  he  had  himself  at  once  replied  that  he  would  most 
willingly  (Wordsworth  having  gone  to  the  Netherlands)  take  upon 
himself  the  responsibility  suggested,  and  act  for  his  friend  in  the 
matter  as  his  friend  would  by  him,  taking  care  that  wherever  there 
was  an  omission  the  place  should  be  marked.  He  added  that  the 
specimen  Landor  had  sent  him  of  the  dialogue  of  the  Ciceros  was  de- 
lightful, and  that  Julius  Hare  spoke  of  the  whole  just  in  such  terms 
as  lie  should  expect  it  to  deserve. 

On  the  31st  of  the  same  month  Landor  replied.  He  felt  so  much 
pleasure  on  receiving  Southey 's  letter,  he  said,  that  it  hardly  could 
be  increased  by  reading  it,  although  the  information  it  gave  him  sat- 
isfied all  his  wishes. 

''  The  first  thing  I  did  was  to  write  instantly  to  Taylor,  and  I  hope  he 
will  receive  what  I  have  written  in  despite  of  a  defective  address,  for  I 
directed  the  sheets,  containing  a  few  lines  to  him  and  additional  matter  for 
the  Conversations  and  some  notes,  '  Messrs.  Taylor,  printers,  London,' not 
knowing  more.  Omit  whatever  you  think  ought  to  be  omitted.  Before  I 
knew  anything  of  Taylor's  proposal  to  you,  Iliad  hoped  to  obviate  his  ob- 
jection by  the  following  lines:  'The  author  not  only  has  authorized,  but  has 
requested  the  editor  to  mark  with  his  reprobation  whatever  in  these  Con- 
versations maybe  injurious  to  the  national  establishments,  or  irritating  to 
the  public  feeling.  The  characters  he  introduces  must  speak  characteris- 
tically and  strongly,  often  with  prejudices  and  sometimes  with  perverseness. 
His  editor  then  marks  this  sentence  as  liable  to  do  mischief,  if  general  prin- 
ciples are  drawn  from  it  unwarily,  and  if  it  is  not  considered  as  the  fancy  of 
the  individual  who  utters  it.  rather  than  as  a  theory  laid  down  for  establish- 
ment by  the  writer.'  Taylor  will  not  expect  that  Demosthenes  (as  I  tell 
him)  should  talk  like  Canning.  The  language  of  the  ancients  is  suitable  to 
them,  and  can  do  no  more  harm  than  their  works,  which  I  presume  he 
would  not  hesitate  to  print  if  a  new  edition  were  called  for.  Enough  on 
this.  .  .  .   What  in  the  name  of  Heaven  can  Wordsworth  do  in  the  Nether- 

•  I  quote  from  Landor*a  letter  to  Southey  of  the  19th  March,  1822:  "There  is  one 
Bentence  which  will  perhaps  shock  the  fastidiousness  of  some  English  reader-.  Crom- 
well says,  speaking  of  the  sectaries,  &c,  &c.  No  ether  mode  of  expression  would 
be  so  characteristic.  I  would,  however,  be  sparing  of  the<e  flowers  from  the  Deanery 
garden,  andpresent  no  other  of  them."  The  word  appeared  in  both  first  and  second 
editions,  bdl  in  the  collected  edition  of  1846  it  was  expunged  by  himself." 


iET.  47~53-]  A    PUBLISHER   FOUND.  329 

lands  ?  Italy  and  Greece  are  the  only  countries  which  I  would  pay  a 
postilion  eighteenpence  to  see.  Men  in  other  countries  are  less  interesting 
than  beavers  ;  whole  generations  of  them  are  not  worth  so  many  barrels  of 
dry  figs.  If  I  were  still  at  Como,  I  would  however  go  as  far  as  into  the 
Netherlands  to  see  Wordsworth ;  odious  as  travelling  is  to  me,  and  never 
accomplished  without  a  fever  of  some  days-." 

Landor's  characteristic  proposal,  it  is  needless  to  say,  would  only 
have  given  greater  force  to  Taylor's  objections  by  giving  greater 
prominence  to  the  questionable  passages.  Southey  preferred  to  act 
on  the  powers  of  omission  also  here  given  him,  and  some  few  sen- 
tences were  condemned  accordingly.  But  as  to  the  passage  in  the 
Middleton,  in  which  that  not  very  orthodox  divine  was  represented  as 
disputing  the  efficacy  and  even  the  propriety  of  prayer,  Southey  was 
unable  to  see  the  force  of  Taylor's  objection,  and  the  point  had  again 
to  be  referred  to  Florence.  "According  to  the  last  note  I  received 
from  Hare,"  wrote  Landor  to  Southey  on  the  2d  July, 

"  Taylor  objects  to  some  passages  in  the  dialogue  of  Middleton.  It  appears 
to  me  that  I  have  acted  fairly.  I  have  given  the  known  sentiments  of  both 
parties.  The  fabricators  of  religious  for  state  purposes  found  the  pure  and 
simple  doctrines  of  Jesus  Christ  unfit  for  them.  He  says :  '  When  you  pray, 
you  shall  pray  thus.'  For  he  was  the  least  violent  of  all  innovators.  What- 
ever leads  to  truth  should  be  left  upon  the  road :  to  stop  and  interrogate  is 
right  enough ;  but  not  to  thrust  it  aside,  break  it,  or  efface  it.  Hare  kindly 
says  he  would  let  it  pass,  from  a  love  of  free  discussion.  I  shall  be  delighted 
if  your  sentiments  are  the  same,  and  shall  be  contented  if  they  are  not.  I 
have  been  so  often  wrong,  that  I  doubt  of  myself  perpetually.  In  regard  to 
prayer,  if  ever  I  prayed  at  all,  I  would  not  transgress  or  exceed  the  order 
of  Jesus  Christ.  In  my  opinion  all  Christianity  (as  priests  call  their  inven- 
tions) is  to  be  rejected  excepting  His  own  commands.  There  is  quite 
enough  in  these  for  any  man  to  perform  ;  which  he  will  be  best  induced  to 
do  by  reading  his  life  and  reflecting  on  his  sufferings.  His  immediate  fol- 
lowers were,  for  the  greater  part,  as  hot-headed  fanatics  as  Whitfield  and 
Wesley,  and  probably  no  less  ambitious.  These,  however,  are  truths  I 
would  not  propagate ;  for  it  is  false  that  all  truth  is  alivays  good.  Suppose, 
for  instance,  that  a  man  should  be  told  that  his  wife  or  daughter  had  been 
guilty  of  a  certain  fault  seven  years  ago.  It  might  be  true  ;  but  it  would 
create  much  misery,  and  might  precipitate  them  again  from  the  purity  to 
which  they  had  returned.  To  increase  the  sum  of  happiness,  and  to  dimin- 
ish the  sum  of  misery,  is  the  only  right  aim  both  of  reason  and  of  religion.  All 
superstition  tends  to  remove  something  from  morality,  and  to  substitute 
something  in  its  place ;  and  is  therefore  no  less  a  wrong  to  sound  probity 
than  to  sound  sense." 

•  But  though  Hare  would  have  let  the  thing  pass,  and  Southey 
thought  it  admissible,  Taylor  stuck  to  his  objection.  It  is  not 
easy  to  reconcile  this  with  his  own  offer  to  be  bound  by  Southey's 
decision ;  but,  incompatible  as  such  a  view  appears  with  any  sugges- 
tion of  a  compromise,  Hare  thought  that  Taylor  had  never  barred  his 
right  of  electing  to  decline  the  whole  matter.  "  I  had  agreed,"  he 
said  afterwards,  "  to  print  what  Southey  sanctioned ;  but  of  course 


330  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ?to^A* 

this  was  only  binding  to  a  certain  extent,  and  could  not  oblige  Tay- 
lor to  print  what  he  thought  morally  wrong,  and  hurtful  to  Christian- 
ity. He  may  have  been  mistaken  :  1  thought  he  was.  I  thought 
the  argument  against  prayer,  as  an  argument,  good  for  nothing.  I 
may  have  been  equally  mistaken ;  but  at  all  events  I  cannot  blame 
Taylor  for  acting'  conscientiously  according  to  his  judgment."  It 
sin  mid  be  added  that  Taylor  repeatedly  desired  Hare  to  find  another 
publisher,  and  recommended  him  one  (Mr.  Simpkin)  who  would  feel 
no  Midi  Bcruples  as  he  had  himself;  but  Hare  disliked  the  thought 
of  changing.  Taylor  had  shown  so  much  interest  in  the  book,  and 
had  taken  such  pains  to  have  it  handsomely  and  correctly  printed,  that 
Hare  was  more  anxious  than  ever  to  continue  with  him;  and,  rather 
than  break,  even  ventured  at  last  to  make  the  alterations  in  the  Mid- 
dleton.  This  was  hardly  judicious.  It  got  rid  of  a  difficulty  for  the 
time  ;  but  Landor  had  a  ground  of  complaint  on  discovering  it,  and 
some  excuse  afterwards  (a  thing  that  did  not  often  happen  to  him) 
for  quarrelling  with  a  very  worthy  man. 

It  was  during  the  Middleton  discussions  and  delays  that  Hare  gave 
Taylor  permission  to  print  in  the  London  Magazine  the  dialogue  be- 
tween Southey  and  Porson  containing  the  comment  on  Wordsworth's 
poetry.  This  was  done  to  please  Wordsworth,  Landor  willingly  con- 
senting ;  and  in  the  July  number  of  1823  it  appeared.  It  excited 
considerable  interest;  and  much  curiosity  was  raised  for  the  appear- 
ance of  the  book,  which  the  same  magazine  had  promised  would  be 
immediate  ;  but  for  several  more  months  the  promise  was  not  kept, 
and  Wordsworth  mcanwdiile  wrote  to  Landor. 

Sharp  as  were  some  of  Porson's  sayings,  the  poet  had  reason  to  be 
proud  of  the  tone  and  matter  of  the  dialogue;  and  it  was  of  no  com- 
mon import,  at  this  turning-hour  of  his  fame,  that  a  champion  of 
such  appearance  and  prowess  should  declare  upon  his  side.  Southey 
speaks  of  him  as  in  those  latter  times  the  glory  of  their  country; 
and  when  reminded  that  a  rabble  had  persecuted  him,  and  a  Jeffrey 
made  him  his  prey,  retorts  with  a  couple  of  allegories,  that  an  ele- 
phant was  born  to  lie  consumed  by  ants  in  the  midst  of  his  unap- 
proachable solitudes,  and  that  in  the  creation  God  had  left  his  noblest 
creature  at  the  mercy  of  a  serpent.  Even  Porson's  severity  is  so 
tempered  as  not  to  exclude  the  highest  claims.  He  condemns  the 
habit  of  pursuing  thoughts  too  far,  of  showing  them  entirely  rather 
than  advantageously,  of  accumulating  instead  of  selecting  them,  in 
language  that  the  poet  might  in  earlier  days  have  read  with  inex- 
pressible advantage ;  and  his  bitterest  censure  of  the  line  about  the 
"witness"  and  "second  birth,"  that  then  disfigured  the  stanza  of 
Laodamia  descriptive  of  the  Elysian  Fields,*  hardly  detracted  from  its 
accompanying  magnificent  eulogy  that  the  poem  was  one  which 
Sophocles  might  have  exulted  to  own,  and  that  the  former  part  of  the 

*  Removed  afterwards  in  consequence  of  Landor's  criticism. 


^T-  47-53-]  A   PUBLISHER   FOUND.  331 

stanza  might  have  been  heard  with  shouts  of  rapture  in  the  regions 
it  describes. 

Wordsworth's  letter  was  dated  the  21st  of  January,  1824,  and  be- 
gan by  telling  Landor  he  was  both  tired  and  ashamed  of  waiting  any 
longer.  Many  months  had  he  looked  for  his  dialogues,  "  and  they 
never  appear."  The  expectation  of  the  book  had  prevented  his  an- 
swering Landor's  former  letter,  in  which  were  mentioned  some  un- 
pleasant topics  relating  to  the  writer's  own  feelings ;  but  as  a  second 
letter  had  since  arrived  not  adverting  to  them,  he  hoped  the  storm  was 
blown  over.  Wordsworth  then  went  on  to  say,  that  having  been  at 
Keswick  in  the  summer,  Southey  had  read  to  him  part  of  the  dialogue 
in  which  he  is  introduced  as  a  speaker  with  Porson  ("it  had  appeared, 
something  I  must  say  to  my  regret,  in  a  magazine "),  and  he  has 
since  read  the  remainder  himself.  "  You  have  condescended  to  mi- 
nute criticism  upon  the  Laodamia.  I  concur  with  you  in  the  first 
stanza,*  and  had  several  times  attempted  to  alter  it  upon  your 
grounds.  I  cannot  however  accede  to  your  objection  to  '  the  second 
birth  '  in  the  later  stanza  merely  because  the  expression  has  been  de- 
graded by  conventiclers.  I  certainly  meant  nothing  more  by  it  than 
the  eadem  cura  and  the  larginr  cether,  &c,  of  Virgil's  sixth  JEneid. 
All  religions  owe  their  origin  or  acceptation  to  the  wish  of  the  hu- 
man heart  to  supply  in  another  state  of  existence  the  deficiencies  of 
this,  and  to  carry  still  nearer  to  perfection  what  we  admire  in  our 
present  condition  ;  so  that  there  must  be  many  modes  of  expression, 
arising  out  of  this  coincidence  or  rather  identity  of  feeling,  common 
to  all  mythologies  ;  and  under  this  observation  I  should  shelter  the 
phrase  from  your  censure.  But  I  may  be  wrong  in  the  particular 
case,  though  certainly  not  in  the  general  principle." 

By  this  reasoning  Wordsworth  is  further  led  to  a  remark  of  Lan- 
dor's in  the  letter  last  received  from  him,  —  that  he  was  disgusted 
with  all  books  that  treat  of  religion.  He  was  afraid  it  was  a  bad 
sign  in  himself,  Wordsworth  says,  that  he  had  little  relish  for  any 
other.  Even  in  poetry  it  was  the  imagination  only  —  namely,  that 
which  is  conversant  with  or  turns  upon  infinity  —  that  powerfully 
affected  him.  "  Perhaps  I  ought  to  explain.  I  mean  to  say  that, 
unless  in  those  passages  where  things  are  lost  in  each  other,  and 
limits  vanish,  and  aspirations  are  raised,  I  read  with  something  too 
much  like  indifference."  But  all  great  poets  were  in  this  view  power- 
ful religionists  ;  and  therefore,  among  many  literary  pleasures  lost  to 
Wordsworth,  he  had  not  yet  to  lament  over  that  of  verse  as  de- 
parted. But  politics  !  What  did  Landor  say  to  Bonaparte  on  the 
one  side  and  the  Holy  Alliance  on  the  other  1  to  the  prostrate  Tories  1 
and  to  the  contumelious  and  vacillating  Whigs,  who  disliked  or  de- 

*  Porson  also  objected  to  the  second  and  fourth  line  of  the  first  stanza  as  terminating 
too  much  alike,  and  to  "have.  I  required"  and  "have  I  desired"  as  worse  than  prosaic. 
It  i<  curious,  however,  that  Wordsworth  has  left  unaltered  the  lines  thus  objected  to, 
though  he  says  he  agrees  in  the  objection;  while,  in  deference  to  a  criticism  which  he 
states  himself  unable  to  accede  to,  he  has  altered  altogether  the  subsequent  passage. 


332  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  l?££-J.' 

Bpised  the  Church,  and  seemed  to  care  for  the  State  only  as  far  as 
they  were  striving,  without  hope,  as  he  honestly  believed,  to  get  the 
management  of  it  I  As  to  the  low-bred  and  headstrong  Radicals, 
they  were  not  worth  a  thought.  He  had  himself,  indeed,  small  in- 
teresl  of  any  kind  in  the  matter  at  present.  His  politics  used  al- 
ways  to  impel  him  more  or  less  to  look  out  for  co-operation  with  a 
view  to  embody  them  in  action  ;  but  feeling  himself  utterly  deprived 
of  this  interest,  the  subject,  as  matter  of  reflection,  languished  ac- 
cordingly. Cool  heads  no  doubt  there  were  in  the  country,  but  mod- 
eration naturally  kept  out  of  sight;  and,  wanting  associates,  Words- 
worth declared  himself  to  be  less  of  an  Englishman  than  he  once 
was  or  could  wish  to  be.  At  the  close  of  his  letter  he  wishes  very 
much  to  have  Landor's  opinion  of  Dante.  "  It  has  become  lately, 
owing  a  good  deal  I  believe  to  the  example  of  Sehlegel,  the  fashion  to 
extol  him  above  measure.  I  have  not  read  him  for  many  years.  His 
style  I  used  to  think  admirable  for  conciseness  and  vigor  without 
abruptness  ;  but  I  own  that  his  fictions  often  struck  me  as  offensively 
grotesque    and  fantastic,  and  I  felt  the    poem  tedious  from   various 

causes Farewell.     Be  so  kind  as  write  soon,  and  believe  me 

ever  sincerely  and  affectionately  yours,  Wm.  "Wordsworth/'  What 
Landor  replied  does  not  appear  ;  but  his  opinion  of  Dante  was  given 
publicly  some  years  later  in  very  memorable  fashion. 

A  month  after  Wordsworth's  letter,  on  the  last  day  of  February, 
1824,  Southey  announced  to  Landor  the  completion  of  the  printing 
of  the  Inuujinurt/  Conversations.  "  Your  dialogues  have  been  delayed 
some  three  weeks  by  an  involuntary  fault  of  mine  in  not  sending  to 
Julius  Hare  a  passage  from  that  between  Cicero  and  his  brother.  It 
is  not  worth  explaining  how  this  happened,  and  how  the  wrong  pas- 
sage was  forwarded  to  me  in  London.  It  is  remedied  now.  The 
firsl  thing  I  did  on  my  return  home  from  a  long  absence  was  to  trans- 
mit the  insertion.  The  last  sheet  has  probably  by  this  time  been 
struck  off;  and  you  may  perhaps  receive  news  of  its  publication 
early  as  this  will  reach  you."*  And  now  I  will  venture  my- 
Belf  to  interpose  some  account,  in  a  little  detail,  of  what  the  book 
really  was  which  thus  was  ready  to  be  given  to  the  world.  It  con- 
tained thirty-sis  conversations,  eighteen  in  each  volume  ;  and  these 
I  will  attempt,  so  to  describe  as  to  show  in  each  case  the  drift  or  de- 
sign, something  of  the  varieties  of  style,  as  well  as  what  is  possihle 
of  tin  illustrations  of  character,  and  pre-eminently  of  Landor's  own 
character,  that  surprisingly  abound  in  them. 

IV.     WHAT    THE   FIRST   VOLUME   CONTAINED. 

The  opening  subject  was  taken  from  our  early  history.      The  first 
Richard,  returning  from  his  imprisonment,  is  met  by  the  Abbot  of 

*  Omitted,  with  other  passages,  in  the  letter  as  printed  (Life,  III.  116),  which  is  also 

otherwise  incorrect. 


^ET.  47  -  53.]  WHAT    THE    FIRST    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  333 

Boxley,  and  to  his  old  confessor  relates  the  story  of  his  wanderings  and 
his  captivity.  The  moral  of  it  is  contempt  for  the  princes  of  Europe, 
and  respect  for  Saladin.  Creatures,  he  had  discovered  them  to  be, 
"  of  less  import  than  the  sea-mews  on  their  cliffs  ;  men  praying  to  be 
heard  and  fearing  to  be  understood  ;  ambitious  of  another's  power  in 
the  midst  of  penitence  ;  avaricious  of  another's  wealth  under  vows 
of  poverty  ;  and  jealous  of  another's  glory  in  the  service  of  their 
God."  Was  that  Christianity,  and  was  Saladin  to  be  damned  if  he 
despised  it  ]  In  him  he  had  seen  wisdom,  courage,  courtesy,  fidelity, 
and  the  power  to  judge  a  hero's  nature  by  his  own.  "  To  them  he 
sent  pearls  and  precious  stones,  to  me  figs  and  dates ;  and  I  resolved 
from  that  moment  to  contend  with  him  and  to  love  him."  Excellent 
character  is  in  that.  But  the  story  told  by  the  Lion-heart  has  also 
another  lesson.  As  Richard  sailed  along  the  realms  of  his  family,  lit- 
tle else  had  been  visible  to  him  than  sterile  eminences  and  extensive 
shoals  ;  and  in  the  wide  ocean,  when  these  were  fled  behind  him,  he 
found  himself  little  of  a  monarch.  Old  men  guided  him,  boys  in- 
structed him  ;  and  when  thus  he  had  acquired  the  names  of  his 
towns  and  harbors,  and  been  shown  the  extent  of  his  dominions,  one 
cloud,  that  dissolved  in  an  hour,  covered  them.  Not  so  the  capacity 
and  courage  of  the  men  by  whom  they  had  been  governed.  "  What  na- 
tion hath  ever  witnessed  such  a  succession  of  brave  kings  two  hundred 
years  together  as  have  reigned  uninterruptedly  in  England  1  Example 
formed  them,  danger  nurtured  them,  difficulty  instructed  them,  peace 
and  war  in  an  equal  degree  were  the  supporters  of  their  throne." 
Thus,  on  the  first  page  of  a  work  which,  as  he  said  to  Francis  Hare, 
it  was  his  pride  so  to  have  planned  as  to  be  under  no  restraint  from 
claim  of  citizenship  or  country  to  withhold  what  might  be  due  to 
men  of  every  race  and  clime,  Landor  impressed  unmistakably  that 
other  pride  which  he  never  could  suppress,  of  having  been  born  him- 
self an  Englishman. 

For  interlocutors  in  his  second  dialogue  he  had  chosen  bearers  of 
names  also  very  dear  to  his  countrymen,  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  his 
friend  Lord  Brooke ;  the  subject  of  whose  talk,  among  the  wilds  and 
glades  of  Penshurst,  is  of  the  art  of  contentment  and  a  happy  life,  and 
its  principal  object  to  show  that,  however  wisely  or  unwisely  we  may 
look  iipon  contentment  as  the  cause  of  happiness,  we  shall  find  still 
that  since  we  are  contented  because  we  are  happy,  and  not  happy  be- 
cause we  are  contented,  the  happiness  to  be  desired  must  be  that 
only  which  will  satisfy  what  is  noblest  in  ourselves.  "  We  are  all 
desirous  of  pushing  forward  into  every  stage  of  life  excepting  that 
alone  which  ought  reasonably  to  allure  us  most,  as  opening  to  us  the 
via  sacra  along  which  we  move  in  triumph  to  our  eternal  country. 
We  labor  to  get  through  the  moments  of  our  life  as  we  would  to  get 
through  a  crowd.  Such  is  our  impatience,  such  our  hatred  of  pro- 
crastination, in  everything  but  the  amendment  of  our  practices  and 
the  adornment  of  our  nature,  one  would  imagine  we  were  dragging 


334  THE    IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  ?to^&" 

Time  along  by  force,  and  not  he  us."  Not  a  few  of  the  most  subtle 
chorda  of  its  theme,  old  as  the  world  itself,  are  touched  in  this  dia- 
logue :  and  drawn  alike  from  the  knowledge  of  his  hooks  and  his  life, 
Sidney's  character  found  in  it  very  perfect  expression.  With  much 
delicacy  this  was  marked  in  what  he  is  made  to  say  of  the  love  and 
practice  of  poetry  and  its  independence  of  other  than  its  own  re- 
wards ;  which  could  hardly  have  been  written  by  a  man  ignorant  of 
the  Apology  and  the  Arcadia,  though  these  are  not  reproduced  even 
in  the  turn  of  a  phrase.  Never  indeed,  throughout  all  the  series, 
was  there  anything  in  the  dialogues  borrowed  or  merely  imitative. 
Not  to  insert  in  any  one  of  them  "a  single  sentence  written  by,  or 
recorded  of,  the  personages  who  are  supposed  to  hold  them.''  had 
been  the  pride  of  Landor's  design;  he  adhered  to  it  inflexibly;  it 
helped  him  to  truth  of  character  where  least  careful  as  to  truth  of 
circumstance  ;  and,  when  he  makes  Sidney  talk  of  the  difficulty  of 
writing  as  the  ancients  have  written  without  borrowing  a  thought  or 
an  expression  from  them,  we  see  the  personal  reference.  But  with 
what  Brooke  says  of  the  spot  amid  Pcnshurst  woods  in  which  he  had 
found  his  friend,  I  must  quit  the  dialogue,  of  which  Julius  Hare  said 
well  that  it  was  calm  and  serene  as  a  summer  evening.  Among  its 
many  wise  and  noble  things  there  may  he  finer  than  this,  hut  there 
is  none  that  more  clings  to  the  memory.  "What  a  pleasant  spot, 
Sidney,  have  you  chosen  here  for  meditation!  A  solitude  is  the 
audience-chamber  of  God." 

Another  English  subject  he  took  for  his  third  dialogue  from  the 
supposed  talk  of  Henry  the  Fourth  with  Sir  Arnold  Savage,  the  first 
recorded  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons;  and  here  were  strokes 
of  character  that  are  excellent,  as  well  as  touches  that  exhibit  in  a 
lifelike  way  the  place  and  the  significance  in  history  of  both  the 
sovereign  and  subject  who  are  talking  before  us.  Henry,  bent  upon 
completing  the  conquest  of  France,  makes  rough  recital  of  what  his 
Commons  will  have  to  provide  him  with:  is  warned  by  Savage  of 
things  he  will  require  far  more  than  any  he  has  enumerated  ;  and,  to 
much  eager  questioning  of  what  these  can  he,  is  reminded  of  the 
hearts  of  his  subjects.  "  Your  horse  will  not  gallop  far  without  them, 
though  you  empty  into  his  manger  all  the  garners  of  Surrey.  .  .  . 
The  whole  people  is  a  good  king's  household,  quiet  and  orderly  when 
well  treated.  .  .  .  Act  in  such  guise,  most  glorious  Henry,  that  the 
king  may  say  my  people  and  the  people  may  say  our  king,  and  I  then 
will  promise  you  the  enjoyment  of  a  blessing  to  which  the  conquest 
of  France  in  comparison  is  as  a  broken  flag-staff." 

Matters  critical,  such  as  may  have  interested  literary  men  at  the 
close  of  Porson'a  life,  and  incidental  notices  of  the  poetry  of  Words- 
worth, were  the  subjeel  of  the  dialogue  of  Sunt  hey  ami  Porson  already 
named,  tin'  fourth  of  the  series.  Landor  here  delivered  himself  sharp- 
ly, through  the  mouth  of  Porson,  against  canons  of  criticism  at  that 
time  in  vogue  ;  Laughed  at  Mr.  Matthias  and  his  admirers;  and  quit- 


^T-  47"53']  WHAT   THE   FIRST   VOLUME   CONTAINED.  335 

ted  himself  of  an  old  grudge  against  his  own  reviewers  in  younger 
days,  those  "  daring  geniuses,  ensigns  and  undergraduates,  members 
of  Anacreontic  and  Pindaric  clubs,"  to  whom  his  Phoavans  had  been 
Gi'eek  and  his  Gebir  foolishness.  There  is  a  capital  stroke  against 
Gilford,  introduced  as  the  little  man  that  followed  Southey  in  the 
Critical  Review,  whose  pretensions  widened  every  smile  his  imbecility 
excited,  of  whom  Porson  is  made  to  say  that  he  would  certainly,  if 
Homer  were  living,  pat  him  in  a  fatherly  way  upon  the  cheek,  and 
tell  him  that  "  by  moderating  his  fire  and  contracting  his  prolixity, 
he  might  give  the  public  before  long  something  really  worth  reading." 
In  Porson's  mouth  also  is  placed  a  reply  to  the  charge  of  inequality 
in  the  poetry  of  the  ancients  (with  whom  he  classes  Dante,  Shake- 
speare, and  Milton),  saying  that  it  is  the  property  of  modern  poetry, 
as  it  is  of  modern  arms  and  equipments,  to  be  more  uniformly  trim 
and  polished,  but  that  the  ancients  had  more  strength  and  splendor 
if  they  had  also  more  inequality  and  rudeness.  Very  much  in  char- 
acter, too,  is  his  plan  for  the  recovery  of  the  missing  Greek  manu- 
scripts ;  his  belief  that  the  well-directed  labor  of  twenty  good  scholars 
might  in  a  few  years  retrieve  what  has  been  lost  by  the  bigotry  of  popes 
and  caliphs,  and  that  with  a  smaller  sum  than  is  annually  expended  on 
the  appointment  of  some  silly  young  envoy  might  be  recovered  some 
trace  of  nearly  all  the  writers  whose  disappearance  has  been  the  re- 
gret of  genius  for  four  centuries.  "  To  neglect  what  is  recoverable  is 
like  rowing  away  from  a  crew  that  is  making  its  escape  from  ship- 
wreck." Nor  is  the  old  scholar  out  of  place  as  devil's  advocate 
against  "Wordsworth,  putting  his  objections  with  humor  and  force, 
and  drawung  out  Southey's  defence  of  his  friend.  In  the  detail  and 
niceties  of  criticism  Landor  is  never  so  strong  as  in  its  generals  and 
principles,  but  the  subject  here  was  handled  without  unfairness  on 
either  side,  and  with  so  much  of  character  on  both  as  to  mark  their  dif- 
ferences even  in  points  of  agreement.  Where  the  mistakes  of  critics 
are  the  theme,  Southey  extenuates  while  he  blames  ;  "  clear  writers, 
like  clear  fountains,  do  not  seem  as  deep  as  they  are  :  the  turbid  look 
the  most  profound  ":  but  Porson  has  no  consideration  for  such  adver- 
saries ;  "  they  know  not  whether  they  are  upon  the  body  of  a  giant, 
or  upon  one  of  ordinary  size,  and  bite  both  indiscriminately."  Reply- 
ing to  a  friend's  remark  upon  this  dialogue,  Southey  conceded  that 
Porson  and  himself  might  not  have  conversed  as  Landor  had  exhib- 
ited them ;  "  but  we  could  neither  of  \is  have  talked  better,"  he 
added,  and  most  people  will  agree  with  him. 

In  the  fifth  dialogue  the  speakers  were  Oliver  Cromwell  and  that 
Michael  (misnamed  by  him  Walter)  Noble,  the  friend  of  Oliver  and 
member  for  Lichfield  in  the  Long  Parliament,  some  of  whose  blood 
ran  in  Landor's  own  veins  ;  his  grandfather,  Robert  Landor  of  Rugeley, 
having  (in  1732)  married  the  sole  daughter  and  heiress  of  Noble's 
grandson  "Walter,  of  Chorley  Hall,  Longdon,  through  whom  Landor's 
father  inherited  a  good  estate.     The  drift  of  this  dialogue  is  to  show 


33G  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  [^™-J.' 

Cromwell  stubbornly  putting  aside  the  intercessions  of  his  friends  the 
republicans  for  the  life  of  Charles  ;  and  there  is  capital  character  in 
the  half-humorous,  half-evasive  way,  in  which  the  deeply  set  tragic 
purpose  of  the  Puritan  general  declares  itself.  "  Why,  dost  thou 
verily  think  me  so,  Walter]"  he  says,  when  his  friend  has  called  him 
cruel.  "  Perhaps  thou  art  right  in  the  main  ;  but  He  alone  who 
fashioned  me  in  my  mother's  womb,  and  who  sees  things  deeper  than 
we  do,  knows  that."  Profound  touches  of  this  kind  contrast  well 
with  the  stately  periods  in  which  the  associate  of  Vane  and  Harrington 
has  been  pleading  for  mercy.  "We  should  be  slow  in  the  censure  of 
princes,  and  slower  in  the  chastisement.  Kingship  is  a  profession 
which  lias  produced  few  among  the  most  illustrious,  many  among  the 
most  despicable,  of  the  human  race.  As  in  our  days  they  are  edu- 
cated and  treated,  he  is  deserving  of  no  slight  commendation  who 
rises  in  moral  worth  to  the  level  of  his  lowest  subject ;  so  manifold 
and  so  great  are  the  impediments.  .  .  .  Let  us  consider  that,  edu- 
cated in  the  same  manner  and  placed  in  the  same  position,  we  our- 
selves might  have  acted  as  reprovably.  Abolish  that  forever  which 
must  else  forever  generate  abuses;  and  attribute  the  faults  of  the 
man  to  the  office,  not  the  faults  of  the  office  to  the  man."  This  conver- 
sation was  very  nearly  the  only  one  that  pleased  the  Quarterly  reviewer, 
who  had  probably  failed  to  discover  what  was  really  meant  by  it. 

The  sixth* dialogue  —  first  of  a  series  famous  for  its  range  of  sub- 
ject, its  variety  of  treatment,  and  a  familiarity  with  classic  life  and 
thought  unparalleled  since  the  revival  of  letters  —  brought  upon  the 
scene  the  sages  and  orators  of  antiquity.  /Eschines  and  Phocion  are 
the  speakers  :  their  twofold  theme  being  Demosthenes,  and  the  char- 
acter and  laws  of  the  Athenians.  Defects  in  both  are  sharply  criti- 
cised ;  in  the  former  by  J^schines,  in  the  latter  by  Phocion,  whose 
defence  of  the  great  adversary  of  Philip  becomes  a  lesson  in  elo- 
quence and  government  to  his  rival.  The  style  of  the  conversa- 
tion may  he  judged  of  by  the  way  in  which  Phocion  checks  the  im- 
patience of  /Eschines  under  the  thought  of  the  evil  enemies  and 
times  that  have  befallen  them,  reminding  them  that  no  one  from 
without  can  inflict  worse  upon  a  man  than  he  is  always  inflicting  on 
himself,  and  that  the  remedy  for  both  is  the  same.  "  The  gods  have 
not  granted  us,  /Eschines,  the  choice  of  being  born  when  we  would; 
that  of  dying  when  we  would,  they  have.  Thank  them  for  it,  as  one 
anion--  the  most  excellent  of  their  gifts  :  and  remain  or  go,  as  utility 
or  dignity  may  require.  Whatever  can  happen  to  a  wise  and  virtu- 
ous man  from  his  worst  enemy,  whatever  is  most  dreaded  by  the  incon- 
siderate and  irresolute,  has  happened  to  him  frequently  from  himself ; 
and  not  only  without  his  inconvenience,  hut  without  his  observation. 
We  are  prisoners  as  often  as  we  bolt  our  doors,  exiles  as  often  as  we 
walk  to  Munychia,  and  dead  as  often  as  we  sleep.  It  would  be  a 
folly  and  a  shame  to  argue  that  these  things  are  voluntary,  and  that 
what    our  enemy  imposes  are  not.  ...   In  fine,   /Eschines,  I   shall 


JET.  47-53-]  "WHAT    THE    FIRST   VOLUME    CONTAINED.  337 

then  call  the  times  bad  when  they  make  me  so."  From  the  point  of 
view  of  ancient  life  that  is  true  philosophy,  nor  is  it  with  the  proper 
reserves  and  limitations  inapplicable  wholly  to  modern  thoughts  and 
ways. 

The  seventh  dialogue,  with  Elizabeth  and  Burleigh  for  its  speakers, 
was  quite  a  little  masterpiece  of  humor  and  character.  Here  Ed- 
mund Spenser's  laureateship  and  pension  are  talked  about ;  and  the 
queen's  pleasant  pedantic  patronage  of  the  Muses,  condescending  to 
those  sacred  damsels  as  but  another  sort  of  maids-of-honor,  shows  off 
by  whimsical  contrast  her  minister's  complaint  that  ladies  of  such 
doubtful  character  shoidd  so  have  "  choused  "  her  highness.  "  God's 
blood  !  "  she  swears  at  his  contemptuous  laugh  over  a  poet's  com- 
plaint of  neglect,  "  shall  the  lady  that  tieth  my  garter  and  shuffles 
the  smock  over  my  head,  or  the  lord  that  steadieth  my  chair's  back 
while  I  eat,  or  the  other  that  lopketh  to  my  buckhounds  lest  they  be 
mangy,  be  holden  by  me  in  higher  esteem  and  estate  than  he  who 
hath  placed  me  among  the  bravest  of  past  times,  and  will  as  safely 
and  surely  set  me  down  among  the  loveliest  in  the  future  1 "  It  is 
in  vain  that  Cecil  reiterates  the  pension  and  the  butt  of  canary. 
"  The  moneys  are  given  to  such  men,"  his  mistress  rejoins,  "  that 
they  may  not  incline  nor  be  obligated  to  any  vile  or  lowly  occupa- 
tion ;  and  the  canary  that  they  may  entertain  such  promising  Wits 
as  court  their  company  and  converse  ;  and  that  in  such  manner  there 
may  be  alway  in  our  land  a  succession  of  these  heirs  unto  Fame." 
This  may  be  thought  too  favorable  a  view  of  her  highness's  regard  to 
letters,  but  it  is  true  to  her  character  all  the  same  ;  for  the  trick  of 
her  speech  is  not  better  caught  in  it  than  her  inbred  loyalty  of  na- 
ture, to  which  indeed  it  does  greater  justice  than  she  ever  cared  to 
mete  out  to  herself.  "  A  page  of  poesy  is 'a  little  matter  ;  be  it  so  : 
but  of  a  truth  I  do  tell  thee,  Cecil,  it  shall  master  full  many  a  bold 
heart  that  the  Spaniard  cannot  trouble."  One  such  heart  betrays 
itself,  while  Cecil  reads  at  his  mistress's  command  some  lines  that 
Edmund  has  written  on  the  cruelty  of  the  Goddess  of  Chastity  ;  and 
there  is  another  little  copy  of  verses  by  him,  read  to  her  by  Burleigh, 
which  she  thinks  of  inferior  merit,  not  being  written  with  his  wonted 
fancifulness  nor  in  learned  and  majestical  language,  but  of  which  the 
homely  and  rustic  way  moves  her  the  more  as  demonstrating  that 
since  her  laureate  had  resided  in  Ireland  his  genius  had  been  damp- 
ened by  his  adversities.  Yet  not  as  "  a  fee  grief  due  to  a  single 
breast  "  is  the  sorrow  expressed  in  them.  We  have  all  a  part  in  the 
poet's  lament,  as  he  tells  how  much  is  lost, 

"  When,  rising  from  the  turf  where  youth  reposed, 
We  find  but  deserts  in  the  far-sought  shore; 
When  the  huge  book  of  Faery-land  lies  closed, 

And  those  strong  brazen  clasps  will  yield  no  more." 

Even  Burleigh,  when  his  reading  was  done,  may  have  winced  a  little 
under  his  mistress's  closing  words  :  — 

22 


338  THE    IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  rfto-**' 

"Thou  Brightest  toss  and  tumble  in  thy  hod  many  nights,  and  never  eke 
out  the  substance  of  a  stanza:  bul  Edmund,  if  perchance  I  should  call  upon 
him  for  his  counsel,  would  give  me  as  wholesome  and  prudent  as  any  of 
you.  We  should  indemnify  such  men  for  the  injustice  we  do  until  them  in 
not  calling  them  about  us,  and  for  the  mortification  they  must  suffer  at  see- 
ing their  inferiors  set  before  them.  Edmund  is  grave  and  gentle;  he  com- 
plains of  Fortune,  not  of  Elizabeth,  of  courts,  not  of  Cecil.  I  am  resolved, 
so  help  me  Q-od,  he  shall  have  no  further  cause  for  his  repining.  Go,  con- 
vev  unto  him  those  twelve  silver  spoons,  with  the  apostles  on  them,  glo- 
riously gilded;  and  deliver  into  his  hand  these  twelve  large  golden  pieces, 
sufficing  for  the  yearly  maintenance  of  another  horse  and  groom.  Beside 
which,  set  open  before  him  with  due  reverence  this  Bible,  wherein  he  may 
read  the  mercies  of  God  towrard  those  who  waited  in  patience  for  his  hless- 
ing;  and  this  pair  of  crimson  silk  hose,  which  thou  knowest  1  have  worne 
only  thirteen  months,  taking  heed  that  the  heelpiece  he  put  into  good  and 
sufficient  restoration,  at  my  sole  charges,  by  the  Italian  woman  nigh  the 
pollard  elm  at  Charing  Cross." 

Hardly  less  admirable  was  the  picture  of  Elizabeth's  successor  in 
the  eighth  dialogue,  where  the  speakers  were  James  the  First  aud 
Isaac  Casaubon,  and  the  principal  subject  popery.  James's  oddities 
of  speech  had  not  been  so  felicitously  caught  as  Elizabeth's  vernacu- 
lar, but  his  native  mother-wit,  pedantic  folly,  shreAvd  cunning,  real 
learning,  dogmatic  absurdities,  argumentative  subtleties,  and  a  hatred 
of  Jesuit  and  presbyter  as  devouring  as  his  love  for  himself,  were 
reproduced  with  humor  and  success.  And  it  was  very  well  said  of 
this  class  of  the  dialogues,  1  think  by  Hazlitt,  that  the  verisimilitude 
arises  less  from  the  studied  use  of  peculiar  phrases  or  the  exaggera- 
tion of  peculiar  opinions,  than  from  the  fact  that  the  writer  is  so 
well  versed  in  the  productions  and  characters  of  those  he  brings 
upon  the  stage  that  the  adaptation  takes  place  unconsciously  and 
without  apparent  effort.  Southey,  then  fresh  from  his  Book  of  the 
Church,  was  unprepared  for  such  handling  by  Ins  friend  of  the  weap- 
ons of  theological  controversy  ;  and  he  found  all  that  portion  of  the 
dialogue  denouncing  the  popes,  exposing  the  horrid  vices  and  mon- 
strous beliefs  of  Rome,  and  slaving  again  the  thrice-slain  Bellarmine, 
masterly  in  the  extreme.  James's  discipline  even  for  his  bishops  was' 
not  too  much  for  him.*  "  If  any  one  of  mine  in  his  pruriency 
should  cast  his  wild  eye  askance,  and  ruffle  his  mane  and  neigh  and 
Snort  to  overleap  bis  boundary,  1  would  thrust  the  Bible  into  his 
mouth  forthwith,  and  thereby  curb  bis  extra vagance.  For,  M.  Isaac, 
avc  do  possess  this  advantage  :  our  bishops  acknowledge  in  spirituals 
the  sole  authority  of  that  sacred  book  :  whereas  your  papist,  when 
you  push  him,  slinks  off  from  it  as  he  lists,  now  to  one  doctor,  now 
to  another,  now  to  saint,  now  to  father,  now  to  confessor;  and,  as 
these  retire  from  him  and  will  have  nothing  to  say  to  him  or  for  him, 
he    has  recourse   to    tradition,  which  is  any  where  or  nowhere."      But 

*  Southey  was  an  accurate  reader;  ami  upon  becoming  acquainted  with  <  lasnubon's 
letters,  which  Landor  hail  sent  him,  wrote  out  to  say  that  the  view  they  fad  led  the 
latter  to  take  of  the  character  of  James  the  First  very  much  accorded  with  the  opin- 
ion ho  had  himself  expressed  concerning  him.    (August,  1824.) 


^ET-  47-53-1  WHAT    THE    FIRST    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  339 

Souther's  appetite  was  only  for  the  high-spiced  condiments  of  James  : 
it  .had  no  stomach  for  the  stronger  meats  to  which  his  majesty  is  in- 
vited by  Casaubon.  "  I  would  authorize  no  inabilities  or  privations 
for  a  difference  in  mere  articles  of  faith  :  for  instance,  it  would  be  a 
tyranny  or  madness  to  declare  a  man  incapable  of  beating  the  enemy 
because  he  believes  in  transubstantiation  ;  but  I  would  exclude  from 
all  power,  all  trust,  all  office,  whoever  should  assert  that  any  man  has 
legitimate  power  of  any  kind  within  this  realm,  unless  it  repose  in, 
or  originate  from,  the  king  or  Parliament,  or  both  united."  The  prop- 
er correction  to  James's  humorously  unconscious  contradictions  in 
claiming  for  himself  what  he  tramples  on  the  pope  for  exercising,  is 
excellently  supplied  throughout  by  this  liberal  wisdom  of  Casaubon. 
The  ninth  dialogue  was  the  first  in  which  Landor  appeared  in  his 
own  person,  talking  with  the  Marchese  Pallavicini,  whose  palace  he 
rented  at  Albaro,  and  to  whose  boast  of  the  magnificence  of  Genoese 
doorways  he  makes  reply  that  there  are  oaken  staircases  in  England 
as  worthy  to  commemorate,  and  that  he  had  himself  inherited  an  old 
ruinous  house  (at  Ipsley)  up  whose  staircase  the  tenant  rode  his 
horse  to  stable  him.  The  talk  throughout  is  much  upon  architecture, 
passing  by  easy  transition  from  men's  houses  and  gardens  to  the 
national  or  individual  peculiarities  indicated  by  them  ;  and  dogma- 
tizing after  the  usual  fashion  of  talkers  upon  art,  who  seldom  fail  to 
find  themselves  more  knowing  about  it  than  those  whose  lives  have 
been  devoted  to  its  practice^  and  whose  labors  are  their  theme.  But 
when  Landor  turns  to  matters  more  remote,  he  satisfies  the  expecta- 
tion raised.  One  passage  I  will  quote,  for  the  comment  it  then  pro- 
voked, and  the  confirmation  it  has  since  received.  He  is  speaking  of 
Rome,  and  says  that  Lucullus  was  the  first  of  the  nation  who  had 
anj-  idea  of  amplitude  in  architecture. 

"Julius  Caesar,  to  whom  glory  in  all  her  forms  and  attributes  was  more 
familiar  than  his  own  Penates,  meditated  the  grandest  works  of  utility  and 
decoration,  in  the  city  and  out :  but  he  fell  a  victim  to  insatiable  ambition, 
and  left  nothing  memorable  in  his  birthplace  but  Pompey's  statue.  Augus- 
tus did  somewdiat  in  adorning  the  city ;  but  Augustus  was  no  Pericles.  Ti- 
berius, melancholy  at  the  loss  of  a  young  and  beautiful  wife  borne  away  from 
him  by  policy,  sank  into  that  dreadful  malady  which  blighted  every  branch  of 
the  Claudian  family,  and,  instead  of  embellishing  the  city  with  edifices  and 
sculpture,  darkened  it  with  disquietudes  and  suspicions,  and  retired  into  a 
solitude  which  his  enemies  have  peopled  with  monsters.  Such  atrocious 
lust,  incredible  even  in  madness  itself,  was  incompatible  with  the  memory 
of  his  loss  and  with  the  tenderness  of  his  grief:  nor  were  his  mental  powers 
always  estranged.  Nero,  in  the  beginning  of  his  government,  and  indeed 
five  entire  years,  a  virtuous  and  beneficent  prince,  was  soon  affected  by  the 
same  insanity,  but  acting  differently  on  his  heart  and  intellect.  He  never 
lost  sight  of  magnificence,  and  erected  a  palace  before  which  even  the  splen- 
dors of  Pericles  fade  away." 

Much  gravity  of  objection  was  made  to  this  *  by  the  earliest  crit- 
*  It  appeared  originally  as  a  note  to  the  dialogue  of  Pericles  and  Sophocles. 


340  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  [^-J.' 

ica  of  the  Conversations,  and  Hazlitt  condemned  it  as  the  wildest  of 
paradoxes  that  Tiberius  should  be  put  forth  for  a  man  of  sentiment 
retired  to  Capri  out  of  grief  for  his  wife,  and  Nero  pi-omoted  into  a 
humane  and  highly  popular  person.  Yet  since  that  date  there  are 
scholars  both  in  Germany  and  England  who  have  discovered  some- 
thing of  truth  in  both  paradoxes  :  and  a  learned  professor  at  this 
very  hour  is  busily  engaged  in  demonstrating,  in  one  of  the  reviews, 
that  Tiberius  was  a  brilliant  soldier,  and  a  not  unjust  or  cruel  sovereign, 
and  that  the  turning-point  of  his  life,  the  cloud  which  darkened  his 
spirit  in  youth  and  never  quitted  him  in  age,  was  the  divorce  from 
Vipsania  and  compelled  marriage  with  Jnlia,  which  Landor  made  the 
subject  of  a  later  and  very  masterly  dialogue.  The  present  one  has 
a  characteristic  close.  The  speakers  look  over  at  the  lofty  and  grand 
flight  of  steps,  leading  up  to  a  palace  just  before  them,  on  which 
Landor's  children  are  playing.  "  These  are  my  vases,  marchese,"  he 
cries  out  :  "  these  are  my  images,  these  are  decorations  for  architect- 
ure, this  is  ornamental  gardening,  and  suitable  to  all  countries  and 
climates."  "Whereupon  Pallavicini  says  that  over  those  steps  he  had 
seen  the  wife  of  a  patriotic  Italian  to  whom  the  palace  belonged,  the 
Marchese  Cambiagi,  dragged  and  insulted  by  Austrian  soldiers,  and 
that,  seeing  also  the  English  general  looking  on,  it  had  occurred  to 
him  that  our  houses  of  Parliament  should  have  animadverted  on  such 
an  outrage,  and  our  general  should  have  been  made  to  answer  for  it. 
To  which  Landor  rejoins  :  "  These  two  fingers  have  more  power,  mar- 
chese, than  those  two  houses.  A  pen  !  he  shall  live  for  it.  What, 
with  their  animadversions,  can  they  do  like  this?  " 

A  smile  arises  here  ;  but  it  is  very  certain  that  in  the  next  follow- 
ing  dialogue,  the  tenth,  the  "  two  fingers  "  leave  a  scathing  mark 
which  the  "  two  houses,"  by  any  given  number  of  speeches  or  resolu- 
tions, would  have  found  it  hard  to  remove.  "  I  have  been  told  that 
among  Landor's  Conversations^  writes  Julius  Hare  in  the  Guesses  at 
Truth,  "the  most  general  favorite  is  that  between  General  Kleber 
and  si  line  French  officers.  If  it  be  so,  one  may  easily  see  why. 
Beautiful  as  some  touches  in  it  are,  it  is  not  so  far  removed  as  most 
of  its  companions  from  what  other  men  have  written  and  can  write." 
It  is  in  truth  a  story,  even  a  love-story,  the  dialogue  being  set  in  nar- 
rative ;  but  all  thai  is  suffered  or  said  in  it  expresses  only  with  more 
extraordinary  force  the  cruel  character  of  Bonaparte's  glory,  and  its 
hardening  effect  on  Frenchmen.  During  the  invasion  of  Egypt  a 
young  English  officer  sittting  at  the  base  of  the  great  pyramid,  and 
aboul  to  surrender  himself  to  the  French,  is  deliberately  slain  by  a 
French  rifle  :  and  what  is  found  upon  him,  as  they  plunder  his  body, 
tells  the  affecting  little  tale.  Among  his  papers  is  a  poem  on  the  bat- 
tle of  Aboukir,  from  which  one  stanza  on  the  desolation  of  "  the  land 
of  all  marvels  in  all  ages  past  "  may  be  taken  here. 

"  0'ir  cities  shadowing  some  dread  name  divine 
Palace  and  fane  return  the  hyena's  cry, 
And  bootless  camels  in  long  Bingle  line 
Stalk  Blow,  with  foreheads  level  to  the  sky."  • 


JET.  47-53.]  WHAT    THE    FIRST    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  341 

The  eleventh  dialogue  introduced  Bishop  Burnet  and  Humphrey 
Hardcastle,  and  in  execution  was  one  of  the  happiest  of  the  series. 
The  bishop's  style  *s  excellently  caught  :  credulous,  gossiping,  coarse, 
but  with  character  in  every  word,  amusingly  graphic  and  distinct. 
The  Southey  and  Byron  controversy  had  been  raging  just  before,  and 
both  combatants  had  tossed  about  the  name  of  Landor,  Byron  rhym- 
ing it  with  gander  in  one  of  the  later  cantos  of  Don  Juan ;  when 
Landor  himself  by  this  dialogue  took  part  in  the  quarrel,  delivering 
his  heaviest  blows  from  the  mouth  of  the  garrulous  bishop.  Burnet 
answers  Hardcastle's  questions  after  his  uncle  Sir  Humphrey  by  ram- 
bling off  with  a  delightful  humor  into  all  about  Sir  Hum's  flight  and 
escape  at  the  Restoration,  his  drinking,  verse-writing,  love-making, 
and  his  outwitting  Mr.  Cowley  both  in  politics  and  poetry,  though  the 
king  had  chosen  Abraham  to  circumvent  Hum  ;  and  by  relating  how 
people  used  to  declare  that  Hum  might  have  overtopped  Abraham 
altogether  if  he  could  have  drunk  rather  less,  thought  rather  more, 
and  felt  rather  rightlier,  for  that  he  had  great  spunk  and  spirit,  and 
not  a  fan  was  left  upon  a  lap  when  any  one  sang  his  airs.  However, 
the  bishop  protests  that  to  sit  as  arbitrator  between  two  righting  poets 
and  between  two  fighting  game-cocks  he  should  consider  equally 
foolish,  only  that  both  were  not  equally  wicked,  —  being  firmly  of 
opinion  that  those  things  which  are  the  most  immoral  must  always 
be  the  most  foolish.  But  in  truth,  he  adds,  his  unfitness  to  arbitrate 
may  perhaps  be  because  he  does  n't  very  well  know  what  poetry  is  ; 
for  who  would  ever  have  thought  that  my  Lord  Rochester's  reputed 
child,  Mr.  Geoi-ge  Nelly,  was  for  several  seasons  a  great  poet  % 

"  Yet  I  remember  the  time  when  he  was  so  famous  a  one  that  he  ran  after 
Mr.  Milton  up  Snow  Hill,  as  the  old  gentleman  was  leaning  on  his  daughter's 
arm  from  the  Poultry,  and,  treading  down  the  heel  of  his  shoe,  called  him  a 
rogue  and  liar,  while  another  poet  sprang  out  from  a  grocer's  shop  clapping 
his  hands,  and  crying,  '  Bravely  done !  by  Beelzebub,  the  young  cock  spurs 
the  blind  buzzard  gallantly !  '  On  some  neighbor  representing  to  Mr. 
George  the  respectable  character  of  Mr.  Milton,  and  the  probability  that  at 
some  future  time  he  might  be  considered  as  among  our  geniuses,  and  such 
as  would  reflect  a  certain  portion  of  credit  on  his  ward,  and  asking  him 
withal  why  he  appeared  to  him  a  rogue  and  a  liar,  he  replied,  '  I  have  proofs 
known  to  few :  I  possess  a  sort  of  drama  by  him,  entitled  Comus,  which 
was  composed  for  the  entertainment  of  Lord  Pembroke,  who  held  an  ap- 
pointment under  the  king,  and  this  John  hath  since  changed  sides,  and  writ- 
ten in  defence  of  the  Commonwealth.'  " 

I 
This  reference  to  the   Wat  Tyler  raid   was  not  to  be   mistaken ; 

but  what  followed  on  the  after-career  of  Mr.  George  struck  harder 

still. 

"  Afterward,  whenever  he  wrote  a  bad  poem,  he  supported  his  sinking 
fame  by  some  signal  act  of  profligacy ;  an  elegy  by  a  seduction,  a  heroic  by 
an  adultery,  a  tragedy  by  a  divorce.  On  the  remark  of  a  learned  man  that 
irregularity  is  no  indication  of  genius,  he  began  to  lose  ground  rapidly, 


342  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATION'S.  [?<£?!X,SV 


when  on  a  sudden  he  cried  out  at  the  Haymarket,  There  is  no  God.  It  was 
then  surmised  more  generally  and  more  gravely  thai  there  was  something 
in  him,  and  he  stood  upon  his  legs  almost  to  the  last..  Say  what  you  will, 
once  whispered  a  friend  of  mine,  there  are  things  in  him  strong  as  poison, 
and  original  as  sin." 

One  would  give  one's  little  finger  to  have  said  that,  exclaimed 
Julius  Hare  ;  Cribb  himself  never  put  in  such  a  blow.  To- 
wards the  close,  too,  another  such  hits  home,  where  the  bishop 
hopes  f>r  Mr.  George,  now  no  longer  among  the  living,  that  the  mer- 
cies which  had  been  begun  with  man's  forgetfulness  would  be  crowned 
with  God's  forgiveness.  To  which  a  compliment  from  Mr.  Hard- 
castle  on  the  worth  that  even  writers  of  perishable  fame  may  assume 
when  represented  by  such  a  pen  as  the  bishop's  (a  light  one  becoming 
as  a  film  in  agate,  and  a  noxious  one  as  a  toad  in  marble),  draws 
from  Burnet  a  remark  on  the  fallacy  of  human  judgments  which 
closes  with  noble  appropriateness  this  fine  conversation. 

"How  near  together,  Mr.  Hardcastle,  are  things  which  appear  to  us  the 
most  remote  and  opposite !  how  near  is  death  to  life,  and  vanity  to  glory ! 
How  deceived  are  we,  if  our  expressions  are  any  proofs  of  it,  in  what  we 
mighl  deem  the  very  matters  most  subject  to  our  senses!  the  haze  above 
our  heads  we  call  the  heavens,  and  the  thinnest  of  the  air  the  firmament.-' 

Of  the  sequel  something  will  be  told  hereafter,  in  one  of  the  letters 
to  Southey.  Hardly  had  the  dialogue  been  printed  when  Byron's 
gallant  exertions  for  the  Greeks,  followed  by  his  death,  turned  Lan- 
dor's  anger  into  sorrow,  and  he  was  eager  to  make  what  amends  he 
could.  But,  "alas,  my  writings  are  not  upon  slate:  no  finger,  not 
of  Time  himself,  who  dips  it  in  the  clouds  of  years  and  in  the  storm 
and  tempest,  can  efface  the  written."  Leaving  it  therefore,  he  placed 
beneath  it  in  his  second  edition  a  generous  tribute  to  the  better  parts 
of  a  character  of  which,  in  the  conversation,  he  had  depicted  only 
the  worst. 

The  speakers  in  the  twelfth  dialogue  were  the  famous  Austrian 
grand  duke  Peter  Leopold  and  the  French  president  Du  Paty  whom 
he  lias  summoned  to  confer  upon  the  new  code  he  is  preparing  for 
Tuscany,  and  with  whom  he  discusses  the  laws  of  various  nations, 
Buch  defects  in  them  as  call  for  amendment,  and  such  social  or  na- 
tional peculiarities  as  they  have  risen  from,  or  by  sympathy  become 
pari  of  Kngland  is  not  spared  any  more  than  France  or  Italy  ;  but 
in  the  latter  it  is  shown  that  bad  laws  had  grown  out  of  what  was 
worst  in-the  surrounding  social  and  religious  influences,  while  in  the 
former  they  have  sprung  up  in  the  teeth  of  what  is  best  in  both  so- 
ciety and  religion.  "  Wherever,"  says  Du  Paty  of  the  Italian,  "  there 
is  a  substitute  for  morality,  where  ceremonies  stand  in  the  place  of 
duties,  where  the  confession  of  a  fault  before  a  priest  is  more  merito- 
rious than  noser  fco  haw  committed  it,  where  virtues  and  duties  arc 
vicarious,  where  crimes  can  be  expiated  after  death  for  money,  where 
by  breaking  a  wafer  you  open  the  gates  of  Heaven,  —  probity  and 


^ET.  47-53.]  WHAT   THE   FIRST   VOLUME   CONTAINED.  343 

honor,  if  they  exist  at  all,  exist  in  the.  temperament  of  the  indi- 
vidual." Nor  is  he  more  merciful  to  his  countrymen.  "  We  French 
are  the  most  delicate  people  in  the  world  on  points  of  honor,  and  the 
least  delicate  on  points  of  justice."  In  other  words,  puts  in  Leopold, 
the  most  on  imaginary  things,  the  least  on  real.  "  A  man's  vanity 
tells  him  what  is  honor,  a  man's  conscience  what  is  justice  :  the  one 
is  busy  and  importunate  in  all  times  and  places ;  the  other  but 
touches  the  sleeve  when  men  are  alone,  and,  if  they  do  not  mind  it, 
leaves/them.  Point  of  honor  you  may  well  call  it ;  for  such  precisely 
is  the  space  it  occupies."  As  to  the  English,  however,  prince  and 
president  are  in  less  perfect  agreement  :  and  there  is  an  amusing 
comparison  of  the  grand-duke's  between  the  manners  of  English 
ladies  abroad,  "  taking  alarm  or  umbrage  at  every  foot  that  ap- 
proaches them,"  and  the  more  winning  ways  of  his  Florentines; 
which  calls  forth  by  way  of  rejoinder  from  the  president  a  picture, 
not  it  may  be  hoped  too  flattering,  of  the  well-born  Englishwoman  at 
home,  not  only  superintending  the  village  school,  hearing  the  children 
their  lesson,  examining  their  cleanliness,  observing  their  dress,  inquir- 
ing into  their  health,  remarking  their  conduct,  presaging  their  pro- 
pensities, amused  at  their  games,  and  interested  in  their  adventures, 
but  also  visiting  the  sick,  conversing  with  the  aged,  comforting  the 
afflicted,  and  carrying  her  sons  and  daughters  with  her  to  acquire  the 
practice  of  their  duties.  "  If,"  he  adds,  after  admission  that  even 
such  women,  travelling  too  often,  leave  these  qualities  behind  them, 
"we  desire  to  know  with  certainty  what  religion  is  best,  let  us  ex- 
amine in  what  country  are  the  best  fathers,  mothers,  sons,  daugh- 
ters, wives  :  we  shall  there  also  find  the  best  citizens,  and  of  course 
the  best  Christians."  Here  the  speakers  are  again  in  agreement ; 
and,  in  what  is  said  by  both  of  the  degrading  influences  upon  morals 
and  laws  of  confession,  celibacy,  purgatory,  and  all  the  noxious  brood 
of  saints,  miracles,  intercessory  prayers,  prohibitions,  and  indulgences 
that  are  the  stock-in-trade  of  Rome,  we  have  the  results  of  long  and 
masterly  observation  of  actual  life  in  Italy.  Allowance  will  be  made 
here  and  there  for  statements  verging  on  the  extreme.  Du  Paty  has 
even  a  theory  that  Cervantes,  by  his  immortal  romance,  meant  to 
laugh  something  more  than  knight-errantry  away  ;  and  Leopold,  re- 
solved upon  curtailing  in  his  dominions  the  holidays  of  the  Church, 
declares  his  belief  that  every  saint  in  the  calendar  had  made  (not 
counting  monks)  ten  thousand  beggars  and  ten  thousand  thieves. 

It  should  be  added  that  a  hint  for  more  effectually  dealing  with 
both  beggars  and  thieves  was  thrown  out  in  this  dialogue,  written 
while  yet  poor-laws  and  prisons  were  unreformed,  and  reformatories 
hardly  known  ;  and  throughout  it  ran  a  keen  criticism  of  defects  of 
English  laws  only  partly  remedied  since  ;  their  illusory,  dilatory,  and 
costly  procedures  ;  their  punishments  for  bringing  a  man  into  con- 
tempt, "  as  if  any  one  could  be  brought  into  it  without  stirring  a  step 
on  his  own  legs  toward  it "  ;  and  all  the  wrongs  inseparable  from  their 


344  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  C2ta-A' 


excessive  use  of  halters  and  of  fines.  How  the  uses  of  a  language, 
too,  may  exhibit  differences  or  distinctions  of  character,  is  another 
truth  shown  in  it  by  many  examples  from  the  Italian  ;  and  with  a 
few  of  these  that  also  illustrate  the  unfavorable  impression  thus  far 
made  upon  the  writer  by  the  peculiarities  of  the  people  he  had  cast 
his  lot  among,  I  quit  the  dialogue. 

"Of  all  pursuits  and  occupations,  for  I  am  unwilling  to  call  it  knowledge, 
the  most  trifling  is  denominated  virtu.  An  alteration  in  a  picture  is  penti- 
rnento.  The  Romans,  detained  from  war  and  activity  by  a  calm,  termed  it 
malaria  ;  the  Italians,  whom  it  keeps  out  of  danger,  call  it  bonaccia.  Three 
or  four  acres  of  land  with  a  laborer's  cottage  are  called  a podere.  Beggarly 
magnificence  of  expression!  Every  house  with  a  barn  door  instead  of  a 
narrower  is  palazzo.  1  saw  open  in  a  bookseller's  window  a  boy's  dictionary, 
Dictionariwm  Ciceronianum,  in  the  page  where  heros  was,  and  found  its 
interpretation  barone,  signore.  Strength  which  frightens,  and  finery  which 
attracts  them,  arc  honesty  :  hence  valentuomo  and  yalantuomo.  A  well-dressed 
man  is  a  man  of  honor,  uomo  di  garbo.  Spogliare  is  to  undress;  the  spoils 
of  a  modern  Italian  being  his  shirt  and  stockings." 

These  are  given  by  Du  Paty.  But  Leopold  contributes  one  from 
his  own  profession. 

"  Governare  means  to  govern  and  to  wash  the  dishes.  This  indeed  is  not 
s  i  absurd  at  bottom;  for  there  is  generally  as  much  dirty  work  in  the  one 
as  in  the  other." 

All,  however,  are  not  unfavorable ;  and  our  last  may  be  an  exam- 
ple of  a  pleasanter  kind. 

"We  may  discern,  I  think,  the  characters  of  nations  in  their  different 
modes  of  salutation.  We  Italians  reply,  Sto  bene:  the  ancient  Romans, 
valeo:  the  Englishman,  I  am  well :  the  Frenchman,  I  carry  myself  well 
Here  the  Italian,  the  best  formed  of  Europeans,  stands  with  gracefulness 
and  firmness,  in  short,  stands  well:  the  Roman,  proudly  confident  in  his 
Btrength,  says,  /  am  stout  and  hearty:  the  Englishman  feels  throughout 
mind  and  body  this  '  standing  well,'  this  calm  confident  vigor,  and  says,  I 
am  well  :   the  Frenchman  carries  himself  so." 

In  the  thirteenth  conversation  Demosthenes  and  Eubulides  ap- 
peared on  the  scene,  the  orator  defending  himself  to  his  old  teacher 
of  Miletus  against  adversaries  alike  of  his  politics  and  eloquence,  and 
in  his  turn  carrying  war  into  the  territory  of  his  assailants.  The 
main  object  seems  to  be  that  Demosthenes  should  relate  the  discipline 
and  experiences  by  which  the  varieties  of  his  method,  his  alleged 
irregularities  of  speech,  and  the  character  of  his  oral  delivery,  were 
determined  ;  bringing  under  review  many  leading  sophists,  philoso- 
phers, and  historian-  ;  and  showing  his  right,  in  speaking  to  the  peo- 
ple, to  use  their  idiom,  even  at  the  risk  of  being  called  inattentive  or 
indifferent  to  nobility  of  expression.  "Ought  1  to  speak  nobly,  as 
you  call  it.  of  base  matters  and  base  men  \  Ought  my  pauses  to  be 
invariably  the  same  I  Would  Aristoteles  wish  that  a  coat  of  mail 
should  be  as  flowing  as  his  gown]     Let  peace  be  perfect  peace,  war 


/ET.  47-53-]  WHAT    THE    FIRST    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  345 

decisive  war ;  but  let  eloquence  move  upon  earth  with  all  the  facili- 
ties of  change  that  belong  to  the  Gods  themselves."  The  conversa- 
tion closes  with  what  is  too  evidently  a  whimsical  sketch  of  Canning 
under  the  cover  of  the  last  favorite  orator  of  the  Athenians,  Ansedes- 
tatus. 

The  fourteenth  dialogue,  between  Bonaparte  and  the  President  of 
the  Senate,  was  a  laugh  at  the  extravagant  servility  of  the  speeches 
addressed  to  the  French  emperor  by  his  officers  of  state ;  and  that  it 
was  not  ineffective  may  be  inferred  from  Hazlitt's  calling  it,  in  his  in- 
tense Bonapartism,  a  scandal  against  good  taste  and  decency.  To 
this  conversation  in  its  original  form  was  appended  a  long  and  most 
remarkable  note,  of  which  in  the  collected  edition  portions  were  ab- 
sorbed into  other  dialogues,  upon  the  character  of  Bonaparte  and 
some  passages  in  his  career;  containing  among  other  things  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  retreat  from  Moscow,  as  fine  as  anything  in  the  ancient 
historians.  The  view  he  took  of  Napoleon  on  this  and  on  other  oc- 
casions was,  that  he  had  the  fewest  virtues  and  the  faintest  semblan- 
ces of  them  of  any  man  that  had  risen  by  his  own  efforts  to  supreme 
power  ;  yet  that  the  services  he  rendered  to  society,  incommensurate 
as  they  were  with  the  prodigious  means  he  possessed,  were  great, 
manifold,  and  extensive.  He  singles  out,  as  the  best  kings  of  Napo- 
leon's creation,  Bernadotte  and  Louis  Bonaparte,  saying  of  the  latter 
that  from  the  throne  he  had  mounted  amid  the  curses  of  the  people 
he  descended  amid  their  tears,  and  of  both  that  they  had  given  no 
sign,  either  by  violence  or  rapacity,  by  insolence  or  falsehood,  that  they 
had  been  nurtured  in  the  feverish  bosom  of  the  French  Republic. 

In  the  fifteenth  conversation  Landor  reappeared  in  his  own  person 
in  friendly  talk  with  the  Abbe  Delille,*  and  the  main  part  of  it  was 
an  attack  on  Boileau,  which  one  would  like  to  have  been  made  less 
dogmatically,  and  with  less  confidence  in  his  knowledge  of  the  delica- 
cies of  a  living  language  not  his  own.  But  we  may  well  afford  to 
leave  such  exquisite  sense  and  satire  as  Boileau's  to  turn  with  its 
simile  the  edge  of  a  sharper  assailant,  and  the  digressions  of  the  dia- 
logue are  masterly.  As  capital  things  are  said  in  it  as  anywhere  in 
the  series,  on  points  and  peculiarities  of  style,  and  on  individual  au- 
thors, modern  and  ancient :  as  where  the  language  of  Gibbon  in  the 
Decline  and  Fall  is  likened  to  the  colors  of  the  setting  sun ;  where 
the  fact  that  there  is  no  golden  mean,  no  safe  mediocrity,  in  poetry, 
is  expressed  in  the  remark  that  between  the  good  and  the  excellent 
there  is  a  greater  difference  than  between  the  bad  and  the  good ; 
where  Homer  and  Virgil  are  said  to  have  been  excelled  in  sublimity 
by  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  as  the  Caucasus  and  Atlas  of  the  old 
world  by  the  Andes  and  Teneriffe  of  the  new  ;  and  where  Voltaire,  in 
his  censures  of  those  two  famous  Englishmen,  is  described  sticking  to 
them  as  a  woodpecker  to  an  old  forest  tree  only  that  he  may  pick  out 
what  is  rotten,  making  the  holes  deeper  than  he  found  them,  and 

*  See  ante,  p.  102. 


34G  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  *%b£j[' 

after  all  his  cries  and  chatter  bringing  homo  but  scanty  sustenance 
to  his  starveling  nest.  The  good  Abbe  finds  it  difficult  nevertheless 
to  approve  in  Shakespeare  of  such  frightful  irregularities  in  the  mat- 
ter of  unities  and  time  as  if  a  child  might  grow  into  a  man  in  the 
course  of  a  night,  or  as  if  we  could  see  years  of  history  act  themselves 
in  a  day.  Hut  that  is  exactly  what  we  do  see  in  his  English  chroni- 
cles. Landor  retorts.  "And  indeed  the  histories  of  our  country  read 
h\  Shakespeare  held  human  life  within  them.  When  we  are  interest- 
ed in  the  boy  we  spring  forward  to  the  man,  with  more  than  a  poet's 
Velocity.  We  would  interrogate  the  oracles  ;  we  would  measure  the 
thread  around  the  distaff  of  the  Fates;  yet  we  quarrel  with  him  who 
knows  and  tells  us  all.  Glory  to  thee  in  the  highest,  thou  confidant 
of  our  Creator  !  who  alone  has  taught  us  in  every  particle  of  the  mind 
how  wonderfully  and  fearfully  we  are  made."  It  may  be  added  that 
this  dialogue  contains  the  substance  of  a  talk  Landor  used  often  to  men- 
tion having  had  with  Talma  (to  whom  John  Kcmble  introduced  him), 
when  with  a  curious  freedom  from  national  predilections,  the  French 
tragedian  declared  our  English  blank  verse  to  have  a  great  superiority 
over  the  rhymed  tragedy  of  the  French  stage;  which  imposed  upon  the 
actor,  he  said,  the  necessity  of  so  breaking  the  joints  and  claws  of 
every  verse  as  to  be  able  to  pronounce  it  as  if  it  were  no  verse  at  all, 
"thus  undoing  what  the  poet  had  taken  the  greater  part  of  his  pains 
to  accomplish." 

The  sixteenth  dialogue  introduced  the  Emperor  Alexander  discuss- 
ing with  ( lapo  dTstrias  the  results  and  prospects  of  the  Holy  Alliance, 
ami  apology  was  made  in  a  note  for  attributing  to  both  speakers  more 
wisdom  and  reflection  than  either  possessed.  Certainly  to  such  a 
writer  as  Landor  one  can  see  that  the  difficulty  was  infinitely  less  to 
show  that  the  great  are  great  than  to  show  that  the  little  are  little; 
and  it  is  only  a  truism  to  add  that  he  is  most  successful  where  the 
most  is  demanded  of  him.  But  such  passages  of  the  dialogue  before  us 
a-  relate  to  the  struggle  of  the  Greeks  and  foreshadow  its  results,  as  the 
Comparisons  of  national  character  in  France  and  England,  and  as  tfcie 
prediction  that  no  "runic  spell  would  be  ever  so  powerful  as  the  three 
words  Italy  is  free"  render  it  worthy  of  preservation  ;  and  there  is  a 
remark  of  Capo's  about  the  Continental  armies  which  the  events  of 
tin'  year  following  its  publication  verified,  and  which  is  pregnant  still 
with  important  meaning.  "Pertinacity  among  rulers  in  making 
armies  the  instruments  of  their  ambition  has  made  them  the  arbiters 
of  their  fate.  Soldiers  can  never  stand  idle  long  together:  they  must 
turn  into  citizens  or  rebels." 

Briefly  I  will  add  of  the  next  succeeding  dialogue,  the  seventeenth, 
between  Kosciusko  and  Poniatowski,  that  this  also  contained  many 
admirable  things:  on  the  folly  of  the  partition  of  Poland  as  even 
greater  than  its  wickedness,  on  the  small  wisdom  of  the  Poles  in 
serving  Napoleon  with  any  expectation  of  service  in  return,  and  on 
the  short-sightedness  of  politicians  in  leaving  morals  so  much  behind 


/ET.  47-53.]  WHAT    THE   SECOND   VOLUME   CONTAINED.  347 

them.  "  Beyond  all  doubt,"  says  Kosciusco,  "  I  am  a  feeble  and  vis- 
ionary politician  :  nevertheless  I  will  venture  to  express  my  opinion 
that  gratitude,  although  it  never  has  been  admitted  among  the  po- 
litical virtues,  is  one  ;  that  whatever  is  good  in  morals  is  also  good 
in  politics  ;  and  that,  by  introducing  it  opportunely  and  dexterously, 
the  gravest  of  old  politicians  might  occasionally  be  disconcerted." 
The  closing  speech  of  this  dialogue  Julius  Hare  used  to  point  to  as 
a  specimen  of  perfect  rhythm,  such  as  might  have  been  deemed 
scarcely  attainable  in  a  language  rather  of  thought  than  of  sound 
such  as  ours  is.  But  the  great  performer  can  make  his  instrument 
wellnigh  what  he  pleases. 

The  eighteenth  conversation,  between  Middleton  and  Magiiabechi, 
closed  the  first  volume ;  and  here  occurred  the  passages  whereon  con- 
tention arose  between  Landor  and  his  publisher,  and  which  were 
omitted  in  the  first  edition  bv  Julius  Hare.  Thev  had  relation  to 
the  efficacy  of  prayer :  but  if  expurgation  were  to  be  made  at  all,  it 
is  difficult  to  understand  the  justice  of  leaving  in  the  dialogue  its 
other  reasonings  and  humorous  illustrations  directed  against  doctrines 
and  practices  exclusively  Romish.  Even  Southey  could  see  that  such 
omissions  were  not  exactly  fair,  and  he  declined  to  be  a  party  to 
them.  The  conversation  is  unquestionably  a  powerful  one,  but  the 
effect  would  have  been  greater  with  less  offence  in  the  tone,  and 
there  are  some  words  spoken  by  Magiiabechi  that  seem  to  have  this 
objection  in  view.  "  I  defended  you  to  my  superiors,"  he  says  to 
Middleton,  "  by  remarking  that  Cicero  had  asserted  things  incredible 
to  himself  merely  for  the  sake  of  ai'gument,  and  had  probably  writ- 
ten them  before  he  had  fixed  in  his  mind  the  personages  to  whom 
they  should  be  attributed  in  his  dialogues ;  that,  in  short,  they  were 
brought  forward  for  no  other  purpose  than  discussion  and  explosion." 
In  this  was  also  let  drop  the  secret  of  an  occasional  want  of  veri- 
similitude as  chargeable  to  Landor  as  to  Cicero. 

V.     WHAT   THE    SECOND   VOLUME   CONTAINED. 

The  second  volume  opened  with  a  dialogue,  nineteenth  in  the  series, 
between  Milton  and  Marvell,  who  talk  of  what  we  should  hardly  ex- 
pect to  have  been  their  theme,  but  find  to  be  quietly  characteristic 
both  of  them  and  of  the  time.  Government,  religion,  the  noblest 
forms  of  human  life,  the  highest  regions  of  poetry,  —  of  these  Milton 
talked  in  his  happier  days,  and  his  thoughts  about  them  all,  scat- 
tered over  his  own  majestic  pages,  are  grandly  familiar  to  us  :  but 
here,  within  sound  of  the  riot  of  Bacchus  and  his  revellers,  we  learn 
what  may  have  been  his  thoughts  about  some  wiser  kinds  of  mirth, 
in  what  he  says  upon  the  literature  of  comedy.  His  friend  Andrew 
has  in  hand  the  design  of  writing  one,  and  this  raises  between  them 
interchange  of  thought  and  suggestion  not  only  as  to  its  forms  but  its 
province,  and  its  principal  masters  among  the  ancient  writers.    Upon 


348  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  TteT-^sY' 

the  points  of  management  and  plot  we  have  a  reproduction  of  what 
had  been  said  bo  ingeniously  by  Mr.  Hardcastle  in  his  preface  to  the 
comedy  of  the  Charitable  Dowager  :*  and  in  the  higher  criticism  we 
have  Bayings  happily  suggestive  of  Menander,  whose  fragments  Marvell 
imitates  in  some  verses;  of  Plautus,  who  for  his  clear  insight  into 
feeling  and  manners  is  declared  by  Milton  to  resemble  Shakespeare 
more  than  any  of  the  ancients;  and  of  Aristophanes,  to  whom  the 
praise  and  Maine  are  given  that  would  naturally  arise  to  the  lips  of 
so  severe  a  moralist  and  so  great  a  poet.  While  he  compares  his 
verse  to  a  dance  of  bacchanals,  and  admits  that  in  his  joyous  glades 
tin1  satyrs  do  not  dance  without  the  nymphs,  he  yet  brands  him  with 
the  offence  beyond  pardon  of  turning  into  derision  what  is  excellent, 
and  endeavoring  to  render  undesirable  what  ought  to  lie  desired. 
The  character  and  writings  of  the  wise,  Milton  holds  to  be  the  only 
riches  our  posterity  cannot  squander ;  and  he  woidd  punish  the  man 
who  attempts  to  depreciate  them.  1  will  add  his  noble  exhortation 
to  Marvell  to  be  ever  mindful  of  what  learning  gives,  and  heedless  of 
what  she  takes  away. 

"0  Andrew!  albeit  our  learning  raiseth  up  against  us  many  enemies 
amonjr  the  low.  and  more  among  the  powerful,  yet  doth  it  invest  us  with 
grand  ami  glorious  privileges,  and  confer  on  us  a  largeness  of  beatitude. 
We  enter  our  studies  and  enjoy  a  society  which  we  alone  can  bring  to- 
gether;  we  raise  no  jealousy  by  conversing  with  one  in  preference  to 
another;  we  give  no  offence  to  the  most  illustrious  by  questioning  him 
as  long  as  we  will,  and  leaving  him  as  abruptly.  Diversity  of  opinion 
raises  no  tumult  in  our  presence;  each  interlocutor  stands  before  us,  speaks 
or  is  silent,  ami  we  adjourn  or  decide  the  business  at  our  leisure.  Nothing 
is  pasl  which  we  desire  to  be  present;  and  we  enjoy  by  anticipation  some- 
what like  the  power  which  I  imagine  we  shall  possess  hereafter,  of  sailing 
on  a  wish  from  world  to  world." 

The  speakers  in  the  twentieth  dialogue  were  Washington  and 
Franklin,  who  are  supposed  to  have  met  on  the  envoy's  return  from 
Paris,  and  between  whom  are  exchanged  experiences  and  thoughts 
that  would  lie  likely  to  occur  at  such  a  time  :  recollections  of  the  re- 
cent struggle;  comparisons  of  forms  of  government  and  religion; 
confidence  in  the  prospects  of  the  new  world  which  they  have  crea- 
ted, and  distrust  of  such  arrangements  of  the  old  world  as  their 
success  has  left  undisturbed.  Washington  points  to  where,  by  timely 
acknowledgment  of  error,  England  might  "recover  not  much  less 
than  she  has  lost";  and  thereupon  are  suggested  certain  remedies 
for  Ireland,  of  which  the  principal  four  have  claim  upon  attention 
even  yet.  They  proceed  in  chief  from  Franklin,  who  would  have 
middlemen  abolished  to  check  absenteeism,  Irish  gentlemen  ennobled 
to  encourage  residence,  the  Protestant  Establishment  removed  to  ar- 
rest popery,  and  fisheries  established  to  relieve  the  potato.  The 
shrewd  man  of  type  professes  no  confidence  in  talking  men  ;  thinks 
that  no  kind  of  good    can   come  from   keeping  the  understanding  at 

*  See  ante,  p.  237. 


JET.  47-53-]  WHAT    THE   SECOND    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  349 

tongue's -length  ;  and  is  disposed  to  lay  no  small  part  of  England's 
losses  on  her  too  great  reliance  upon  orators.  "  I  have  been  present 
while  some  of  them  have  thrown  up  the  most  chaffy  stuff  two  hours 
together,  and  have  never  called  for  a  glass  of  water.  This  is  thought 
the  summit  of  ability ;  and  he  who  is  deemed  capable  of  performing 
it  is  deemed  capable  of  ruling  the  East  and  West."  That  was  levelled 
against  Pitt,  and  will  be  found  to  have  considerable  meaning  in  it  to 
this  day. 

The,  series  had  no  conversation  more  attractive  than  the  twenty- 
first  for  the  quiet  sweetness  of  its  tone  and  character.  Lady  Jane  Grey, 
called  suddenly  away  from  the  companionship  of  her  books  to  that  other 
in  which  her  life  was  wrecked,  takes  counsel  from  her  tutor,  Roger 
Ascham,  on  the  duties  awaiting  her.  Shaken  by  fears,  the  good  old 
man  strives  hard  to  reassure  himself.  "  Love  is  a  secondary  passion 
in  those  who  love  most,  a  primary  in  those  who  love  least.  He  who 
is  inspired  by  it  in  a  high  degree  is  inspired  by  honor  in  a  higher." 
With  innocent  dismay  she  hears  his  sentence  of  banishment  from  her 
old  silent  friends  ;  and,  surrendering  to  him  those  that  have  amused 
her  in  the  arbor  or  the  gravel-walk,  makes  tender  intercession  to 
retain  still  the  companionship,  by  her  fireside  and  her  pillow,  of  the 
four  that  have  taught  her  truth  and  eloquence,  courage  and  constancy. 
They  are  Cicero  and  Epictetus,  Polybius  and  Plutarch.  "  Read 
them,"  cries  Ascham ;  "  read  them  on  thy  marriage-bed,  on  thy 
child-bed,  ©n  thy  death-bed.  Thou  spotless,  undrooping  lily,  they 
have  fenced  thee  right  well.  These  are  the  men  for  men ;  these  are 
to  fashion  the  bright  and  blessed  creatures  whom  God  one  day  shall 
smile  upon  in  thy  chaste  bosom.  Mind  thou  thy  husband."  0,  yes, 
she  says ;  she  will  love  and  will  obey  him,  and  will  do  her  best  to 
make  his  home  dear  to  him,  reading  to  him  every  evening,  and  open- 
ing to  him  new  worlds  richer  than  those  discovered  by  the  Spaniard. 
Nay,  says  Ascham, 

"  Rather  do  thou  talk  with  him,  ride  with  him,  play  with  him,  be  his 
faery,  his  page,  his  everything  that  love  and  poetry  have  invented  :  but 
watch  him  well ;  sport  with  his  fancies ;  turn  them  about  like  the  ringlets 
round  his  cheek ;  and  if  ever  he  meditate  on  power,  go  toss  up  thy  baby  to 
his  brow,  and  bring  back  his  thoughts  into  his  heart  by  the  music  of  thy 
discourse.  Teach  him  to  live  unto  God  and  unto  thee  ;  and  he  will  dis- 
cover that  women,  like  the  plants  in  woods,  derive  their  softness  and 
tenderness  from  the  shade." 

This  dialogue  was  a  great  favorite  with  Hazlitt,  whose  praise  of  it 
rises  to  enthusiasm. 

The  twenty-second  was  between  Francis  Bacon  and  Richard  Hooker  : 
the  fallen  chancellor  seeking  consolation  from  religion  in  his  trouble, 
and  giving  back  to  Master  Hooker  the  wrorth  of  yet  more  than  he 
receives.  There  is  much  character  in  this  little  dialogue,  and  the 
style  of  each  speaker  is  nicely  shadowed  forth.  One  may  see  it 
where  Bacon  compliments  Hooker  :  "  Good  Master  Hooker,  I  have 


350  Till:    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ata**' 

read  many  of  your  reasonings,  and  they  are  admirably  well  sustained  : 
added  to  which,  your  genius  has  given  such  a  strong  current  to  your  lan- 
guage as  ran  come  only  from  a  mighty  elevation  and  a  most  abundant 
plenteousness "  :  and  where  Hooker,  in  his  proud  humility,  contrasts 
what  little  he  himself  knows  with  the  vast  attainments  of  his  most 
noble  lord:  "Wisdom  consisteth  not  in  knowing  many  things,  nor 
even  in  knowing  them  thoroughly  ;  but  in  choosing  and  in  follow- 
ing what  conduces  the  most  certainly  to  our  lasting  happiness  and 
true  glory." 

To  a  quite  other  world  we  pass  in  the  twenty-third  of  the  series, 
where  a  Spanish  republican,  General  Lascy,  and  a  treacherous  priest 
and  partisan  of  Ferdinand,  the  cura  Merino,  talk  of  what  ought  to 
be  the  rule  in  Spain,  of  the  doings  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  of  the  vices 
of  modern  governments  in  regard  to  countries  foreign  to  their  own, 
of  the  degradation  and  decline  of  the  higher  elements  of  freedom  in 
England,  and  of  the  opportunity  she  had  lost  of  placing  herself  at 
the  head  of  the  world.  From  the  mouth  of  a  contemptuous  Spanish 
soldier,  not  inappropriately,  we  have  language  as  to  our  houses  of 
lords  and  commons  which  we  may  cither  for  its  wisdom  gratefully 
accept,  or  for  its  want  of  better  information  charitably  forgive  ;  but, 
in  whatever  temper  the  conversation  is  read,  there  is  in  its  shrewd 
suggestions  matter  for  profitable  thought,  and,  by  the  side  of  much 
that  may  lower  the  confidence  of  Englishmen,  enough  also  to  justify 
and  exalt  their  pride. 

li  Tlic  strength  of  England  lies  not  in  armaments  and  invasions  :  it  lies  in 
the  omnipresence  of  her  industry,  and  in  the  vivifying  energies  of  her  high 
civilization.  There  are  provinces  she  cannot  grasp;  there  arc  islands  she 
cannol  hold  fast;  but  there  is  neither  island  nor  province,  there  is  neither 
kingdom  nor  continent,  which  she  could  not  draw  to  her  side  ami  fix  there 
everlastingly,  by  saying  the  magic  words  be  Free.  Every  land  wherein 
she  favors  the  sent iincnts  of  freedom,  every  land  wherein  she  Imt  lorMds 
them  to  he  stilled,  is  her  own;  a  true  ally,  a  willing  tributary,  an  insepa- 
rable friend.  Principles  hold  those  together  whom  power  would  only 
alienate.'" 

Hack  to  the  antique  world  and  its  serener  thoughts  we  are  taken  in 
the  twenty  fourth  conversation,  where  Sophocles  has  been  summoned 
to  the  side  of  Pericles  to  congratulate  him  on  the  completion  of  the 
Piraeus  and  the  Pcecile,  and  where  the  great  ruler  and  great  writer  of 
Athens,  proud  of  the  completeness  of  that  glory  of  their  city  which 
has  its  foundation  in  the  supremacy  of  its  citizens,  converse  of  the 
mighty  power  given  to  its  statuaries  and  painters  to  restore  to  the 
living  their  dead  ancestors  and  hand  down  themselves  to  their  chil- 
dren in  remotest  times.  The  thought  rises  thereupon  to  lYricles  of 
how  worthless  an  incumbrance,  how  wearisome  an  impediment,  life 
itself  may  be.  "  We  are  little  liv  being  seen  among  men  :  because 
thai  I'hasis  of  us  only  is  visible  which  is  exposed  toward  them  and 
which  most  resembles  them  :  we  become  greater  by  leaving  the  world, 


JET.  47-53.]  WHAT    THE    SECOND    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  3-31 

as  the  sun  appears  to  be  on  descending  below  the  horizon.  Strange 
reflection  !  humiliating  truth  !  that  nothing  on  earth,  no  exertion,  no 
endowment,  can  do  so  much  for  us  as  a  distant  day."  The  subject 
is  afterwards  pursued  by  Sophocles  in  a  form  designed  to  suggest 
higher  consolations.  "  It  is  folly  to  say,  Death  levels  the  whole 
human  race  ;  for  it  is  only  when  he  hath  stripped  men  of  everything 
external  that  their  deformities  can  be  clearly  discovered  or  their 
worth  correctly  ascertained.  Gratitude  is  soon  silent ;  a  little  while 
longer  and  Ingratitude  is  tired,  is  satisfied,  is  exhausted,  or  sleeps.  .  .  . 
We  then  see  before  us  and  contemplate  calmly  the  creator  of  our 
customs,  the  ruler  of  our  passions,  the  arbiter  of  our  pleasures,  and, 
under  the  Gods,  the  disposer  of  our  destiny.  What  then,  I  pray  you, 
is  there  dead!"  This  is  one  of  the  grandest  of  the  minor  dialogues 
for  the  depth  and  reach  of  its  reflection,  to  which  there  is  but  one  in- 
terruption, where  in  Chloros,  sold  as  a  slave  in  Persia  to  a  man  who 
dealt  largely  in  that  traffic,  one  of  Pitt's  friends  is  discernible,  and 
we  discover  Pitt  himself  as  the  slave-dealer  who  had  displayed  to  the 
public  four  remarkable  proofs  of  ability  :  first,  by  swallowing  at  a 
draught  an  amphora  of  the  strongest  wine  ;  secondly,  by  standing  up 
erect  and  modulating  his  voice  like  a  sober  man  when  he  was  drunk  ; 
thirdly,  by  acting  to  perfection  like  a  drunken  man  when  he  was 
sober  ;  "  and  fourthly,  by  a  most  surprising  trick  indeed,  which  it  is 
reported  he  learnt  in  Babylonia  :  one  would  have  sworn  he  had  a 
blazing  fire  in  his  mouth  ;  take  it  out,  and  it  is  nothing  but  a  lump 
of  ice." 

For  the  successor  to  this  dialogue,  and  wonderfully  contrasting 
with  it,  brief  mention  may  suffice.  In  this,  the  twenty-fifth  of  the 
series,  Louis  the  Fourteenth  is  introduced  with  his  confessor  Father 
la  Chaise,  the  object  of  it  being  that  the  speakers  should  uncon- 
sciously illustrate  the  inseparable  alliance  of  superstition  and  cruelty, 
and  satirize  the  ferocious  religious  wars  of  the  most  Christian  king. 
It  is  a  grim  kind  of  humor  ;  but  the  effect  desired  is  obtained,  at 
the  further  expense  of  a  laugh  at  the  confessional. 

The  twenty-sixth  conversation  was  between  Tooke  and  Johnson, 
and  was  so  enlarged  after  its  first  publication  as  to  become  in  the 
collected  edition  two  dialogues.  It  was  upon  the  English  language, 
the  corruptions  that  have  crept  into  it,  and  the  restorations  neces- 
sary to  its  correctness  both  in  writing  and  speech.  All  his  life  this 
subject  interested  Landor.  From  early  youth  to  extreme  old  age 
it  was  his  hobby  to  be  always  putting  forth  such  spellings  of  words 
as  he  professed  to  be  able  to  vindicate  from  old  writers  ;  and  reclaim- 
ing to  the  service  of  the  language  what  he  alleged  to  have  been  im- 
properly rejected  as  obsolete.  Nevertheless  it  may  not  be  said  that 
he  has  gone  any  great  way  towards  the  settlement  of  a  subjeot  of 
unquestionable  importance.  He  was  not  enough  of  a  philologist  to 
make  always  the  needful  distinction  between  what  is  legitimately  an 
old  English  word,  and  what  is  merely  a  form  illegitimately  given  to 


352  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  f?a«^aV' 


it  by  changing  fashions  of  scrivener  or  printer.  He  is  full  of  sug- 
gestions that  are  subtle  and  ingenious;  many  of  his  reasonings  are 
unanswerable  ;  by  these  he  has  done  much,  by  the  example  of  his 
own  writing  infinitely  more,  to  enrich  the  language,  whose  purity  he 

jealously  guarded  and  to  whose  dignity  he  largely  added  :  but  ad- 
mirable as  are  many  of  the  changes  he  insists  upon,  we  foil  to  dis- 
cover that  he  is  governed,  in  any,  by  a  very  intelligible  or  uniform 
principle  of  change. 

1  may  illustrate  brieflv  a  few  of  wdiat  must  he  called  his  incon- 
sistencies.  He  would  remove  from  one  word,  for  example,  all  the 
marks  of  its  origin;  and  then,  with  or  without  reason,  would  as 
sedulously  retain  them  in  another.  He  would  write  clame,  exclamc, 
proclame,  because  of  the  Latin  derivation ;  and  he  woidd  spell  soup 
soop  and  group  groop,  to  remove  the  mark  of  their  French  deriva- 
tion. On  the  other  hand,  again,  to  retain  such  trace,  he  woidd  write 
parlement  for  parliament,  manteaii-maker  for  mantua-maker,  would 
strike  the  i  out  of  all  such  words  as  conceive,  receive,  perceive, 
achieve,  and  would  spell  allegiance,  for  its  derivation  after  liege  not 
allege,  alliegeance.  He  makes  many  appeals  from  the  vulgar  (in  the 
sense  of  common)  to  the  learned,  in  determining  what  to  speak  or 
how  to  spell  ;  hut  he  has  yet  also  the  wisdom  to  know  that  few  ex- 
pressions  can  become  vulgarisms  without  having  a  broad  foundation, 
and  that  to  have  changed  the  scholarly  gown  for  the  homely  jerkin 
is  not  always  the  worst  that  can  befall  a  word.  Upon  this  indeed  is 
based  our  of  the  happiest  things  said  in  the  dialogue,  that  whereas 
the  language  of  the  vulgar  has  the  advantage  of  taking  its  source  in 
known,  comprehended,  and  operative  things,  the  language  of  those 
immediately  above  them,  flowing  as  it  does  in  general  from  what  is 
less  clearly  comprehended,  is  as  a  rule  less  pure.  "Hence  the  pro- 
fusion of  broken  and  ill-assorted  metaphors  which  we  find  in  the  con- 
versation of  almost  all  who  stand  in  the  intermediate  space  between 
the  lettered  and  the  lowest";  and  of  which  curious  examples  are 
given.  In  what  way,  at  the  same  time,  a  vulgarism  may  become  the 
property  of  the  best  writers,  he  shows  by  example  among  others  of 
a  word,  "underneath,"  of  which  either  half  conveys  the  full  mean- 
ing of  the  whole  ;  but  which  is  significant  though  redundant,  and 
was  inscribed  on  the  gravestones  of  peasants  long  before  it  shone 
amid  heraldic  emblems  in  the  golden  epitaphs  of  Jonson.  Very  prop- 
erly he  thinks  it  silly  to  argue  that  we  gain  ground  by  shortening  on 
all  occasions  the  syllables  of  a  sentence.  "Half  a  minute,  if  indeed 
80  much  is  requisite,  is  well  spent  in  clearness,  in  fulness,  and  pleas- 
urableness  of  expression,  and  in  engaging  the  ear  to  carry  a  message 
to  the  understanding."  Yet  this  is  forgotten  when  he  would  have 
us,  on  Addison's  authority,  substitute  "grandor,"  the  same  in  sound 
as  its  adjective  comparative,  for  "grandeur"  :  which  he  maintains  to 
be  as  had  as  if  we  retained  liqueur,  honneur,  faveur,  and  other  "puny 
offspring  of  the  projected  jaw." 


MT.  47-53-]  WHAT    THE    SECOND    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  353 

The  real  truth  however  is  that  these  inconsistencies  in  the  en- 
deavor to  be  consistent  only  help  to  show  that,  even  if  attainable, 
consistency  would  hardly  be  desirable.  Doubtless  there  is  something 
to  be  said  for  making  wholly  our  own  what  we  have  fairly  won,  by 
putting  under  English  laws  our  captives  from  the  French  and  other 
tongues  ;  but  there  must  still  be  exceptions,  and,  as  to  trifles  in 
spelling,  one  would  hardly  disturb  customs  long  established  for  a 
uniformity  after  all  not  arrived  at.  We  must  admit  it  to  be  not 
reasonable  to  naturalize  some  words  and  leave  others  out  in  the 
cold  ;  that  it  is  not  consistent  to  get  rid  of  French  terminations  in 
quiver,  monster,  letter,  pentameter,  &c,  and  not  to  write  also  meter, 
scepter,  sepulcher,  luster,  theater,  &c. ;  and  that  it  is  indefensible  to 
write  travesty  and  gayety  while  yet  we  retain  reverie,  or  to  write  lie 
and  not  retain  applie,  relie,  allie  ;  to  write  precede  and  not  procede, 
accede  and  not  succede  ;  to  write  said  and  paid,  and  not  praid  and 
staid  ;  or  laid  and  not  allaid,  knowledge  and  not  colledge,  abridge 
and  not  alledge  ;  but  it  is  to  be  feared  that  there  is  really  no  help 
for  these  irrationalities.  Still,  not  a  small  service  is  done  by  remark- 
ing them  ;  and  for  students  of  language  the  dialogues  of  Tooke  and 
Johnson  will  be  always  a  rich  collection  of  such  peculiarities  and 
defects  as  a  rare  mastery  of  English,  and  prolonged  and  unwearying 
investigation  of  its  irregularities  and  intricacies,  could  alone  have 
brought  together.  In  other  ways  also  they  are  characteristic  of 
Landor,  as  a  few  more  examples  of  his  reformed  spellings  will  per- 
haps amusingly  illustrate. 

Appealing  to  better  authors  in  wiser  ages  he  would  write  with 
them  finde,  minde,  kinde,  blinde,  holding  the  retention  of  the  e  to  be 
as  necessary  to  pronunciation  as  its  elision  would  be  fatal  in  chaste, 
waste,  or  paste,  and  that  to  say  tim  for  time  would  not  be  worse  than 
mind  for  minde.  Not  seeing  why  we  should  make  three  syllables  of 
creator  and  two  of  creature,  he  would  write  creture.  The  adverb 
still,  to  avoid  confusion  between  adverb  and  adjective,  he  would  write 
stil ;  and  for  uniformity  he  would  write  both  til  and  until.  He  can- 
not see  why  won  should  be  the  preterite  of  win,  while  begun  is  the 
preterite  of  begin.  He  thinks  that,  writing  being  the  sign  of  speech, 
pronunciation  should  determine  the  spelling  of  such  words  as  referr, 
inferr,  interr,  compell,  dispell,  and  so  forth,  all  of  which  should  end 
with  the  double  consonant.  He  condemns  all  such  words  as  resistless, 
relentless,  exhaustless,  upon  the  ground  that  no  word  can  legitimately 
end  with  'less '  that  is  not  formed  from  a  substantive  ;  and,  pointing 
out  that  a  word  so  formed,  as  moneyless,  peerless,  penniless,  thought- 
less, careless,  is  necessarily  not  capable  of  a  comparative  or  super- 
lative, he  discards  as  unhappy  and  inelegant  all  such  phrases  as  a 
more  or  most  careless,  a  more  or  most  thoughtless,  or  a  more  or  most 
peerless  person.  Since  we  write  architecture  and  sculpture,  he  would 
write  also  painture,  as  in  one  instance  Dryden  does  ;  and  if  Cowley's 
"  pindarique  "  is  to  be  laughed  at,  he  does  not  see  why  antique  and 

23 


354  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  *?.£ 


picturesque  should  not  be  equally  reducible  to  order.  As  we  say 
treacherous  and  ponderous  he  would  say  monsteroufl  and  wonderous, 
to  which  he  would  assimiliate  enterance  and  rememberance.     He  sees 

as  little  reason  for  poulterer  as  for  niasterer,  maltsterer,  or  minis- 
terer.  He  would  turn  the  adjective  oircumBpeot  into  a  substantive 
like  prospect  and  retrospect,  adding  the  same  termination  for  the 
adjective  as  in  the  latter  words,  circumspective,  prospective,  retro- 
spective. He  declares  passenger  or  messenger  to  be  as  coarse  and 
barbarous  a  substitute  for  passager  or  messager  as  sausinge  for  sau- 
sage. He  would  have  rough,  tough,  sough,  guided  by  bluff,  rebuff, 
luff.  He  would  omit  the  u  wherever  it  is  not  sounded,  as  in  favour, 
honour,  and  all  that  family  ;  treating  in  the  same  way  other  not 
sounded  letters,  as  the  b  in  debt,  crumb,  and  comb,  and  the  s  in 
island,  puisne,  demesne.  He  would  avoid  in  every  possible  case  the 
diphthong  and  reduplication  of  vowel,  preferring,  to  the  ordinary  coat, 
green,  sheaf,  &c,  cote,  grene,  shefe,  kene,  gote,  dore,  flore,  for  which 
and  many  of  the  like  he  pleads  Chaucer's  authority,  as  for  w<  >rke  in 
place  of  work.  After  ostrich  he  would  write  partrich,  and  he  would 
assimiliate  anarchical  and  monarchical  to  the  simpler  patriarchal 
He  sees  no  better  reason  for  apostle  than  for  symble,  and  would,  for 
agreement  with  their  kinsfolk  epistolary  and  apostolical,  write  apos- 
tol  and  epistol.  Like  Milton,  he  would  write  sovran  and  foren,  both 
pronunciation  and  etymology  declaring  themselves  against  sovereign 
and  foreign.  As  civil  forms  civility,  he  holds  that  abil  should  form 
ability  ;  and  generally  as  to  all  that  class  of  words  he  would  substi- 
tute il  for  le,  as  humbil,  dazzil,  tickil,  tfce.  He  would  always  write 
preterites  and  participles  with  t,  as  possest,  disperst,  extinguisht, 
refresht,  nourisht,  stopt,  knockt,  dreamt,  burnt,  usurpt,  talkt,  re- 
markt,  lavisht,  askt,  mockt,  defying  any  human  voice  even  to  utter 
such  words  as  cork'd.  He  objects  to  all  such  inversions  of  active  and 
passive  as  well-read,  well-spoken,  well-mounted  ;  and  inasmuch  as 
lead  has  led  for  its  preterite,  he  thinks  read  should  have  led.  without 
the  de  that  Byron  and  others  added  to  it,  for  that  nobody  could  mis- 
take the  verb  fbr  the  adjective. 

Reasoning  thus  in  that  particular  instance,  however,  he  is  quite  as 
ready  in  others  to  reject  existing  forms  because  they  involve  confu- 
sion between  words  identical  in  spelling  but  different  in  meaning  ; 
and  in  fact  it  is  to  be  repeated,  ingenious  and  excellent  as  many  of 
his  surest  ions  are,  that,  in  adopting,  for  his  only  guide  to  such  an 
extensive  change  as  he  desires  in  the  forms  of  our  language,  the 
assumption  that  spelling  should  always  agree  with  sound  unless  a 
higher  authority  should  interpose,  and  that  this  higher  authority 
is  to  lie  found  sometimes  in  the  old  writers,  sometimes  in  specialties 
of  derivation,  sometimes  in  the  mere  avoidance  of  anomalies  ami  sin- 
gularities, he  would,  if  able  to  obtain  any  considerable  following, 
make  only  worse  confounded  such  confusion  as  exists.  Uniformity  is 
impossible,  and  would  hardly  be  desirable,  in  a  language  derived  from 


'^ET.  47-53.]  WHAT   THE   SECOND   VOLUME   CONTAINED.  355 

such  an  infinity  of  sources.  You  may  restore  a  language  as  you 
clean  a  picture  by  rubbing  away  the  richness  and  mellowness  of  time. 
"Where  we  are  pleased,  improprieties  pass  unnoticed,  and  it  is  well 
that  they  should.  But  while  I  thus  take  exception  to  what  formed 
so  large  a  part  of  the  labors  of  my  old  friend  in  this  interesting  field, 
there  was  another  not  inconsiderable  part  for  which  infinite  thanks 
are  due  to  him.  His  canons  of  style  are  always  sound  ;  throughout 
these  dialogues,  in  remarks  on  masters  of  style  and  in  illustrative 
examples,  they  find  valuable  expression  ;  and  against  false  taste,  in- 
correctness, and  impurity  of  every  kind,  the  language  had  ever  in 
him  an  unwearied  sentinel,  during  all  his  life  on  watch  and  guard. 
The  last  instance  I  remember  was  immediately  before  his  final  depart- 
ure froni  England,  when  he  had  passed  his  eighty-first  year,  and,  in 
a  conversation  between  Alfieri  and  Metastasio  published  in  Fraser's 
Magazine,  had  singled  out  for  scornful  denunciation  the  fashionable 
and  thrice-detestable  word  pluck*  an  example  of  the  very  worst  kind 
of  base  corruption  of  language.  "  That  utterance  of  Landor,"  Mr. 
Carlyle  wrote  to  me  at  the  time,  referring  to  this  passage,  "  did  my 
heart  good.  Indeed,  the  first  of  those  two  imaginary  conversations 
is  really  as  good  as  anything  I  ever  saw  from  Landor.  Do  you  think 
the  grand  old  Pagan  wrote  that  piece  just  now  1  The  sound  of  it  is 
like  the  ring  of  Roman  swords  on  the  helmets  of  barbarians.  An 
unsubduable  old  Roman  !  Make  my  loyal  respects  to  him  the  first 
time  you  write."  It  was  the  same  spirit  that  had  animated  the 
Tooke  and  Johnson,  burning  brightly  to  the  last. 

Different  in  form  from  the  rest,  the  twenty-seventh  dialogue  is 
more  correctly  to  be  described  as  a  narrative  by  Landor  of  his  calling 
at  the  house  of  an  Italian  friend,  Cavaliere  Puntomichino,  who  had 
travelled  in  England  ;  of  his  meeting  there  an  Irish  gentleman,  Mr. 
Dennis  Eusebius  Talcranagh,  who  had  lately  published  an  imperial 
folio  of  eleven  pages  on  the  Wolf-dog  of  Erin  ;  and  of  his  taking 
part  in  a  conversation  that  followed  on  Italian  society  and  manners, 
and  on  British  travellers  and  reviewers,  which  in  regard  to  these 
various  subjects  was  the  reverse  of  complimentary.  Each  of  the 
three  speakers  has  his  grievance.  The  Irishman  has  paid  some 
fellow  in  Cockspur  Street  for  a  favorable  criticism  of  his  folio,  and 
says  he  declined  other  civilities  of  that  sort,  although  the  proprietor 
of  one  of  the  journals,  upon  ascertaining  that  from  ignorance  of  cus- 
tom he  was  too  proud  to  review  it  himself,  had  been  constantly  at 
the  heels  of  his  groom  in  the  hope  of  getting  him  to  review  it.  The 
Cavaliere  points  out  the  many  social  failings  of  his  countrymen,  and 
complains  of  the  absence  of  public  spirit.     "  His  only  grievances  are, 

*  "You  will  suppose  that  by  this  expression  he  meant  courage:  he  did  so.  We 
Italians  would  have  said  spirit,  or  heart,  which  comes  nearest.  But  the  meaning  of 
pluck,  until  this  year,  had  always  been  the  entrails  of  animals,  torn  out  of  them,  and 
the  vilest  part  of  them.  The  Romans  were  satisfied  with  cor  and  pectus ;  their  con- 
tents, anlmo  and  corn ggio,  suffice  for  us;  but  what  is  ejected  from  a  beast  is  to  an 
Englishman  the  coronal  of  glory." 


356  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  Tto^S.'' 

to  pay  taxes  for  the  support,  and  to  carry  arms  for  the  defence,  of  his 
country."  And  Landor  himself,  complimenting  Miss  Edgeworth, 
Bays  bitter  tilings  of  Lady  Morgan,  and  remarking  on  his  Florentine 
friend's  description  of  the  starved  hospitality  of  the  Italians,  gives  us 
one  or  two  personal  traits.  "I  have  never  been  tempted  to  dine 
from  home  these  seven  years:  yet  I  have  given  at  least  a  hundred 
dinners  in  the  time,  if  not  superb,  at  least  not  sordid.  And  those 
who  knew  me  long  ago  say,  '  Landor  is  become  a  miser :  his  father 
did  otherwise.' "  As  might  have  been  expected,  this  conversation 
gave  great  offence  in  Florence. 

The  subject  of  the  twenty-eighth  conversation,  between  Hofer  and 
Metteraich,  had  been  suggested  by  Southey,*  and  there  is  good  char- 
acter in  it,  as  well  as  capital  writing.  The  air  of  his  mountains  is 
not  fresher  than  the  talk  for  which  the  Tyrolese  leader  at  the  close 
craves  pardon  of  the  treacherous  Austrian.  "Excuse  me,  sir,  I  ac- 
knowledge my  error.  I  have  been  discoursing  as  if  all  the  cloth  in 
the  world  were  of  one  color  and  one  fineness ;  and  as  if  a  man  who 
goes  upon  two  legs  were  equal  to  one  who  goes  upon  eight  or  sixteen, 
with  a  varnished  plank  betwixt,  and  another  man's  rear  at  his 
nostrils." 

The  twenty-ninth  was  between  the  kinsmen  Hume  and  Home  ;  the 
former  talking  much  as  his  essays  might  suggest,  and  making  many 
keen  thrusts  which  the  other  parries  feebly.  But  though  doubts  are 
rather  started  than  solved  in  this  dialogue,  its  matter  is  full  of  inter- 
est ;  there  is  a  remark  of  Hume's  in  the  course  of  it,  that  the  evil 
principle,  or  devil,  was  hardly  worth  the  expense  of  his  voyage  from 
Persia,  to  which  some  orthodox  theologians  seem  lately  to  have  given 
their  assent  ;  and  other  touches  of  wit  and  humor  are  in  the  ironical 
philosopher's  happiest  vein. 

In  the  thirtieth  Mavrocordato  and  Colocotroni  discussed  eloquently 
the  affairs  of  Greece,  bitterly  denouncing  the  Holy  Alliance  ;  and  here 
occurred  the  suggestion,  put  forth  with  the  utmost  gravity,  for  another 
trial  of  the  bow  and  arrow  as  an  instrument  of  war. 

In  the  thirty-first  was  introduced  one  of  Landor's  greatest  favorites, 
Alfieri,  talking  with  the  Florentine  Jew,  Salomon  ;  and  better  talk  it 
would  not  be  easy  t<>  imagine.  He  had  a  wonderful  liking  for  AlfierLf 
in  whose  intolerant  liberalism,  aristocratic  republicanism,  and   fierce 

*  See  ante,  p.  231. 

t  I  nii<_'ht  have  mentioned  on  an  earlier  pajre  that  he  once  saw  Alfieri,  with  whom  I 
have  often  heard  him  Bay  that  hi-  thought-  wore  in  more  frequent  agreement  than  with 

tli" i'  any  other  writer.     !!>•  used  especially  to  <|u< >t»-  him  in  his  latter  years  for  the 

remark,  in  which  he  expressed  his  own  cordial  concurrence,  that  Italy  and  England 
were  the  only  two  countries  worth  living  in.  I  quote  one  of  his  letters:  "The  only 
time  1  ever  gaw  AUieri  was  just  before  he  left  this  country  forever.  I  accompanied 
my  Italian  master,  Parachinetti,  t..  h  bookseller's  to  order  the  works  of  Alfieri  ami  Me- 
tastasis and  was  enthusiastic,  a-  most  young  men  were,  about  the  French  Revolution. 
'  Sir,'  said  Allien'.  '  von  are  a  very  young  man.  Yon  are  yet  to  learn  that  nothing  good 
ever  came  out  of  France,  or  ever  will  The  ferocious  monsters  are  about  to  devour 
one  another;  and  they  can  do  nothing  better.  They  have  always  been  the  curse  of 
Italy;  vet  we  too  have  fools  among  as  who  trust  them.'  "    1852." 

t 


^ET.  47-53.]  WHAT   THE   SECOND    VOLUME   CONTAINED.  357 

independence,  he  had  all  the  Enjoyment  of  his  own.  Here  was,  in 
another,  what  others  might  see  in  himself;  and  the  weakness  of  it 
never,  but  the  strength  of  it  always,  impressed  him.  "  As  a  writer 
and  as  a  man,  I  know  my  station.  If  I  found  in  the  world  five  equal 
to  myself,  I  would  walk  out  of  it,  not  to  be  jostled."  Na'tional  con- 
trasts in  the  English,  French,  and  Italian  ;  comparison  of  moderns 
with  the  ancients  in  regard  to  satirical  writing ;  a  discrimination  of 
the  gravity  of  wit  and  humor  from  the  gayety  of  banter  and  quibble  ; 
and  a  masterly  definition  and  limitation  of  the  right  provinces  of 
satire  ;  are  the  principal  points  of  this  dialogue,  which  closes  with  a 
noble  denial  by  the  Florentine  of  the  saying  that  climate  is  the  cre- 
ator of  genius.  Austria  had  a  regular  and  temperate  climate,  and  not  a 
single  man  of  genius  had  appeared  in  her  whole  vast  extent ;  Florence 
was  subject  to  heavy  fogs  for  two  months  in  winter,  and  to  a  stifling 
heat  concentrated  within  the  hills  for  five  more,  and  her  men  of 
genius  who  could  count  up  1  "  Look  from  the  window.  That  cot- 
tage on  the  declivity  was  Dante's.  That  square  and  large  mansion, 
with  a  circular  garden  before  it  elevated  artificially,  was  the  first 
scene  of  Boccaccio's  Decameron.  A  boy  might  stand  at  an  equal  dis- 
tance between  them,  and  break  the  windows  of  each  with  his  sling. 
...  A  town  so  little  that  the  voice  of  a  cabbage-girl  in  the  midst 
of  it  may  be  heard  at  the  extremities,  reared  within  three  centuries 
a  greater  number  of  citizens  illustrious  for  their  genius  than  all  the 
remainder  of  the  Continent  (excepting  her  sister  Athens)  in  six  thou- 
sand years.  Smile  as  you  will,  Signor  Conte,  what  must  I  think  of 
a  city  where  Michael  Angelo,  Frate  Bartolomeo,  Ghiberte  (who 
formed  them),  Guicciardini,  and  Macchiavelli  were  secondary  men  1 
And  certainly  such  were  they,  if  we  compare  them  with  Galileo  and 
Boccaccio  and  Dante."  It  was  not  till  nearly  six  years  after  writing 
this  that  Landor  became  himself  the  owner  of  a  villa  at  Fiesole 
which  was  built  by  Michael  Angelo,  and  could  boast  that  the  very 
spot  in  that  immortal  valley  where  Boccaccio  had  placed  his  Lago 
delle  Belle  Donne  formed  a  portion  of  the  grounds  of  his  own  farm 
and  vineyard. 

The  bad  faith  of  the  greater  to  the  lesser  states  of  Europe  was  the 
theme  of  the  thirty-second  conversation  ;  Lopez  Banos  and  Alpuente 
being  the  speakers,  and  their  principal  subjects  the  conduct  of  France 
to  Spain,  the  gallantry  and  self-denial  of  Mina  and  the  patriots,  and 
the  atrocities  of  Ferdinand.  Here,  as  in  most  part  of  the  conversa- 
tions merely  political,  the  subjects  have  passed  away,  and  the  speak- 
ers' names  have  ceased  to  be  words  to  conjure  with;  yet  the  charm 
of  the  composition  is  enduring,  and  in  all  of  them  sayings  abound 
that  will  never  lose  their  freshness.  "  Little  is  that,  0  Lopez,  which 
any  man  can  give  us  ;  but  that  which  we  can  give  ourselves  is  infi- 
nitely great.  This  of  all  truths,  when  acted  upon  consistently,  is  the 
most  important  to  our  happiness  and  glory."  In  the  mouth  of 
Alpuente  is  also  placed  a  fine  characterization   of  his  countrymen ; 


358  TIIE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  l?££*J 


where,  speaking  of  the  English  and  their  favorite  oak,  he  says  that 
"  the  Spaniard  1ms  rather  the  qualities  of  the  cedar  ;  patient  of  cold 
and  heat,  nourished  on  little,  lofty  and  dark,  unbending  and  incor- 
ruptible" 

The  thirty-third  dialogue,  between  Lord  Chatham  and  Lord  Ches- 
terfield, was  upon  the  principal  English  philosophers,  Bacon,  llobbes, 
Newton,  and  Locke;  Chatham  taking  occasion  to  make  unsparing 
assault  on  Plato,  and  Chesterfield  giving  dryly  his  assent  that  it  was 
rather  an  idle  thing  for  an  old  gentleman  in  a  purple  robe  to  be 
sticking  pins  in  every  chair  on  which  a  sophist  was  likely  to  sit  down. 
\Ye  have  here  a  difficult  and  complex  subject  treated  too  confidently  ; 
but  the  conversation  is  nevertheless  one  of  the  best.  All  the  eulogy 
of  Locke  is  admirable  ;  the  style  throughout  is  wonderful  for  a  clear- 
ness as  of  crystal  ;  and  there  are  incidental  savings  of  a  singular 
beauty,  as  in  what  is  remarked  of  Newton's  famous  comparison  of 
himself  to  the  boy  gathering  pebbles  by  the  sea-shore  with  the  ocean 
of  truth  lying  all  undiscovered  before  him.  "  Surely,  Nature,  who 
had  given  him  the  volume  of  her  greater  mysteries  to  unseal,  who 
had  bent  over  him  and  taken  his  hand,  and  taught  him  to  decipher 
the  characters  of  her  sacred  language,  who  had  lifted  up  her  veil  be- 
fore him  higher  than  ever  yet  for  mortal,  that  she  might  impress  her 
features  and  her  fondness  on  his  heart,  —  threw  it  back  wholly  at 
these  words,  and  gazed  upon  him  with  as  much  admiration  as  ever  he 
had  gazed  with  upon  her."  Often,  as  in  the  criticism  of  Plato,  where 
assent  is  most  reluctantly  given,  admiration  is  most  strongly  awakened  ; 
the  handling  of  the  objection  to  the  poets  in  his  Republic  is  full  of 
maBterly  illustration  ;  and  the  exception  to  lie  taken  to  the  criticism 
altogether  is  not  so  much  that  the  particular  objections  are  unten- 
able, as  that  the  general  view  is  incomplete.  If  it  could  be  proved 
to  demonstration  to-morrow  that  Bacon's  mind  was  prodigiouslv  more 
Vigorous  .uid  comprehensive  than  Plato's,  that  his  philosophical  acu- 
men was  sharper  and  more  penetrating,  and  that  his  imagination  was 
not  only  more  creative,  but  cast  from  its  altitude  more  definite  and 
more  proportioned  shadows,  the  influence  exercised  by  Plato,  not  on 
thinkers  merely  but  on  thought  and  on  belief  through  successive 
ages,  would  remain  unexplained,  a  thing  solitary  and  apart,  mysterious 
and  unaccountable.  Tradition  is  powerful  and  almost  sacred,  but 
will  not  satisfy  us  as  to  this. 

rl  he  objection  to  Plato  is  resumed  in  the  next  following  (the  thirty- 
fourth)  conversation,  between  Aristoteles  and  Callisthenes  ;  which 
upon  the  whole  1  should  lie  disposed  to  characterize  as  more  inter- 
penetrated than  any  other  with  intimate  and  accurate  knowledge  of 
the  old  Greek  literature,  character,  and  social  life,  although  it  con- 
tains also,  under  the  flimsiest  of  disguises,  a  coarse  attack  on  Metter- 
nich  and  Castlereagh  !  The  period  of  time  in  this  dialogue  is  when 
Callisthenes,  having  incurred  the  dislike  of  Alexander  whom  he  had 
accompanied  into  Asia,  has  been  sent  back' as  the  messenger  of  pres- 


^^T.  47-53.]  WHAT    THE    SECOND    VOLUME    CONTAINED.  359 

ents  for  Xenocrates  ;  visits  his  old  teacher  and  relative  Aristoteles  ; 
and  has  such  talk  with  him  as  might  arise  at  such  a  time.  Of  the 
respective  claims  of  philosophers  and  kings,  of  the  superiority  of  re- 
publics over  monarchies,  of  the  debasing  tendencies  of  despotism  on 
the  despot,  and  the  inferiority  of  the  sensual  to  the  intellectual 
pleasures,  they  hold  converse  grave  and  noble.  There  is  not  a  page 
that  is  not  radiant  with  exalted  thought.  "  The  higher  delights  of 
the  mind,"  says  Aristotle,  upon  the  wonder  expressed  by  his  pupil  at 
his  own  and  even  Plato's  youthfulness  of  look,  "  are  in  this,  as  in 
everything  else,  very  different  in  their  effects  from  its  seductive  pas- 
sions. These  cease  to  gratify  us  the  sooner,  the  earlier  we  indulge 
in  them  ;  on  the  contrary,  the  earlier  we  indulge  in  thought  and  re- 
flection, the  longer  do  they  last,  and  the  more  faithfully  do  they 
serve  us."  And  how  different  from  those  of  the  great  king,  rejoins 
Callisthenes,  are  your  conquests  and  your  friends  ;  united  not  for 
robbery  and  revelry,  but  joyous  in  discovery,  calm  in  meditation,  in- 
trepid in  research. 

"  How  often,  and  throughout  how  many  ages,  shall  you  be  a  refuge  from 
such  men  as  he  and  his  accomplices :  how  often  will  the  studious,  the  neg- 
lected, the  deserted,  fly  towards  you  for  compensation  in  the  wrongs  of  for- 
tune, and  for  solace  in  the  rigor  of  destiny  !  His  judgment-seat  is  covered 
by  his  sepulchre :  after  one  year  hence  no  appeals  are  made  to  him :  after 
ten  thousand  there  will  be  momentous  questions,  not  of  avarice  or  litigation, 
not  of  violence  or  fraud,  but  of  reason  and  of  science,  brought  before  your 
judgment-seat,  and  settled  by  your  decree.  Dyers  and  tailors,  carvers  and 
gilders,  grooms  and  trumpeters,  make  greater  men  than  God  makes;  but 
God's  last  longer,  throw  them  where  you  will." 

Nor  less  admirable  is  the  anticipation  by  Aristotle  himself  of  what 
is  told  us  in  the  homily  of  Chrysostom,  that  neither  the  tomb  of 
Alexander  nor  the  day  of  his  death  was  known. 

"  I  have  lost  an  ibis,  or*  perhaps  a  hippopotamus,  by  losing  the  favor  of 
Alexander ;  he  has  lost  an  Aristoteles.  He  may  deprive  me  of  life :  but  in 
doing  it  he  must  deprive  himself  of  all  he  has  ever  been  contending  for  of 
glory;  and  even  a  more  reasonable  man  than  he  will  acknowledge  that 
there  is  as  much  difference  between  life  and  glory  as  there  is  between  an 
ash-flake  from  the  brow  of  iEtna  and  the  untamable  and  eternal  fire  within 
its  centre.  ...  I  have  prepared  for  myself  a  monument,  Callisthenes,  from 
which  perhaps  some  atoms  may  be  detached  by  time,  but  which  will  retain 
the  testimonials  of  its  magnificence  and  the  traces  of  its  symmetry  when  the 
substance  and  site  of  Alexander's  shall  be  forgotten.  Who  knows  but  that 
the  very  ant-hill  whereon  I  stand  may  preserve  its  figure  and  contexture 
when  the  sepulchre  of  this  Macedonian  shall  be  the  solitary  shed  of  a  rob- 
ber, or  the  manger  of  mules  and  camels  !  " 

Reluctant  as  I  am  to  quit  this  dialogue,  I  will  close  with  its  ex- 
quisite little  character  of  Phocion.  "  He  conquered  with  few  sol- 
diers, and  he  convinced  with  few  words.  I  know  not  what  better 
description  I  could  give  you  either  of  a  great  captain  or  great 
orator." 


3G0  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATION'S.  '?£?*,«'• 


1823-08. 


To  the  class  of  conversations  like  the  Ascham  and  Lady  Jane  Grey 
and  others  to  be  named  hereafter,  prose-poems  of  faultless  construc- 
tion, made  as  "  of  one  entire  and  perfect  chrysolite,"  and  not  to  have 
any  portion  taken  from  them  without  impairment  of  their  beauty, 
the  thirty-seventh  belonged.  This  was  the  Henry  the  Eighth  and 
Anne  Boleyn  of  which  Hazlitt  and  Hare  spoke  with  equal  enthu- 
siasm. The  delicacy  of  the  means  by  which  its  effect  is  produced 
appears  to  have  impressed  them  both  alike  ;  and  certainly  the  art  is 
Aery  admirable  where  such  extraordinary  pathos  is  so  controlled  and 
chastened,  by  the  delight  arising  from  the  contemplation  of  its 
beauty,  as  to  be  neither  painful  nor  overpowering.  The  sensual  is  as 
distant  from  it  as  the  sentimental.  "  The  angelic  purity,"  said  Hare, 
"  the  innocence  and  kindliness,  the  affectionate  simplicity  of  the  suf- 
ferer, elevate  her  far  beyond  the  reach  of  evil  "  ;  and  he  might  have 
added,  that  the  genius  of  the  conception  is  in  nothing  more  manifest 
than  in  showing,  besides,  that  the  very  qualities  that  so  lifted  her  far 
above  guilt  were  those  also  that  had  betrayed  her  to  the  doubt  and 
suspicion  of  it.  Hare  further  observed  it  as  a  fine  peculiarity  of  this 
dialogue,  that  its  language  was  throughout  quite  simple,  and  recom- 
mended it  as  a  study  for  those  who  conceived  poetry  to  consist  in 
imagery.  One  image  there  is  nevertheless,  where,  driven  to  find  ex- 
cuse for  her  gayety,  Anne  tells  her  lord  that  the  withered  leaf  catches 
the  sun  sometimes,  little  as  it  can  profit  by  it ;  but  the  extraordinary 
beauty  of  the  composition  beyond  a  doubt  is  its  quiet  plainness  and 
even  homeliness  of  speech.  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  an  effect 
more  profoundly  touching  than  that  of  her  closing  allusion  to  her 
daughter,  when  at  last  made  fully  conscious  of  the  fate  awaiting  herself. 
"Love  your  Elizabeth,  my  honored  lord,  and  God  bless  you!  She  will 
soon  forget  to  call  me  :  do  not  chide  her  :  think  how  young  she  is."' 

The  last  dialogue  of  the  series  was  that  of  the  Ciceros.  The  speak- 
ers were  Marcus  Tullius  and  Quinctus,  and  the  greatest  beauty  and 
impressiveness  distinguished  it  throughout.  The  brothers,  who  had 
taken  opposite  sides  in  the  wars  closed  by  the  second  triumvirate,  meet 
at  the  house  of  Quinctus  by  the  sea,  on  the  evening  before  that  anni- 
versary of  the  birthday  of  Tullius  which  was  also  to  be  the  day  of  his 
violent  death.  Sundered  by  civil  strife  so  long,  they  have  been  drawn 
together  now  by  the  calamities  of  their  country;  hope  subsided  in 
both,  and  ambition  silenced,  the  tenderness  of  earlier  days  has  re- 
turned ;  and  for  the  last  time  together,  in  friendly  converse,  they 
walk  along  the  shore  of  Formiae.  The  greatest  champion  of  the  re- 
public  contrasts,  to  her  sorrowing  assailant,  the  genius  and  the  vir- 
tues fallen  with  her,  and  the  rulers  risen  in  their  place  :  to  rebuke 
tin'  living  Lepidus,  Octavianus,  and  Antonius,  he  summons  from  their 
urns  Cornelia  and  the  Gracchi,  Sertorius,  Pompeius,  Cato,  LuculluS, 
Ceesar,  and  Brutus;  the  gloom  and  despair  that  surround  him  p;iss 
away,  in  the  brightness  of  the  hope  that  Philosophy  has  opened  beyond 
them  ;  and,  in   language  modelled  after  the  choicest  of  the  treatises 


JET.  47-53-]  WHAT    THE    SECOND    VOLUME    CONTAINED. 


3G1 


and  orations  that  bear  his  name,  he  shows  himself  as  ready  cheer- 
fully to  part  with  life  as  he  had  been  reluctant  to  bid  farewell  to 
liberty.  This  blending  of  a  personal  emotion  with  the  antique  life  of 
Rome  constitutes  pre-eminently  the  attraction  of  this  dialogue  ;  which 
for  the  completeness  of  the  identification  of  its  ideal  portraiture  with 
historic  truth  has  been  frequently  and  perhaps  justly  characterized 
as  the  masterpiece  of  all  the  conversations.  A  competent  critic  has 
indeed  declared  that  the  sayings  in  it  attributed  to  Cicero  on  subjects 
especially  his  own  are  such  as  might  not  only  not  have  lessened  but 
have  added  to  his  fame  ;  and  a  story  was  told  of  Lord  Dudley  by  Fran- 
cis Hare,  which  Landor  has  more  than  once  with  pardonable  pride  re- 
peated to  me,  that  during  one  of  his  illnesses  in  Italy  he  had  asked  a 
friend  to  read  aloud  to  him  this  dialogue,  and,  to  his  friend's  admiring 
question  at  the  close,  "  whether  it  was  not,  by  Jove,  exactly  what  Cicero 
would  have  said,"  had  himself  exclaimed,  "  Yes,  if  Cicero  could  have 
said  it !  " 

It  would  nevertheless  be  difficult,  filled  as  it  is  with  sayings  Cice- 
ronian, to  exhibit  their  impressiveness  by  extracting  even  the  best  of 
them.  The  conversation  is  so  infinitely  better  than  anything  that 
can  be  taken  from  it.  It  unfolds  itself  in  such  fine  gradations  as  the 
brothers  walk  along  the  shore,  their  thoughts  toned  and  tempered  by 
skyey  influences,  and  their  spirits  drawn  nearer  not  more  by  conscious 
remembrance  of  the  past  than  by  that  dim  foreboding  of  some  coming 
change,  the  forecast  of  a  final  quiet  to  which  both  are  drawing  near, 
which  so  often  accompanies  the  approach  of  death.  The  very  mild- 
ness of  the  winter  evening,  with  a  softness  in  its  moist  still  air  allied 
to  the  gentleness  of  sorrow,  plays  its  part  in  the  dialogue.  As  they 
retrace  their  steps,  the  purple  light  that  had  invested  the  cliffs  and 
shore  has  faded  off,  and  the  night  quite  suddenly  closes  in  ;  of  the 
promontories,  the  long  irregular  breakers  under  them,  the  little  soli- 
tary Circaean  hill,  tl*e  neighboring  whiter  rocks  of  Anxur,  the  spot 
where  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi  lived,  nothing  further  is  discernible  ; 
all  the  nobleness  of  the  surrounding  or  the  far-off  landscape,  recalling 
scenes  of  friendship  and  recollections  of  greatness,  has  passed  away ; 
they  see  now  but  the  darkness  of  the  ignoble  present,  and  as,  on 
reaching  home,  they  notice  the  servants  lighting  the  lamps  in  the 
villa  and  making  preparation  for  the  birthday  on  the  morrow,  the 
thought  at  length  consciously  arises  to  Marcus  whether  that  coming 
birthday,  least  pleasurable  to  him  as  it  must  be,  may  not  also  be  his 
last.  But  no  feeling  of  despondency  or  grief  arises  with  it.  All  he 
has  been  saying  to  his  brother  has  had  for  its  design  to  assuage  the 
anxieties  and  disquietudes  attending  the  thought  of  death. 

"  Man  thinks  it  miserable  to  be  cut  off  in  the  midst  of  his  projects :  he 
should  rather  think  it  miserable  to  have  formed  them.  For  the  one  is  his 
own  action,^  the  other  is  not ;  the  one  was  subject  from  the  beginning  to 
disappointments  and  vexations,  the  other  ends  them.  And  what  truly  is 
that  period  of  life  in  which  we  are  not  in  the  midst  of  our  projects?     They 


302  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  %?£• 

spring  up  only  the  more  rank  ami  wild,  year  after  year,  from  their  extinc- 
tion or  change  of  form,  as  herbage  from  the  corruption  and  dying-down  of 
herbage.  .  .  .  Sleep,  which  the  Epicureans  and  others  have  represented  as 
the  image  of  death,  is,  we  know,  the  repairer  of  activity  and  strength.  If 
they  spoke  reasonably  and  consistently,  they  might  argue  from  their  own 
principles,  or  at  least  take  the  illustration  from  their  own  fancy,  that  death, 
like  sleep,  may  also  restore  our  powers,  and  in  proportion  to  its  universality 
and  absoluteness.  .  .  .  The  memory  of  those  great  men  who  consolidated 
our  republic  by  their  wisdom,  exalted  it  by  their  valor,  and  protected  and 
defended  it  by  their  constancy,  stands  not  alone  nor  idly:  they  draw  us 
after  them,  they  place  us  with  them.  OQuinctusI  1  wish  I  could  impart 
to  you  my  firm  persuasion,  that  after  death  we  shall  enter  into  their  so- 
ciety; and  what  matter  if  the  place  of  our  reunion  be  not  the  Capitol  or 
the  Forum?  .  .  .  Surely  he  deserves  the  dignity  and  the  worship  of  a  God 
Who  firsl  instructed  men  that  by  their  own  volition  they  may  enjoy  eternal 
happiness;  that  the  road  to  it  is  most  easy  and  most  beautiful,  sued  as  any 
would  follow  by  preference  even  if  nothing  desirable  were  at  the  end  of  it. 
Neither  to  give  nor  to  take  offence,  are  surely  the  two  things  most  delight- 
ful in  human  life;  and  it  is  by  these  two  things  that  eternal  happiness  may 
be  attained.  We  shall  enjoy  a  future  state  accordingly  as  we  have  employ  ed 
our  intellect  and  our  affections.  Perfect  bliss  can  be  expected  by  few;  but 
fewer  will  be  so  miserable  as  they  have  been  here." 

They  had  only  to  cany  with  them  such  thoughts  as  these,  and 
death  need  not  trouble  them  further.  It  would  but  the  sooner  bring 
to  them  the  happy  day  when  they  would  again  meet  their  equals, 
when  their  inferiors  could  harass  them  no  more,  and  society  would 
take  the  place  of  solitude.  "  For  there  only  is  the  sense  of  soli- 
tude where  everything  we  behold  is  unlike  us.  .  .  .  Death  has  two 
aspects  ;  dreary  and  sorrowful  to  those  of  prosperous,  mild  and  almost 
genial  to  those  of  adverse  fortune.  Her  countenance  is  old  to  the 
young,  and  youthful  to  the  aged  :  to  the  former  her  voice  is  importu- 
nate, her  gait  terrific  :  the  latter  she  approaches  like  a  bedside  friend, 
and  calls  in  a  whisper  that  invites  to  rest.  .*.  .  Were  it  certain 
that  the  longer  we  live  the  wiser  we  become  and  the  happier,  then 
indeed  a  long  life  would  be  desirable  ;  but  since,  on  the  contrary,  our 
mental  strength  decays,  and  our  enjoyments  of  every  kind  not  only 
sink  and  cease  but  diseases  and  sorrows  come  in  place  of  them,  if  any 
wish  is  rational,  it  is  surely  the  wish  that  we  should  go  away  un- 
shaken by  years,  undepressed  by  griefs,  and  undespoiled  of  OUT  better 
facilities.  Life  and  death  appear  more  certainly  ours  than  whatso- 
ever (dse  :  and  yet  hardly  can  that  be  called  ours  which  comes  with- 
out our  knowledge  and  goea  without  it ;  or  that  which  we  cannot  put 
aside  if  we  would,  and  indeed  can  anticipate  but  little.  There  arefew 
who  can  regulate  life  to  any  extent  ;  none  who  can  order  the  things 
it  shall  receive  or  exclude.  What  value  then  should  be  placed  upon 
it  by  the  prudent  man,  when  duty  or  necessity  calls  him  away  1  .  .  . 
Everything  lias  its  use  ;  life  to  teach  us  the  contempt  of, death,  and 
death  the  contempt  of  life,  (dory,  which  among  all  things  be- 
tween stands  eminently  the  principal,  although  it  has  been  considered 


VET.  47-53-]  WHAT   THE   SECOND   VOLUME   CONTAINED.  3G3 

by  some  philosophers  as  mere  vanity  and  deception,  moves  those 
great  intellects  which  nothing  else  could  have  stirred,  and  places 
them  where  they  can  best  and  most  advantageously  serve  the  com- 
monwealth. Glory  can  be  safely  despised  by  those  only  who  have 
fairly  won  it.  .  .  .  The  philosopher1  who  contemns  it  has  every  rogue 
in  his  sect,  and  may  reckon  that  it  will  outlive  all  others.  .  .  .  Fame, 
they  tell  you,  is  air :  but  without  air  there  is  no  life  for  any ;  with- 
out fame  there  is  none  for  the  best." 

Such,  thoughts  and  speech  were  worthy  to  close  a  book  of  so  great 
and  so  original  a  character.  Possessing  these  two  qualities  to  an  ex- 
tent that  no  general  criticism  could  have  adequately  shown,  and  be- 
ing of  all  Landof's  future  labors  in  literature  the  determining  type  and 
expression,  an  account  of  it  sufficiently  minute  to  save  the  necessity 
of  recurring  and  repeated  description  hereafter  seemed  desirable  at 
once.  The  thirty-eight  dialogues  thus  first  issued  became  in  number, 
before  Landor's  death,  not  fewer  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  ;  but  dif- 
ferent as  all  these  were  in  themselves,  it  was  not  the  less  the  distin- 
guishing mark  of  their  genius  to  be  both  in  their  conformation  and 
in  their  mass  almost  strangely  alike ;  and  it  is  this  unity  in  the  as- 
tonishing variety,  the  fire  of  an  irrepressible  genius  running  through 
the  whole,  that  gives  to  the  book  containing  them  its  place  among 
books  not  likely  to  pass  away.  I  have  put  before  the  reader  quite 
fairly  what  the  earliest  dialogues  were ;  and  as,  down  to  the  very 
last,"  if  I  continued  my  review,  the  same  wealth  of  character,  thought, 
and  style  would  present  itself  for  description  and  selection,  little 
more  may  now  suffice  than  to  mention  as  they  arise  the  subjects 
chosen  and  the  names  of  the  speakers.  The  intensity  and  the  range 
of  mental  power  displayed  will  thus  also  sufficiently  declare  them- 
selves. There  is  scarcely  a  form  or  function  of  the  human  mind, 
serious  or  sprightly,  cogitative  or  imaginative,  historical,  fanciful,  or 
real,  which  has  not  been  exercised  or  brought  into  play  in  this  extraor- 
dinary series  of  writings.  The  world  past  and  present  is  repro- 
duced in  them,  with  its  variety  and  uniformity,  its  continuity  and 
change.  When  the  American  writer  Emerson  had  made  the  book 
his  companion  for  more  than  twenty  years,  he  publicly  expressed  to 
the  writer  his  gratitude  for  having  given  him  a  resource  that  had 
never  failed  him  in  solitude.  He  had  but  to  recur  to  its  rfch  and 
ample  page,  wherein  he  was  always  sure  to  find  free  and  sustained 
thought,  a  keen  and  precise  understanding,  an  affluent  and  ready 
memory  familiar  with  all  chosen  books,  an  industrious  observation  in 
every  department  of  life,  an  experience  to  which  it  might  seem  that 
nothing  had  occurred  in  vain,  honor  for  every  just  and  generous  sen- 
timent, and  a  scourge  like  that  of  the  Furies  for  every  oppressor 
whether  public  or  private,  to  feel  how  dignified  was  that  perpetual 
Censor  in  his  curule  chair,  and  to  wish  to  thank  so  great  a  benefactor. 
"  Mr.  Landor,"  continues  Emerson,  "  is  one  of  the  foremost  of  that 
small  class  who  make  good  in  the   nineteenth  century  the  claims  of 


3G4  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  [5£?*aa'" 


pure  literature.  Tn  these  busy  days  of  avarice  and  ambition,  when 
there  is  so  little  disposition  to  profound  thought  or  to  any  but  the 
most  superficial  intellectual  entertainment,  a  faithful  scholar,  receiv- 
ing from  past  ages  the  treasures  of  wit,  and  enlarging  them  by  his 
own  love,  is  a  friend  and  consoler  of  mankind.  .  .  Whoever  writes 
for  the  love  of  truth  and  beauty  and  not  with  ulterior  ends  belongs 
to  a  sacred  class,  among  whom  there  are  few  men  of  the  present  age 
who  have  a  better  elaini  to  be  numbei-ed  than  Mr.  Landor.  Wher- 
ever genius  or  taste  has  existed,  wherever  freedom  and  justice,  which 
he  values  as  the  element  in  which  genius  may  work,  arc  threatened, 
his  interest  is  sure  to  be  commanded.  His  love  of  beauty  is  passionate, 
and  betrays  itself  in  all  petulant  and  contemptuous  expressions.  But 
beyond  his  delight  in  genius  and  his  love  of  individual  and  civil  lib- 
erty, Mr.  Landor  has  a  perception  that  is  much  more  rare, — the 
appreciation  of  character.  This  is  the  more  remarkable  considered 
with  his  intense  nationality,  for  he  is  buttoned  in  English  broadcloth  to 
the  chin.  .  .  .  Such  merits  make  Mr.  Landors  position  in  the  re] ml >lic 
of  letters  one  of  great  mark  and  dignity.  He  exercises  with  a  gran- 
deur of  spirit  the  office  of  writer,  and  carries  it  with  an  air  of  old  and 
unquestionable  nobility.  His  acquaintance  with  the  English  tongue 
is  unsurpassed.  He  is  a  master  of  condensation  and  suppression,  and 
that  in  no  vulgar  way.  He  knows  the  wide  difference  between  com- 
pression and  an  obscure  elliptical  style.  Dense  writer  as  he  is,  he 
has  yet  ample  room  and  choice  of  phrase,  and  often  even  a  gamesome 
mood  between  his  valid  words.  There  is  no  inadequacy  or  disagree- 
able contraction  in  one  of  his  sentences,  any  more  than  in  a  human 
face,  where  in  a  square  space  of  a  few  inches  is  found  room  for  every 
possible  variety  of  expression.  .  .  .  Of  many  of  Mr.  Landor's  sen- 
tences wc  are  fain  to  remember  what  was  said  of  those  of  Socrates, 
that  they  are  cubes,  which  will  stand  firm  place  them  how  or  where 
you  will."  The  author  of  this  tribute  gave  also  practical  proof  of 
the  strength  of  the  admiration  that  suggested  it.  The  wish  to  see 
"the  faces  of  three  or  four  writers"  had  been  one  of  his  principal 
motives  for  visiting  Europe  in  1833  ;  and  when  fourteen  years  later 
he  had  crossed  the  Atlantic  again,  he  told  his  countrymen,  among 
other  experiences  of  Europe,  what  his  intercourse  had  been  with 
those  three  or  four  writers  whose  faces  he  had  so  desired  to  see. 
Their  names  were  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Landor,  and  Carlyle. 

VI.     HOW   THE   BOOK   WAS   RECEIVED. 

In  February,  1824,  Southey  sent  to  Landor  the  completed  book, 
and  in  the  letter  accompanying  it,  alluding  once  more  to  the  omis- 
sions made  by  himself  and  Hare,  expressed  his  belief  that  wherever 
Landor  perceived  a  passage  to  have  been  struck  out  he  would  perceive 
at  the  same  time  for  what  reason  it  had  been  omitted  ;  the  reason 
for  every  omission  having  been   such  that  he  was  persuaded  Landor 


^et- 47-53-]  H0W   THE   B00K   WAS   RECEIVED.  365 

would  without  hesitation  have  assented  to  it,  had  he  been  upon  the 
spot.  Of  the  book  itself  Southey  spoke  as,  with  the  views  then  held 
by  him,  it  might  be  supposed  he  would  ;  with  rapture  of  its  genius, 
and  with  reserve  of  its  opinions.  A  most  powerful  and  original  book 
he  thought  it  ;  in  any  one  page  of  which,  almost  in  any  single  sen- 
tence, he  should  have  discovered  the  author,  if  it  had  come  into  his 
hands  as  an  anonymous  publication.  "  Notice  it  must  needs  attract ; 
but  I  suspect  that  it  will  be  praised  the  most  by  those  with  whom 
you  have  the  least  sympathy,  and  that  the  English  and  Scotch  liber- 
als may  perhaps  forgive  you  even  for  being  my  friend." 

A  few  months  later  in  the  same  year  he  bade  Landor  be  of  good 
heart,  for  a  more  striking  book  had  never  issued  from  the  press  "  in 
these  kingdoms,"  nor  one  more  certain  of  surviving  the  wreck  of  its 
generation  ;  and  this  not  from  the  adventitious  importance  of  the 
subject,  but  from  the  excellence  of  the  workmanship.  The  last  let- 
ter written  in  that  year  was  also  occupied  with  it,  with  the  growth 
of  public  opinion  about  it,  and  with  the  talk  it  was  making.  Southey 
rejoiced  to  hear  of  a  third  volume  ;  spoke  of  subjects  which  Landor, 
and  he  only,  could  treat  as  they  ought  to  be  treated ;  and  urged  him 
not  to  hesitate  at  sending  over  a  fourth  also.  "  The  book  is  making 
you  known,  as  you  ought  to  be  ;  and  it  is  one  of  those  few  books 
which  nothing  can  put  aside."  This  letter,  written  at  the  opening 
of  December,  1824,  had  the  additional  interest  for  Landor  of  two 
supplementary  pages  in  the  handwriting  of  Wordsworth. 

"  I  have  begged  this  space  from  Southey,"  he  wrote,  "  which  I 
hope  you  will  forgive,  as  I  might  not  otherwise  for  some  time  have 
had  courage  to  thank  you  for  your  admirable  dialogues.  They 
reached  me  last  May,  at  a  time  when  I  was  able  to  read  them,  which 
I  did  with  very  great  pleasure.  I  was  in  London  then,  and  have  been  a 
Wanderer  most  of  the  time  since.  But  this  did  not  keep  me  silent. 
I  was  deterred,  such  is  the  general  state  of  my  eyes,  by  a  conscious- 
ness that  I  could  not  write  what  I  wished.  I  concur  with  you  in  so 
much,  and  differ  with  you  in  so  much  also,  that  though  I  could  easily 
have  disposed  of  my  assent,  easily  and  most  pleasantly,  I  could  not 
face  the  task  of  giving  my  reasons  for  my  dissent !  For  instance,  it 
would  have  required  almost  a  pamphlet  to  set  forth  the  grounds  upon 
which  I  disagree  with  what  you  have  put  into  the  mouth  of  Franklin 
on  Irish  affairs,  the  object  to  my  mind  of  constant  anxiety.  What 
would  I  not  give  for  a  few  hours'  talk  with  7ou  upon  republics,  kings, 
and  priests  —  and  priestcraft !  This  last  I  abhor ;  but  why  spend 
one  line  in  declaiming  against  it  1  Better  endeavor  to  improve 
priests,  whom  we  cannot,  and  ought  not  therefore  endeavor  to,  do 
without.  We  have  far  more  to  dread  from  those  who  would  endeavor 
to  expel  not  only  organized  religion  but  all  religion  from  society,  than 
from  those  who  are  slavishly  disposed  to  uphold  it.  At  least  I  can- 
not help  feeling  so.  Your  dialogues  are  worthy  of  you,  and  a  great 
acquisition  to  literature.     The  classical  ones  I  like  best,  and  most  of 


3G6  THE   IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  l?£°-J.' 

all  that  between  Tully  and  his  brother.  That  which  pleases  me  the 
least  is  the  one  between  yourself  and  the  Abbe  Delille.  The  obser- 
vations arc  invariably  just,  I  own;  but  they  are  fitter  for  illustrative 
notes  than  the  body  of  a  dialogue,  which  ought  always  to  have  some 
little  spice  of  dramatic  effect,  i  long  for  the  third  volume  ;  a  feeling 
which  after  my  silence  I  should  not  venture  to  express,  were  yon  not 
aware  of  the  infirmity  which  has  been  the  cause  of  it.  I  sent  a  mes- 
sage of  thanks,  from  Cambridge,  through  Julius  Hare,  whom  I  saw 
.it  I  lambridge  in  May  last.  Ever  affectionately  and  gratefully  yours, 
Wm.  Wordsworth." 

With  well-founded  pride  Landor  received  this  tribute  from  two 
such  famous  men.  "  Your  letter,"  he  wrote  on  the  6th  of  January, 
1825,  "with  its  closing  lines  from  Wordsworth,  gave  me  incredible 
delight.  Never  did  two  such  hands  pass  over  the  same  paper,  un- 
less when  Barrow  was  solving  some  problem  set  before  him  by  New- 
ton." He  had  already,  on  the  4th  of  the  previous  November,  ac- 
knowledged what  Southey  said  on  the  eve  of  the  publication.  "  I 
never  ask  what  is  the  public  opinion  of  anything  I  write.  God  for- 
bid it  should  be  favorable;  for  more  people  think  injudiciously  than 
judiciously.      Your  sentence  has  elated  me. 

1  De  me  splendida  Minos 
Fecerit  arbitria.' 

It  is  irreversible." 

What  meanwhile  had  been  the  sentence  generally  upon  the  book, 
I  shall  perhaps  be  expected  to  say.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  it 
produced  at  once  an  impression  which  it  falls  to  the  lot  of  few  books 
in  a  generation  to  make  that  have  not  amusement  for  their  principal 
design.  Such  readers  as  it  obtained  were  thoroughly  aroused  by  it. 
Even  where  its  opinions  met  with  the  least  favor,  its  mark  was  most 
decisive.  It  was  not  a  book  that  any  cultivated  reader  could  put 
aside  as  of  indifferent  account  ;  and  its  power  and  originality  were 
admitted  in  the  strongest  objections  it  provoked.  On  the  one  hand, 
without  challenge  it  might  be  said  that  no  book  had  appeared  in  that 
generation  comparable  to  it  for  the  variety  of  its  claims:  imagination, 
wit,  and  humor;  dramatic  insight,  and  play  of  character;  richness 
of  scholarship  ,  correctness,  conciseness,  and  purity  of  style.;  extent 
of  information;  speculative  boldness;  many-sided  interest:  and 
sympathies  all  but  universal.  On  the  other  hand,  as  unchallenged 
migl  I  tin'  assertion  be  made  that  never  had  so  masculine  an  intellect 
been  weakened  by  BO  violent  a  temper,  so  many  durable  thoughts 
degraded  by  so  many  .momentary  humors,  and  such  masterly  discrimi- 
nation of  praise  and  blame  made  worthless  by  so  many  capricious 
enmities  and  unreasonable  likings.  I  do  not  indeed  find,  in  the 
criticisms  published  at  the  time,  anything  to  my  mind  satisfactorily 
descriptive  of  the  book,  or  any  real  subtlety  of  appreciation  lor  either 
its  strength  or  weakness:  but  this  is  fairly  the  tone  that  maybe 
taken  to  express  the  differing  verdicts  of  those  who  talked  about  it  : 


JET.  47-53.]  H0W    THE    BOOK    WAS    RECEIVED.  3G7 

and  though  no  great  circulation  awaited  it  at  the  outset,  it  reached 
without  difficulty  the  class  of  readers  who  most  sensibly  influence 
the  general  opinion  in  such  things,  and  have  always  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  the  making  or  unmaking  of  books  in  the  matter  of  immediate 
reputation.  The  entire  result  will  better  appear  in  the  sequel.  But 
at  last  Landor  had  won  for  himself  a  hearing ;  he  contributed  to  the 
town  talk  for  a  whole  season  at  least ;  at  the  universities,  in  particu- 
lar, his  name  became  a  familiar  word  ;  and  men  who  in  those  days 
were  at  Cambridge  have  declared  that  decidedly  the  literary  sensa- 
tion of  1824  was  the  Imaginary  Conversations,  and  that  the  last  poem 
of  Byron,  even  in  that  year  of  his  death,  had  not  been  more  warmly 
discussed  at  the  bachelors'  tables  or  in  the  common-rooms. 

Julius  Hare  had  formed  an  exalted  estimate  of  the  book.  He 
believed  of  it,  and  retained  this  belief  to  the  end  of  his  life,  that  it 
would  live  as  long  as  English  literature  lived.  Some  of  the  conver- 
sations he  thought  unsurpassed  by  the  masterpieces  of  poetic  crea- 
tion, ancient  or  modern  ;  and  by  the  style  in  all  of  them  he  was  fas- 
cinated in  the  extreme.  None  other  so  good  was  known  to  him  in 
our  language.     There  was  hardly  a  dialogue  which  he  did  not  think 

t  1*11 

a  model  of  what  prose  composition  should  be  ;  and  at  its  best,  where 
the  air  of  classic  antiquity  breathed  about  the  speakers,  the  style 
seemed  to  him  what  Apollo's  talk  might  have  been,  as  radiant,  pier- 
cing, and  pure.  But  though  he  thus  characterized  as  incomparable 
the  manner  of  the  book  which  he  so  largely  had  helped  to  bring  into 
the  'world,  to  its  sometimes  questionable  matter  he  was  not  insensible  ; 
from  several  opinions  expressed  in  it  his  own  shrank  instinctively ; 
and  while  its  perversity  even  increased  his  own  liking  for  it,  as  the 
wayward  child  is  cared  for  most,  he  had  a  fear  that  other  readers 
would  be  less  forgiving.  He  saw  the  extreme  probability  that  for 
some  foolish  faults  of  temper  a  book  deserving  honor  in  the  highest 
might  be  waylaid  at  starting,  suffer  perhaps  in  consequence  a  long 
neglect,  and  not  without  serious  injury  at  last  emerge.  It  occurred 
to  him  that  an  attack  of  this  kind  might  be  so  anticipated  as  to  blunt 
its  edge  and  consequence,  by  combining,  in  the  same  fearless  review 
of  the  contents  of  the  book,  earnest  expression  of  all  the  praise  de- 
served by  it  with  ironical  indication  of  all  the  abuse  to  which  its  im- 
petuosities had  exposed  it ;  and  for  Taylor's  London  Magazine  he  drew 
up  such  a  paper.  For  the  purpose  it  was  excellently  done,  and  had 
the  effect  desired.  Hazlitt  had  indeed  the  first  word,  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Revietv  ;  but  though  he  dealt  some  heavy  blows  at  the  literary 
Jacobinism  of  the  Southey  connection,  regretted  Landor's  want  of 
temper  and  self-knowledge,  and  ridiculed  unsparingly  his  dogmatism, 
caprice,  extravagance,  intolerance,  quaintness,  and  arrogance,  he  at 
the  same  time  admitted  his  originality,  learning,  and  fifty  other 
valuable  qualities,  placed  in  the  highest  rank  his  delineation  of  char- 
acter, conceded  to  him  a  power  of  thought  and  a  variety  and  vigor 
of  style  which  made  him  excellent  wherever  excellence  could  consist 


3G8  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  '?ta-a&' 

with  singularity;  and,  after  naming  several  of  his  dialogues  from 
English  history  as  taking  rank  with  truth  itself,  ended  by  confessing 
freely  that  in  the  classical  dialogues  lie  had  so  raised  himself  to  the 
level  of  the  men  portrayed  in  them  that  all  narrow  and  captions 
prejudices  had  there  been  thrown  aside,  he  had  expanded  bis  view 
with  the  distance  of  the  objects  contemplated,  and  into  bis  style  had 
infused  such  a  strength,  severity,  fervor,  and  sweetness,  as  those 
orators  and  heroes  had  never  themselves  surpassed.  In  critical  writ- 
ing however  blame  goes  so  much  further  than  praise,  and  the  objec- 
tions of  the  Edinburgh  were  not  only  put  so  sharply  but  were  appar- 
ently so  justified  by  the  illustrations  given,  that,  if*  the  Quarterly  had 
followed  with  unmixed  severity,  very  grave  damage  might,  have  been 
done.  Julius  Hare  prevented  it.  The  onslaught  had  been  prepared 
(for  Gilford's  detestation  of  Landor  *  was  in  no  degree  abated  by 
Southey's  affection  for  him)  ;  but  so  much  of  it  had  been  cleverly 
anticipated  in  Hare's  whimsical  parody  that  on  the  appearance  of  the 
London  Magazine  in  May,  the  article  which  the  Quarterly  designed 
to  have  published  in  June  had  to  be  entirely  reconsidered.  Coming 
close  upon  the  other,  the  laugh  would  not  have  been  against  Landor. 
It  did  not  make  actual  appearance  till  the  end  of  the  year,  and  had 
then  become  brief  and  commonplace  enough.  Southey  meanwhile, 
having  ascertained  who  was  writing  it,  would  probably  have  succeeded 
in  obtaining  moi'e  consideration  for  his  friend  if  Gifford  had  not 
again  interposed.  "  I  liked  everything  in  it,"  he  says  of  the  article, 
in  one  of  bis  letters  of  January,  1825,  "that  had  no  reference*  to 
Landor,  and  nothing  that  had.  The  general  tenor  I  should  no  doubt 
have  liked  better,  if  Gifford  had  not  struck  out  the  better  parts ;  but 
nothing  could  have  reconciled  me  to  anything  like  an  assumption  of 
superiority  towards  such  a  man."  To  Hare's  paper,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  had  given  eager  welcome  ;  and  he  more  than  once  declared 
his  agreement  with  what  Hare  had  said  at  its  close,  that  no  book  had 
been  published,  since  that  wherein  Shakespeare's  plays  were  col- 
lected, containing  so  much  that  was  excellent  of  such  various  kinds 
as  the  Imaginary  Conversations  of  Landor. 

Hare  was  nevertheless  uneasy  after  his  paper  appeared.  What 
would  Landor  think  of  it1?  To  understand  irony  is  not  at  all 
times  easy  ;  when  we  are  ourselves  the  subject  it  is  sometimes  diffi- 
cult ;  and  in  this  particular  case  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  all  the 
wild  ami  whimsical  absurdity,  put  forth  as  in  ridicule,  had  grave  war- 
rant in  the  book  itself.  Landor  took  everything  kindly  however,  and 
Hare's  acknowledgment  was  full  of  gratitude.  "Few  letters  have 
ever  given  me  so  much  pleasure,"  he  wrote  from  Trinity  College  on 
the  1  Ith  July,  L824,  "as  that  which  I  have  just  received  from  you. 
For,  besides  the  gratification  I  could  not  fail  of  deriving  from  such 
praise,  which  is  precious  in  proportion  to  the  depth  from  which  it 
comes,  1  had  felt  some  doubts  whether  the  good-will  that  had  dictated 

*  Sec  ante,  pp.  158  and  214. 


^T.  47-53-]        THE  SOUTHET  CORRESPONDENCE.  3G9 

my  criticism  might  not  have  been  lost  sight  of  amidst  the  clumsi- 
ness and  coarseness  of  the  execution ;  and  I  trembled  lest  you 
should  think,  as  Taylor  did,  that  I  had  given  a  very  undue  pre- 
ponderance to  the  abusive  portion.  It  seemed  to  me  indeed  that 
his  opinion  arose  in  great  measure  from  that  commonest  of  blind- 
nesses, the  inability  to  understand  irony  ;  but  the  fault  might  also 
be  mine  ;  and  I  was  therefore  delighted  to  be  released  from  fhese 
doubts  by  such  a  sentence  as  is  conveved  in  your  letter."  The  most 
amusing  result  from  the  article  had  been,  he  went  on  to  say,  that  the 
criticism  which  already  had  been  sent  to  press  by  the  editor  of  the 
Quarterly  had  been  recalled  and  returned  to  its  author,  that  he  might 
omit  sundry  passages  anticipated  in  the  parody,  especially  a  long 
diatribe  on  the  childishness  of  dialogues.  The  criticism  was  to 
appear  shortly,  and  was  to  be,  as  might  have  been  expected,  adverse. 
On  the  whole,  the  critics  had  been  favorably  disposed  ;  but,  to  judge 
from  what  Hare  had  seen,  had  proved  themselves  to  be  quite  as  igno- 
rant of  all  the  principles  of  composition  as  English  critics  usually 
are.  Hazlitt's  article  in  the  Edinburgh  certainly  was  the  cleverest 
he  had  read.  "  He,  I  am  well  informed,  is  among  the  greatest 
admirers  of  the  Conversations."  But  Hare  had  little  liking  for 
Hazlitt.  It  was  not  merely  that  he  idolized  Bonaparte,  but  that 
he  hated  Wordsworth  and  Southey,  with  whom  he  connected  Lan- 
dor  in  the  same  feeling ;  and  Hare  adds  that  the  general  impression 
of  his  article,  though  almost  every  passage  of  the  book  quoted  had 
been  praised,  was,  as  everybody  said,  "  How  famously  the  Imaginary 
Conversations  have  been  cut  up  in  the  Edinburgh  Revieio."  One 
thing  in  it  would  not  soon  be  forgotten.  Jeffrey  had  inserted  a 
sentence  wherein  he  had  the  impudence  to  declare  that  but  for  his 
discipline  Wordsworth  would  never  have  written  the  Laodamia  ! 

VII.     THE   SOUTHEY   CORRESPONDENCE. 

And  now,  reserving  to  a  later  page  what  befell  in  connection  with 
the  new  edition  of  his  book  and  the  series  of  additional  dialogues  on 
which  already  he  is  busily  engaged,  I  resume  my  illustrations  from 
Landor's  correspondence  of  the  ordinary  course  of  his  life  and 
thoughts  in  Italy  from  the  date  of  his  residence  in  the  palazzo  Medici. 

His  self-invented  troubles  are  endless.  In  June,  1822,  he  is  in  that 
scrape  with  the  secretary  having  charge  of  the  legation  of  which 
slight  mention  has  before  been  made,  who  had  thought  proper,  he 
says,  to  treat  him  with  such  marked  indignity  that  he  had  requested 
to  be  informed  in  what  part  of  England  or  France  they  might  become 
better  acquainted  in  a  few  minutes.  The  minister  himself  had  set 
the  example,  but  the  subordinate  carried  it  rather  too  far.  "  To 
show  his  courage,  whenever  he  meets  my  wife  in  the  streets  he  walks 
up  and  sings  or  whistles.  This  has  affected  her  health,  and  I  am 
afraid  may  oblige  me  to  put  him  to  death  before  we  can  reach  Eng- 

24 


370  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  l?^J' 


land.  Is  it  not  scandalous  that  our  ministry  should  employ  s\ich 
men?  I  have  a  presentiment  that  you  "will  hearwomething  of  me 
which  you  would  rather  not  hear,  hut  my  name  shall  be  respected 
as  Long  as  it  is  remembered."  What  it  is  all  about  one  finds  it  dim- 
cult  to  discover;  but  we  also  learn  that  he  had  complained  in  vain 
to  the  foreign  minister  in  Downing  Street,  who  did  not  answer  his 
letter,  and  that  curious  facts  were  in  his  possession  "  concerning  more 
than  one  of  the  wretches  he  has  employed  ahroad." 

While  this  explosion  was  on  its  way,  Southey  had  written  (27th 
May,  1822)  in  accents  of  despair  to  say  that  Catholic  Emancipation 
and  Parliamentary  Reform  had  become  inevitable  ;  that  either  would 
suln.ce  to  overthrow  "  our  institutions  "  ;  and  that  the  only  remaining 
question  would  be  whether  Church  or  State  should  go  first.  Some 
consolation  there  might  have  been,  he  added,  in  falling  before  the 
mighty,  before  such  mea  as  Pym,  Hampden,  Milton,  and  so  forth  ; 
but  that  the  ruin  should  be  effected  by  such  people  as  B,  H,  C,  H, 
and  the  house  of  R,  was  like  seeing  a  temple  pulled  down  by  wretches 
who  would  not  have  been  thought  worthy  to  carry  a  hod  for  the 
masons  at  the  building.  But  with  the  greatest  sympathy  for  his 
personal  dislikes,  and  for  his  vigorous  expression  of  them,  Lam  lor  read 
with  equanimity  Southey's  doleful  anticipations  of  ruin.  "The  poli- 
tics of  England,"  he  replied,  "  are  what  Pitt  and  the  Parliament  made 
them.  The  Catholics  should  have  heen  emancipated  at  the  I  (evolu- 
tion, when  they  were  conquered;  that  nothing  might  he  attributed 
to  threats  and  power.  I  have  suffered  so  much  injustice,  and  have 
experienced  so  repeatedly  the  denial  of  redress,  that  I  would  gladly 
see  the  overthrow  of  the  present  system,  even  at  the  hazard  of  utter 
ruin.  Those  who  favored  the  measures  of  Pitt,  in  hopes  of  profiting 
by  the  public  plunder,  cannot  if  they  lose  the  game  complain  that 
they  must  pay  the  stake,  particularly  as  they  have  robbed  every 
family  in  England  of  half  its  property.  France  was  revolutionized 
by  debt ;  so  will  England  he.  Emancipations  and  reforms  are  harm- 
less fooleries.  The  mischief  is  done.  The  B's  and  that  set  wantonly 
a  mischief  of  their  own  equally  lucrative  to  their  party,  and  will 
raise  the  old  hoarse  cry  of  reform  and  religious  freedom.  For  us 
the  only  comfort  and  consolation  is,  to  have  no  share  in,  and  to 
derive  no  advantage  from,  the  overthrow  of  our  country." 

The  question  of  the  improvement  of  nations  through  their  govern- 
ments is  a  frequent  subject  of  discussion  between  the  friends  ;  and  it 
is  curious  that  Southey,  who  at  the  time  in  the  Quarterly  Review  was 
most  eagerly  assailing  the  one  extreme  of  opinion  in  England,  and 
thereby  giving  all  his  Btrength  to  the  support  of  the  other,  was  at 
the  same  time  confessing  in  his  letters  to  Landor  that  both  extremes 
were  so  hail  that  if  a  wish  of  his  could  incline  the  beam,  he  should 
not  know  in  which  scale  to  cast  it.  He  was  disposed  to  think  how- 
ever, in  opposition  to  Landor,  that  old  despotisms  coidd  better  be 
modified  by  a  single  will  than  by  a  popular  assembly ;  and   he  also 


JET.  47-53-1  THE    SOUTHEY    CORRESPONDENCE.  371 

thought  that,  let  individuals  and  communities  err  as  they  might,  it 
was  apparent  that  upon  the  great  scale  mankind  were  improving ; 
but  at  the  same  time  he  fancied  that  if  he  were  in  Italy  he  should  ap- 
proach nearer  to  his  friend,  and  that  his  friend,  if  in  England  or  in 
America,  ■would  draw  nearer  to  him.  Upon  this  point  there  are  ob- 
servations in  one  of  Landor's  letters  (31st  May,  1823)  that  will  be 
read  with  interest. 

"  No  man  living  ever  bore  a  more  constant  or  a  more  implacable  hatred 
towards -Napoleon  than  I;  yet  when  I  consider  that  both  in  France  and 
Italy  he  respected  men  of  worth  and  genius,  and  that  not  a  single  man  of 
either  was  neglected  by  him,  I  am  disposed  to  regret  that  he  is  not  still 
living  and  reigning,  particularly  when  all  such  persons  as  he  cherished  and 
protected  are  now  excluded  from  office  and  treated  with  contempt  and 
ignominy.  Every  good  establishment  in  Italy  is  quite  discouraged.  Priest- 
craft raises  her  proud  head  again.  Schools  of  mutual  instruction  are  shut 
up  in  all  the  cities.  Kings  unite  to  persecute  the  learned.  My  blood  boils, 
I  confess  it,  at  what  I  see  on  every  side.  I  do  not  wish  soldiers  to  be  the 
reformers  of  states.  What  a  dreadful  condition  must  humanity  be  in,  when 
it  can  find  no  others  capable  of  being  so,  or  willing  to  take  the  lead  !  I  am 
comforted  by  your  observation  that  mankind  are  improving  in  England. 
Certainly  it  is  not  so  on  the  Continent.  I  mean  in  France  and  Italy.  The 
maestro  di  casa  and  confessor,  the  old  lumber  of  noble  houses,  drive  out  the 
preceptor,  and  take  what  money  was  applied  to  the  better  education  of  the 
family.  French  and  English  books  are  promiscuously  swept  away.  Lying 
tales  of  miracles  and  conversions  are  taken  up  instead  of  them ;  and  it  is  a 
proof  of  nobility  to  do  as  did  nos  peres.  I  agree  with  you  that  old  despot- 
isms can  better  be  modified  by  a  single  will  than  by  a  popular  assembly. 
But  as  the  single  will  capable  of  modifying  them  does  not  appear  once  in 
five  hundred  years,  Ave  cannot  wait.  Despotism  must  be  crushed  whenever 
it  can  be,  and  by  whatever  means."* 

*  He  had  found  it  in  his  heart  nevertheless  to  say  many  good  words  for  the  Russian 
despotism  when  moved  thereto  by  his  dislike  of  'Turkey,  in  those  days  as  hateful  to 
him  for  unfriendliness  to  the  Greeks  as  in  later  days  beloved  by  him  for  friendliness  to 
the  Hungarians.  The  letter  to  Southey  of  which  Augustus 'Hare  was  the  bearer  (at 
the  opening  of  1822)  closed  thus:  — 

"  People  here  are  in  transports  at  the  idea  of  a  general  war,  thinking  it  certain  that 
Austria  must  sooner  or  later  take  a  part  in  it.  What  a  state  must  nation-  be  in,  which, 
without  anger  or  injury  of  recent  date,  feel  certain  of  being  bettered  by  so  great  a 
calamity!  I  presume  that  our  government  will  act  about  as  wisely  in  this' business  as 
when  it  took  up  arms  against  Napoleon  the  second  time.  The  thing  was  right,  but  the 
pretext  wrong.  It  seems  to  me  that  we  might  have  prevented  this  war  between 
Russia  and  Turkey,  by  joining  with  France  and  all  the  other  powers  of  Europe  to  pre- 
vent the  exportation  of  slaves  from  Greece,  and  other  atrocities  not  sanctioned  by  the 
customs  of  European  warfare.  As  it  is.  I  hope  the  people  of  England  will  re<i<t  all  at- 
tempts to  engage  them  in  hostilities.  Never  since  men  fought  upon  earth  was  there  so  just 
a  cause  as  that  of  Russia  now  is.  Turkey  tells  her  plainly  that  she  attempted  to  de- 
ceive her,  and  never  thought  of  performing' her  promise,  or  of  executing  the  conditions 
of  her  treaties.  She  must  be  vanquished  and  Russia  aggrandized.  This  with  common 
prudence  we  might  easily  have  prevented.  We  cannot  now  declare  war  against  Russia 
for  becoming  powerful;  since  this  accession  of  power  is  the  necessary  consequence  of 
her  forbearance  and  her  justice.  We  have  wiser,  more  prudent,  and'more  honest  men 
than  when  we  had  the  scoundrels  Castlereagh  and  Canning,  but  thev  want  energy  and 
clear-sightedness.  I  must  make  up  my  parcel  for  Augustus  Hare,  nor  indeed,  not 
being  a  prophet,  could  I  say  a  great  deal  'more  than  I  have  said  already.  My  children 
are  well,  which  keeps  me  happy.  I  hope  your  son  thrives,  learns,  and  enjoys  him- 
self, to  the  utmost  of  your  wishes,  and  that  you  have  not  quite  abandoned  your  idea 
of  revisiting  Italy." 


372  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  [*&™J: 

A  few  months  later  Landor  started  a  subject  of  surpassing  im- 
portance, and  as  to  which  a  part  of  the  suggestion  or  speculation  he 
indulges  may  claim  to  have  anticipated  by  several  years  the  greatest 
triumph  of  colonization  in  modern  time. 

"  There  is  a  passage  in  your  letter  on  the  matter  of  which  I  reflect  more 
often  than  on  anything  else.  Few  persons  ask  themselves  what  is  to  be- 
come of  the  rising  generation  of  educated  men  who  can  find  no  room  in  the 
three  professions.  Why  cannot  associations  be  formed,  and  why  cannot 
ministers  patronize  them,  of  extensive  colonies  in  Van  Diemen's  Land  ;  not 
colonies  of  thieves  and  gamblers  and  mercantile  men,  but  of  gentlemen's 
families  fas  in  Canada),  and  well-educated  young  men  and  women?  Why 
cannot  allotments  of  land,  never  exceeding  a  thousand  acres  for  each  indi- 
vidual, be  portioned  out  and  lots  drawn  for  them,  with  a  few  hundred 
pounds  (on  security  given  by  their  friends  at  home)  at  four  per  cent  for 
twenty  years  ?  I  myself  would  go,  provided  the  government  were  repub- 
lican, which  at  that  distance  could  be  no  objection  to  those  at  home.  Why 
cannot  they  treat  us  as  kindly  and  as  wisely  as  a  girl  treats  her  silk -worms? 
We  want  only  leaves  and  perches  and  the  liberty  of  working  in  our  own 
way.  Those  who  have  been  accustomed  to  the  decencies  and  elegances  of 
life  are  the  only  persons  wdio  will  make  a  demand  upon  the  industry  of  the 
mother  country.  I  would  admit  no  religion  but  that  of  the  Moravian  fra- 
ternity for  public  use.  Others  are  terrible  engines  in  the  hands  of  despot- 
ism, and  the  Roman  Catholic  in  my  opinion  ought  to  be  suppressed  as  any 
association  of  pickpockets  should  be.  I  would  oblige  every  priest  to  study 
and  practise  medicine,  since  the  whole  course  of  his  religious  education 
cannot  well  exceed  twenty  minutes, — namely,  the  commands  of  Jesus 
Christ.  At  his  leisure  he  may  read  history,  —  three  hours  will  do.  I  wish 
our  divines  would  consider  that  many  things  said  by  Jesus  Christ  were  in- 
tended for  the  Jews  only,  or  at  furthest  for  people  then  living.  If  our 
philosophers,  too,  had  known  this,  they  would  have  been  silent  upon  some 
points,  and  would  have  found  them  less  thorny." 

Ireland  is  a  subject  that  mightily  interests  both  friends,  but  they 
are  for  asunder  as  the  poles  in  the  remedies  they  woidd  apply  to  her. 
In  May,  1823,  Landor  refers  to  the  horrible  accounts  of  the  sister 
country  that  are  sent  out  every  post  to  Italy,  and  says  he  had  em- 
ployed a  good  deal  of  thought  and  time  on  the  means  of  bettering 
her  condition,  intending  to  insert  them  in  the  conversation  of  Frank- 
lin and  Washington ;  but  after  reflecting  how  little  attention  would 
be  paid  by  those  in  power  to  whatever  he  might  say,  and  that  the 
papers  were  somewhat  too  voluminous  for  the  dialogue,  he  flung  them 
aside.  Yet  he  remembers  the  substance  of  what  he  wished  to 
recommend.  Among  other  things,  the  lands  in  Ireland  were  to  be 
valued  by  sworn  commissioners  as  in  enclosure  acts  ;  leases  for  three 
lives  were  to  be  granted  to  all  cultivators;  tithes  to  be  abolished; 
and  compensation  (to  a  just  amount)  to  be  made  both  to  clergymen 
and  proprietors  from  the  taxes  raised  on  Ireland,  all  of  which  should, 
for  a  certain  number  of  years,  be  expended  on  that  country.  Eng- 
land would  lose  nothing  by  this,  Landor  argued;  for  the  military 
force,  and  much  of  the  civil,  might  then  be  so  reduced  as  to  meet  the 


MT.  47-53.]        THB  SOUTHEY  CORRESPONDENCE.  373 

emergency.  Landholders  would  lose  nothing  on  the  average  of  seven 
years ;  and  the  little  they  might  lose  would  be  abundantly  compen- 
sated by  security  of  property  and  person.  The  measure  could  not 
and  ought  not  to  be  carried  into  effect  without  the  general  concur- 
rence of  the  proprietors ;  but  indemnity  to  so  great  an  extent  from 
government,  freedom  from  taxes  and  from  danger,  and  the  pride  of 
liberality,  would  appease  and  conciliate  them.  "  Without  the  adop- 
tion of  what  I  contemplated,  and  in  its  utmost  extent,  there  will 
never  be  peace  in  that  country.  Her  governors  have  not  thought 
about  it  so  much  as  I  have  ;  nor  could  they  if  they  would ;  for  I  put 
more  thought  in  motion  every  half-hour  than  all  they  united  could  do 
in  three  centuries."  Southey  found  these  suggestions  too  startling  ; 
but  his  view  was  taken  altogether  from  a  narrower  ground  than 
Landor's,  and  turned  indeed  almost  exclusively  on  a  distrust  of  the 
Irish  Roman  Catholics.  What  he  said  on  that  point,  however,  will 
be  worth  preserving,  as  well  for  itself  as  for  Landor's  comment.  The 
date  of  the  letter  is  1824. 

"  Our  prospects  are  blackening  for  a  storm.  The  system  of  conciliation, 
as  it  is  called,  is  producing  in  Ireland  its  proper  and  inevitable  consequences. 
We  have  taken  up  a  nest  of  frozen  vipers  and  laid  them  upon  the  hearth, 
and  now,  unless  we  mean  to  leave  the  house  to  them  (and  the  estate  too), 
we  must  set  to  work  and  scotch  them.  A  rebellion  is  to  be  looked  for,  the 
object  being  the  separation  of  the  two  countries,  and  the  establishment  of 
the  worst  of  all  existing  superstitions  in  its  worst  form.  On  the  subject  of 
that  abominable  system  there  is  not  a  shade  of  difference  between  us ;  but  I 
deduce  from  my  detestation  of  it  this  principle  :  that  no  person  who  holds  it 
ought  ever  to  be  admitted  to  political  power.  Instead  of  trusting  them  with 
seats  in  Parliament,  they  ought  not  to  be  trusted  with  the  elective  fran- 
chise." 

"  Well,"  said  Landor  to  this,  "  I  dislike  and  avoid  all  politics.  But 
in  Ireland  the  errors  of  many  centuries  are  to  be  corrected.  The 
worst  of  these  was  omitting  to  extirpate  Romish  influence  when  it 
could  be  extirpated  easily,  as  in  England  and  in  Scotland.  The  death 
of  Cromwell,  usurper  as  he  was,  was  by  far  the  greatest  misfortune 
that  ever  befell  the  English  nation,  not  excepting  the  ministry  of 
Pitt.  How  very  interesting  even  still,  is  the  account  your  '  Master' 
Spenser  gives  of  Irish  affairs  in  his  times  !  I  have  often  turned  to  it, 
when  I  could  not  go  on  with  the  Faery  Queen" 

Southey  resumed  the  subject  the  following  May.  He  announced 
to  his  friend  on  the  25th  that  he  was  going  to  Holland  for  a  few 
weeks,  partly  to  attack  his  cough  by  change  of  air,  but  mainly  with 
the  object  of  seeking  for  books  relating  to  monastic  history. 

"For  I  am  at  war  with  the  Roman  Catholics  :  and  having  been  attacked 
by  Mr.  Butler,  who  writes  with  all  the  civility  and  deceitfulness  of  a  Jesuit, 
and  by  Milner,  who  breathes  fire  and  brimstone  like  a  Dominican  high  in 
the  Holy  Office,  I  am  about  to  prove,  in  the  teeth  of  these  persons  and  the 
rabble  who  are  raising  the  halloo  against  me,  that  the  Romish  religion  is  a 
system  of  imposture  and  wickedness.     Half  a  volume  of  my  Vindicice  is 


374  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  ^.J' 


printed.  You  may  suppose  what  work  I  make  among  the  Philistines,  hav- 
ing such  a  cause  to  defend,  and  in  my  unshorn  strength.  But  the  best  part 
of  the  book  will  be  the  historical  parts,  in  which  I  shall  treat  of  an  important 
portion  of  history,  and  throw  (if  I  am  not  mistaken)  a  strong  light  upon 
what  has  not  hitherto  been  philosophically  considered." 

To  this  Landor  replied  that  he  could  do  nothing  of  greater  impor- 
tance to  society,  though  almost  anything,  he  should  imagine,  more 
pleasurable  to  himself,  than  throwing  open  the  vile  impostures  of 
popery.  "  More  or  less  of  it  is  adopted  by  all  statesmen  who  can 
introduce  it.  On  this  conviction  I  have  sprinkled  as  much  antiseptic 
as  I  could  into  my  Conversations.  I  had  written  one  between  Penn 
and  Harrington.  It  must  have  been  too  long,  had  I  continued  it ; 
ami  rather  flat,  I  apprehend.  Unwilling  to  lose  all  I  had  said,  much 
of  which  was  remaining  in  my  mind,  I  have  written  another,  — 
between  Penn  and  Lord  Peterborough  ;  and  it  is  curious  that  I  did 
not  insert  a  single  thought  in  it  of  the  former,  though  I  began  for 
that  object.  The  life  of  Peterborough  would  be  a  fine  subject  for 
you.  We  have  nothing  like  him,  or  comparable  to  him.  He  must 
have  been  as  great  a  soldier  as  Mina,  and  he  was  much  more  than 
a  soldier."  "  Vixme  ipse  credens"  he  resumes  in  the  following  month, 
"  I  have  been  reading  a  second  time  your  Book  of  the  Church.  My 
hatred  of  frauds,  fallacies,  and  dissensions,  the  church-jackdaws,  I  did 
fancy  would  have  made  me  loath  to  approach  the  precincts.  Put  the 
constancy  of  our  reformers  was  always  an  object  of  admiration  and 
delight  to  me,  and  you  have  done  it  ample  justice."  The  same  sub- 
ject was  renewed  three  years  later,  when  Landor  thanked  him  for  his 
Letters  to  Charles  Butler,  and  "  the  noblest  eulogy  on  me  that  it  is 
possible  T  ever  can  receive  "  prefixed  to  them  ;  telling  him  that  with- 
out any  of  his  zeal  for  the  Church  of  England  he  felt  all  his  abhor- 
rence to  that  of  Pome,  and  suggesting  as  a  remedy  for  such  evils  as 
the  latter  inflicted  that  all  the  civil  distinctions  between  Roman  Cath- 
olic and  Protestant,  from  which  at  present  their  priesthood  derived 
its  power  over  their  laity,  should  at  once  be  removed.  There  was 
something  in  this  view  of  it,  though  not  even-thing. 

"  Without  any  of  your  zeal  for  the  Church  of  England,  I  feel  all  your  ab- 
horrence  to  that  of  Rome.  Every  page,  every  argument,  every  fact,  proves 
aloveof  truth  in  you.  Butler  seems  anxious  only  to  gain  his  cause  and 
exculpate  his  client  The  best  Roman  Catholics,  in  writing  for  religion, 
ran  nothing  for  veracity  and  everything  for  victory.  In  private  life,  in 
ordinary  ami  indifferent  affairs,  we  do  not  associate  with  men  who  keep  bad 
company;  tin'  Roman  Catholic,  in  the  most  momentous  and  most  solemn, 
clings  body  and  soul  upon  those  by  whom  not  only  whatever  is  loose  and 
foul  i>  tolerated  and  truckled  for,  but  who  open  sanctuaries  lor  the  assassin, 
ami  call  him  from  them  only  to  employ  him.  In  my  opinion  this  cursed 
pes!  is  only  to  be  vanquished  by  throwing  down  the  embankments  of  its 
stagnant  waters  am!  letting  them  run  off.     Remove  all  distinctions  between 

Roman  Catholic  ami  Protestant,  and  soon  will  the  laity  tic  weary  of  the 
clergy.  At  proem  they  meet  for  mutual  support  and  counsel;  these  being 
no  longer  necessary,  the  bond  will  loosen  and  rot  away.      Grant  them 


^ET.  47-53.]  THE    SOUTHEY    CORRESPONDENCE.  375 

everything ;  everything  at  once :  and  if  they  act  against  the  laws,  punish 
them  by  the  laws.  If  the  pope  incites  them  to  insurrection  or  disobedience, 
punish  him  as  you  would  do  any  other  prince  for  the  same  offence.  But  of 
this  there  is  no  danger.  Calculations  of  gain  and  interest  are  the  only 
movers  in  the  pontifical  court,  as  in  all  others.  Leo  XII.  believes  as  much 
in  the  verities  of  his  religion  as  his  predecessor  Caius  Julius  Caesar  in  those 
of  his.  It  is  a  known  fact  that  the  clergy  in  Italy  is  a  clergy  of  unbelievers. 
This  is  not  the  case  at  present  in  Ireland,  but  it  will  be  when  they  have 
nothing  else  to  do  than  to  say  mass.  Here,  the  pope  is  not  esteemed  either 
by  the  higher  clergy  or  the  lower.  A  prefect  in  a  school  said  to  me,  Siede, 
e  noi  alfri  sudiamo.  The  archbishop  of  Toronto  spoke  to  me  these  memor- 
able words,  La  corte  di  Roma  e  la  fucina  di  tutti  i  nostri  guai.  Above  a 
year  ag<  1  I  was  conversing  with  two  priests  here  in  Florence  on  the  Virgin 
Mary.  I  remarked  that,  whatever  gentleness  and  tenderness  she  might 
have  possessed,  we  saw  nothing  in  the  Scriptures  to  persuade  us  that  she  had 
so  much  of  either  as  her  Son  had.  One  of  them  said  to  the  other,  Vuol 
corbellarci  ;  then  turning  to  me,  Ma,  sa  ;  sono  spregiudicato  anch'  to.  Spre- 
giudicato always  means  '  unbelieving'  in  the  mouth  of  an  ecclesiastic." 

Lighter  subjects  also,  and  the  old  interchange  of  thoughts  on  mat- 
ters personal  to  themselves,  their  books  and  their  ways  of  life,  occu- 
pied the  letters ;  and  some  extracts  as  to  these  may  not  be  unamus- 
ing. 

The  year  of  Landor's  settlement  in  Florence  was  that  in  which  the 
Byron  and  Southey  quarrel  raged  fiercest.  Southey's  Vision  of  Judg- 
ment *  and  preface  had  called  forth  Byron's  Vision  and  preface  ;  the 
laureate's  eulogy  of  Landor,  in  the  poem  so  confidently  translating 
George  the  Third  into  heaven,  had  been  followed  by  his  antagonist's 
amusing  inquiry  whether  Landor  were  not  author  of  a  poem  as  con- 
fidently consigning  the  old  monarch  to  another  place  ;  f  and  the  carte 
and  tierce  of  rejoinder  and  reply  had  closed  in  Byron's  cartel  of  a 
more  mortal  defiance,  which  Douglas  Kinnaird  very  discreetly  declined 
to  deliver. 

To  Byron's  published  attack  on  Landor,  Southey  alludes  in  a  letter 
of  May,  1822,  and  says  he  rather  supposes,  after  the  advice  given 
him  in  reply,  that  he  will  not  meddle  with  either  of  them  again.  "  I 
saw  with  pleasure,"  is  Landor's  answer  (21st  June),  "your  victory 
over  Lord  Byron.  I  have  no  right  to  complain  of  him.  I  had  thrown 
slight  upon  him  by  avoiding  him,  and  I  had  pointed  him  out  to  con- 
tempt in  my  Dissertation.  You  will  find  some  ridicule  on  his  poetry, 
and  a  severe  sarcasm  on  his  principles,  in  two  different  parts  of  my 
dialogues."  But  without  seeing  these,  which  indeed  he  did  not  live 
to  see,  Byron  had  returned  to  the  attack  on  both  friends ;  and  in  the 
thirteenth  canto  of  Don  Juan,  which  he  was  now  writing  at  Pisa  and 

*  See  ante,  p.  288. 

t  See  ante,  p.  55.  The  editor  of  the  last  library  edition  of  Byron  (6  vols.  Murray, 
1855),  says  in  a  note  to  the  preface  of  his  Vision,  that  "  it  was  reported  of  Landor  that 
he  said  he  would  not,  or  could  not,  read  Lord  Byron's  works,  and  Lord  Byron  resolved 
to  retaliate  upon  the  works  of  Landor.  But  their  real  feelings  were  those  of  mutual 
esteem.  Lord  Byron  expressed  in  private  his  admiration  of  Mr.  Landor's  generosity 
and  independence,  of  his  profound  erudition  and  brilliant  talents;  and  the  poetry  of 
Lord  Byron  was  panegyrized  by  Mr.  Landor  in  his  Imaginary  Conversations." 


37G  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ' '?*  8V' 


which  Leigh  Hunt's  brother  published  in  London  towards  the  close 
of  1823,  had  discussed  the  various  pretenders  to  the  laurel. 

"  Some  persons  think  that  Coleridge  hath  the  sway, 
And  Wordsworth  1ms  supporters,  two  or  three; 
And  that  deep-mouthed  Boeotian  Savage  Landor 
lias  taken  for  a  swan  rogue  Southey's  gander." 

Landor  might  still  have  been  laughing  at  this,  which  did  not  reach 
him  till  the  following  April,  and  which  certainly  failed  in  moving  him 
to  any  sort  of  anger,  when  the  sad  intelligence  of  its  writer's  death 
was  announced  to  him  suddenly,  and  he  at  once  wrote  to  tell  Southey 
that  he  had  been  affected,  "  even  deeply  affected,"  by  the  untimely 
death  of  their  old  assailant.  "All  his  little  impertinences  against 
me  only  made  me  smile  ;  and  they  were  all  provoked.  His  exertions 
in  favor  of  the  Greeks  incited  me  to  send,  immediately  on  hearing  of 
his  death,  a  note  to  be  added  (I  forget  whether  to  the  character 
of  Mr.  George  Nelly,  in  case  of  a  new  edition,  or  to  the  last  pages)  in 
the  forthcoming  volume.  I  never  took  so  great  an  interest  in  any 
cause  as  that  of  the  Greeks,  and  if  I  had  at  the  present  time  two 
thousand  a  year  I  would  give  them  more  than  one."  To  everything 
else  in  that  letter  Southey  replied,  but  not  to  this.  Julius  Hare  had 
replied,  however,  as  soon  as  he  received  the  note,  to  say  how  much  it 
had  rejoiced  him,  and  how  the  sudden  news  of  Byron's  death  had 
made  him  grieve  that  at  that  very  moment  he  should  have  contrib- 
uted to  diffuse  such  an  attack  as  Landor  had  made  upon  him.* 

Another  subject  in  the  letters  that  appears  and  reappears  fre- 
quently is,  whether  or  not  the  friends  might  be  able  to  concoct 
between  them  a  history  of  their  own  times ;  a  history  that  would 
not  confound  them,  as  Landor  said  in  the  preface  to  one  of  his  vol- 
umes of  Conversations,  "  with  the  Coxes  and  Foxes  of  the  age."  This 
saying  reveals  something  of  what  the  history  might  have  been,  and 
we  may  be  thankful  that  the  attempt  was  not  made.  Southey  was 
not  opposed  to  it  at  first  ;  but  as  time  went  on  he  saw  clearly  that 
if  their  employment  was  to  be  history,  it  should  be  that  of  other 
times  rather  than  their  own.  He  put  the  matter  very  well  to  Landor 
in  telling  him  that  the  difference  was  not  greater  between  the  atmos- 

*  Influenced  by  Hazlitt,  whom  he  soon  afterwards  saw,  Landor  subsequently  pro- 
posed to  omit  this  note,  and  received  from  Hare  a  prompt  remonstrance  (April,  1825), 
whii  h.  differing  widely  as  1  do  from  what  is  said  in  it  of  Hazlitt,  1  think  very  honorable 
to  him.  "I  have  been  very  sorry  to  receive  in  your  recent  letters  directions  to  omit 
the  tine  note  about  Byron,  who,  whatever  his  worst  enemies  can  Bay,  had  ten  thousand 
times  more  good  feeling  and  more  principle  than  the  new  favorite  who  1ms  usurped  his 
place  in  your  laudatory  notes;  and  I  have  greatly  regretted  the  printing  an  eulogium 

Which  I  feel  assured  yOU  will  one  day  retract.     Had  you  read  mure  of  Hazlitt's  writings, 

I  think  you  could  not  speak  of  him  as  vim  have  done.  He  is  indeed  a  person  of  exceed- 
ing talents,  great  cleverness  and  ocuteness;  and  vet  1  think  it  would  he  difficult  to  find 
n  Single  good  sentence  in  all  his  works,  and  I  know  of  no  writer  of  any  merit  equally 
liable  to  your  favorite  criticisms  mi  inaccuracy  of  expression.  That  note  will  lie  a 
strange  contradiction  to  all  the  rest  of  the  three  volumes:  and  I  wish  much  it  were  not 
to  find  a  place  in  them."  The  result  was  that  the  note  eulogistic  of  Byron  was  re- 
Stored,  and  the  praise  of  Hazlitt  was  restricted  here  to  a  complimentary  mention  of  his 
Sjiirit  of  the  Age. 


^T.  47-53-]  THE   SOUTHEY    CORRESPONDENCE,  377 

phere  on  a  fine  summer's  day  on  the  top  of  one  of  their  Cumberland 
mountains  and  the  same  air  in  the  crowded  London  streets,  than 
between  his  dialogues  on  past  and  on  present  times.  The  retort 
might  have  been  made  that  this  was  unavoidable,  and  that  in  reality 
the  past  is  better  seen  at  its  calm  distance  than  the  present  in  its 
nearness  and  noise  ;  but  against  selection  of  such  a  subject  the  argu- 
ment was  a  good  one.  "  When  you  are  consubstantiating  yourself," 
said  Southey,  "  with  Lucullus,  or  Cicero,  or  Isaac  Casaubon,  every 
thought  and  feeling  are  such  as  you  are  the  better  for  having  enter- 
tained and  uttered ;  and  others  are  the  better  and  the  happier  for 
partaking  them.  I  should  like  dearly  to  see  such  a  history  of  Rome 
as  you  and  you  only  could  write  from  the  commencement  of  Augus- 
tus's reign  to  the  end  of  the  Antonines."  To  himself  the  temptation 
of  trying  his  hand  neai-er  home  was  brought  close  to  him  in  1829, 
when  the  government  sounded  him  as  to  his  disposition  to  write  a 
history  of  the  American  war  from  the  English  point  of  view,  as  Jared 
Sparks  had  then  begun  to  do  from  the  American,  our  state  papers 
being  opened  to  him  for  the  purpose.  But  he  declined  because  of 
other  tasks.  "  I  wish,"  wrote  Landor  when  he  heard  of  it,  "  you  had 
been  induced  to  undertake  the  history  of  our  times,  beginning  from 
the  American  war.  You  and  myself  *  are  the  only  men  capable  of 
so  great  a  work  ;  and  you  rather  than  I,  from  more  practice,  more 
coolness,  more  patience,  and  some  other  causes.  It  was  the  work  I 
had  destined  to  accomplish  as  my  last  and  greatest ;  but  it  can  only  be 
done  in  England."  Yet  how  little  of  the  calm  and  equable  temper 
of  history  either  of  them  would  have  brought  to  such  undertakings, 
we  may  judge  from  what  had  passed  between  them  two  years  earlier, 
when  the  news  had  reached  Keswick  of  Lord  Liverpool's  disablement 
for  further  public  service,  and  they  interchanged  thoughts  about  the 
statesman  whose  way  to  the  highest  office  it  had  opened.  Southey 
remarks  to  Landor  that  in  his  judgment  it  would  be  fortunate  for 
Canning's  reputation  if  his  broken  health  should  prevent  him  from 
taking  possession  of  the  premiership,  "  for  which  he  has  long  been 
scheming,  if  he  is  not  belied."  In  spite  of  his  brilliancy  of  talent, 
and  of  personal  good  qualities  that  made  him  liked  wherever  he  was 
known,  nobody,  according  to  Southey,  would  have  the  remotest  con- 
fidence in  him.  To  which  Landor,  whose  favorite  aversion  poor 
Canning  always  was,  made  eager  reply  in  March. 

"  What  you  say  about  Canning  is  no  doubt  well  founded.  Every  rogue  of  a 
statesman  is  much  beloved  by  his  friends:  Pitt  was:  Fox  was:  Windham  was: 
Sheridan  was.  These,  however,  all  yield  to  Canning  in  roguery,  as  much  as 
they  yield  to  him  in  abilities.  Not  that  I  value  his  at  any  great  rate ;  but 
he  has  infinitely  more  than  they  had.  Castlereagh  never  had  rendered  him 
any  material  service,  and  he  labored  to  supplant  him  from  the  first  moment 
he  acted  with  him ;  but  Lord  Liverpool  made  him  what  he  is,  and  he  would 

*  As  far  back  as  1810  (see  ante,  p.  148)  he  had  expressed  to  Southey  his  own  desire 
to  undertake  it. 


378  THE    IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  ^-J"- 


treal  Lord  Liverpool  as  he  treated  Castlereagh.  I  believe  he  lied,  as  usual, 
in  saying  he  had  received  a  letter  from  Burke  on  the  commercial  crash  with 
which  the  country  was  threatened  unless  it  changed  its  system.  If  he  had 
received  this  letter,  why  did  he  keep  it  in  his  pocket  for  twenty  years  with- 
out ever  mentioning  it?  Why  did  he  not  show  it  to  Pitt,  ami  the  other 
members  of  the  cabinet?  Why  did  not  he  himself  act  upon  it?  Why  did 
he  not  represent  to  his  commercial  friends  at  Liverpool  the  danger  they 
were  in,  supported  as  his  opinion  must  have  been  by  the  authority  of  Burke? 
In  fact,  Windham  said  in  the  presence  of  my  brother  Arden,  at  your  friend 
Legge's,  as  he  may  remember,  that  Burke  thought  Canning  a  young  man  of 
great  abilities,  but  rather  a  speaker  than  a  statesman,  and  wanting  both  pre- 
cision and  dignity.  I  am  not  quite  certain  that  precision  was  the  word:  in 
the  rest  I  am  exact,  Now  Windham  would  be  guilty  of  any  vile  action  but 
a  lie,  and  was  less  jealous  than  any  man  ever  was  who  was  so  vain.  Be- 
sides, he  never  doubted  of  his  superiority  over  Canning." 

That  Landor's  interest  in  his  friend's  poetry  continued  to  animate 
his  letters,  it  is  of  course  needless  to  say.  Introducing  Captain 
Shadwell  Clerke  to  him  in  March,  1824,  he  described  the  gallant  gen- 
tleman as  hardly  less  enthusiastic  than  himself  on  the  Roderick,  and 
as  having  declared  (a  fact  not  publicly  known  till  several  years  later) 
that  Byron  himself  had  pronounced  it  to  be  the  "first  poem  of  the 
time."  At  the  close  of  his  letter,  after  saying  that  his  children  are 
well  and  begin  to  talk  English,  he  asks  Southey  to  tell  him  every- 
thing he  can  think  of  about  his,  and  about  himself  too,  —  excepting 
that  if  he  had  relaxed  in  the  New  England  poem  he  was  not  to  say 
it,  his  own  hopes  having  been  fixed  upon  it  so  long.  The  captain 
was  returning  in  September,  and  would  bring  it  with  him  if  it  should 
be  printed.  To  such  pleasant  personal  themes  Southey  readily  re- 
sponded always.  He  had  written  on  the  29th  of  February,  1824,* 
to  report  himself  going  on  with  the  second  volume  of  his  Peninsular 
War  and  bis  Tale  of  Paraguay,  and  his  little  boy  as  just  beginning  to 
learn  the  Greek  alphabet.  He  now,  on  the  14th  of  the  next  August, 
thanks  Landor  for  the  letter  brought  by  Captain  Clerke;  tells  him 
that  his  little  boy  is  old  enough  to  have  begun  upon  the  Latin  gram- 
mar, being  now  in  his  sixth  year  ;  and  adds  that  he  had  himself  com- 
pleted, on  the  previous  Thursday,  his  own  fiftieth  year.  Landor  re- 
plied to  this  in  November.  Wordsworth's  last  letter,  he  told  him, 
had  mentioned  his  daughters  and  spoken  of  their  beauty  raptur- 
ously.!    "  The   gravest  and  most  philosophical  father  must  be  de- 

*  It  may  be  as  well  to  mention  that  mutilated  portions  of  this  appear  in  the  lift  and 
Li  Hi  is  (III.  115)  under  the  mistaken  date  of  1822,  the  editor  supposing  the  allusions  to 
the  Concertations  contained  in  it  to  have  referred  to  "a  work  or  Mr.  Landor's  on  the 
writings  of  »  iharles  Fox,"  I  take  the  opportunity  of  adding  that  all  the  letters  of  either 
friend  quoted  in  this  Becond  volume,  a~  in  my  first,  are  here  printed  for  the  first  time. 
There  are  no  repetitions,  excepting  in  a  few  lines  here  and  there  embodied  in  my  nar- 
rative, of  matter  already  in  print. 

t  Other  little  personal  aoti may  he  worth  subjoining.     At  the  close  of  one  of  his 

letters  (21st  June,  L822)  he  grieves  at  what  Southey  has  told  him  of  an  accident  to 
Wordsworth  in  riding;  Bays  he  was  very  fond  of  that  exercise  when  young,  but  found 
it  dangerous  from  the  habit  of  forgetfulness  it  induced;  has  heard  Chantrey's  works 
praised  highly,  and  hopes  he  will  leave  a  bust  of  Southey  to  rank  with  that  of  Words- 


JET.  47-53.]  THE   SOUTHEY    CORRESPONDENCE.  379 

lighted  at  this.  Cuthbert  will  be  the  great  occupation  and  great  sat- 
isfaction of  A'our  life.  The  only  thing  in  mine  for  which  I  am 
indebted  to  fortune  is  that  my  son  is  born  rather  late  in  it,  so  that  we 
may  amuse  each  other.  To  see  the  happiness  of  children  was  always 
to  me  the  first  of  all  happiness.  How  pure  and  brilliant  is  it  in 
them  !  how  soon  it  runs  over  the  brink,  and  among  what  shouts  and 
transports  !  Whenever  my  opinion  is  different  from  yours,  I  suspect 
and  am  almost  persuaded  I  am  wrong.  You  teach  Cuthbert  gram- 
mar. -All  the  woes  I  have  suffered  are  nothing  to  what  I  suffered  in 
learning  grammar  and  arithmethic*  Of  the  latter  I  know  little 
still,  according  to  the  process  in  use  ;  and  of  the  Greek  grammar  I 
knew  so  little  at  seventeen  that  I  read  over  the  Port  Royal  yearly  for 
more  than  twenty  years.  My  wife's  brother  is  going  to  England,  and 
she  hesitates  between  her  younger  child  and  her  family  there.  But 
having  one  sister  just  married, t  and  another  going  to  India  in  the 
spring,  and  about  to  be  married  to  Mr.  Ravenshaw,  the  son  of  a  di- 
rector, I  think  it  likely  she  will  go.  I  neither  persuade  it  nor  oppose  it, 
but  I  shall  be  very  unhappy  without  the  two  children  she  takes  with  her. 
I  never  thought  that  you  were  older  than  me,  which  it  appears  you  are 
by  about  six  months.  I  shall  be  50  the  thirtieth  of  January.  We  may 
both  reasonably  hope  to  see  our  children  men,  but  1  would  rather 
see  mine  a  child  than  lord  chancellor.  .  .  .  You  say  that  when  you 
have  escaped  from  the  difficult  stanza  in  the  Tale  of  Paraguay  you 
shall  feel  like  a  race-horse  let  loose.  The  racer  I  am  certain  has  been 
loose  all  the  while,  and  as  spirited  as  he  ever  was  in  the  vales  and 
mountains  of  Asturias.  I  wish  to  put  my  hand  upon  him  in  this 
stanza." 

On  the  11th  of  November,  1824,  Landor  thanked  him  for  his 
Vision  of  Judgment. 

"  The  4th  of  this  month  I  received  your  Vision  of  Judgment,  which  I  read 
through  too  fast,  as  I  am  apt  to  do,  and  always  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  what 
I  ought,     I  never  could  bring  myself  to  read  slowly  what  delighted  me.     I 

worth;  gives  Southey  a  great  many  hints  of  domestic  medicine,  by  which  his  little  boy 
may  be  saved  from  bilious  attacks  without  resort  to  the  "  fashionable  poison  calomel  " ; 
and  gives  good  account  of  the  health  of  his  two  children.  "  A  very  wise  man,  Mr. 
Mogg,  told  me  that  he  was  wretchedly  bilious,  and  that  by  drinking  a  glass  of  cold 
water  for  breakfast,  instead  of  tea,  he  could  digest  anything.  There  is  nothing  less 
trifling  than  these  apparently  trifling  pieces  of  information."  He  adds  that  the  heat  in 
Florence  had  been  beyond  all  precedent.  "  Seven  horses  have  fallen  down  dead,  rest- 
ing in  the  streets,  within  four  days.  I  had  this  from  Dr.  Cassini,  who  lost  one,  on  the 
shady  side  of  the  road."  And  he  ends  by  telling  Southey  that  certain  books  he  was 
about  to  send  would  find  him  if  directed  Palazzo  Medici  Tornaquinti,  in  which  house 
he  should  "  probably  end  his  days."  In  another  letter  (6th  January,  1825),  after  say- 
ing that  Wordsworth  does  not  tell  him  whether  he  goes  on  with  his  great  work,  he  adds 
what  he  calls  another  trifling  no-trifle.  "  It  appears  to  me  by  no  means  a  difficult  thing 
to  write  without  a  great  exertion  of  the  eyes;  and  a  gray  or  bluish  paper  may  be 
chosen,  which  is  of  considerable  importance  to  those  who  write  much." 

*  See  ante,  pp.  8  and  13. 

t  To  "  Major-General  Stopford,  adjutant-general  in  the  army  of  Columbia,"  to 
whom  Landor  had  just  dedicated  the  first  volume  of  the  Conversations.  Between  him 
and  the  Stopfords  the  most  affectionate  relations  were  maintained  to  the  very  last,  un- 
interrupted and  unabated. 


380  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  l?£?-J' 


resolved,  on  the  first  reading,  to  lay  it  aside  for  an  entire  week.  My  second 
reading  (of  this  morning)  was  as  slow  and  deliberate  as  I  could  make  ir. 
Never  did  I  suppose  it  possible  to  give  such  harmony  to  English  hex- 
ameters. The  last  line  in  the  first  page  stopped  me;  nor  can  I  scan  it,  unless 
you  admit  three  spondees  at  the  close.  In  p.  28  you  have  made  the  third 
syllable  of  diaphanous  long.  It  is  not  so  in  English  or  Greek,  <paivto.  ecpavov. 
In  prose  the  accent  of  similar  compounds,  and  many  others,  is  on  the  second 
s\  liable,  such  as  uvdfiacns-  Its  derivation  from  @aiva)  gives  it  no  prerogative. 
In  p.  34,  4th  line,  I  should  read  more  easily  if  and  were  taken  from  the 
beginning.  I  think  you  are  somewhat  partial  in  admitting  Taylor  and  ex- 
cluding Barrow.  In  p.  39  I  am  doubtful  whether  I  read  as  I  should  do, 
'That  its  tribute  of  honor,  poor,'  &c.  You  surely  do  not  make  |  honor 
poor  j  a  dactyl;  and  yet.  unless  you  do,  the  caesura  is  wrong.  I  have  seen 
another  (and  thought  I  had  marked  it  with  my  pencil)  where  the  caesura 
seemed  to  me  amiss.  You  have  overcome  what  I  should  have  conceived  to 
be  insuperable  ditliculties.  With  all  my  practice  in  Latin  heroic  verse, 
having  written  at  least  ten  thousand,  I  am  certain  I  could  not  have  written 
any  one  page  of  your  Vision  of  Judgment.  The  only  Latin  metre  I  ever 
tried  in  English  is  the  sapphic.  This  is  extremely  easy.  When  I  was  at 
Rugby  I  wrote  a  vast  number,  and  some  few  at  Oxford.  .  .  .*  Our  own 
heroic  metre  is  so  admirable  as  you  manage  it,  that  I  am  sorry  you  exerted 
your  powers  in  the  Latin,  astonished  as  I  am  at  your  success.  For  I  am 
certain  that  nine  in  ten  who  read  poetry  with  delight  would  have  read  this 
With  greater,  if  you  had  not  leapt  from  your  own  summit  of  the  mountain 
to  the  other. 

"  I  receive  no  letter  from  any  literary  friend  in  which  there  are  not  some 
inquiries  whether  I  know  what  you  are  doing.  I  can  reply  to  this  more 
easily  than  to  your  magnificent  eulogy  on  me  in  your  preface.  The  printer 
has  been  twice  incorrect  in  the  quotation  :  nescio  quid  ac  vere  epicum  is  the 
reading,  I  think,  and  procuderet." 

To  this  on  the  11th  of  December  Southcy  replied  ;  and  what  his 
letter  says  of  poetical  measures,  of  his  reasons  for  preferring  the 
hexameter  over  both  the  Spenserian  stanza  and  the  heroic  blank  verse, 
and  of  a  subject  proposed  by  him  for  a  new  poem  not  elsewhere 
named  in  his  letters,  will  justify  its  preservation. 

"My  Book  of  Up  Church  and  the  first  volume  of  the  Peninsular  War 
ought  to  have  reached  von  by  the  same  conveyance  with  the  Vision  of 
Judgment,  Murray  having  been  desired  to  send  them  to  your  publisher  at 
the  same  time  that  Longman  despatched  the  others,  if  they  have  not 
reached  you,  let  me  know,  that  they  may  be  sent  with  your  third  volume. 
The  misprints  in  the  quotation  from  your  essay  vexed  me  when  I  saw 
them       Your  book  arrived  when  the  proof-sheet  was  before  me.      I  inserted 

the  note  in  ,-i  hand  bo  legible  that  I  thought  it  might  safely  be  trusted,  ami 
therefore  did  not  require  a  revise  of  the  sheet.  But  printers  make  wicked 
work,  even  when  they  are  not  trusted.  The  line  in  the  first,  page  at  which 
you  stumbled  was  ruined  by  their  dropping  a  letter  at  the  press  after  the 
sheet  had  been  corrected,  to  the  destruction  of  the  metre.  Grlaramara  is  the 
name  of  the  mountain.      The  nml  at  p.  34    is  redundant,  and  only  inserted 

to  lessen  a  little  tin-  catalogue-like  appearance  of  a  lisl  of  names.    The  other 

two  lines  I  read  thus:  — 

'Pure  it  |  was  and  di  |  aphanous.  |  Tt  had  no  |  visible  lustre. 
That  its  |  tribute  of  |  honor  |  poor  though  it  |  be  was  withholden.' 

*  See  ante,  p.  17,  for  some  lines  here  omitted. 


JET.  47-53]  THE   SOUTHEY   CORRESPONDENCE.  381 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  writing  English  hexameters  upon  the  principles  of 
adaptation  on  which  I  proceeded.  They  are  not  more  difficult  than  blank 
verse,  and  infinitely  easier  than  the  complicated  stanza  of  Spenser ;  which 
I  shall  never  again  attempt  when  my  present  task  is  over,  on  account  of  the 
time  that  it  costs  me.  I  am  not  so  certain  that  I  may  not  write  in  hex- 
ameters again,  a  little  perhaps  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  against  the 
multitude  what  I  know  to  be  a  right  opinion ;  but  more  because  the  charac- 
ter of  a  poem  is  greatly  modified  by  the  metre  in  which  it  is  cast.  A  new 
measure  leads  to  new  combinations  of  language,  and  prevents  all  danger  of 
repeating  one's  self,  of  which  there  would  be  some  were  I  to  write  another 
long  poem  in  blank  verse.  I  think  (it  is  as  yet  a  mere  thought)  of  a  Portu- 
guese subject,  —  the  first  deliverance  of  Portugal  from  the  Castilians : 
tempted  to  it  by  the  character  of  Nuno  Alvarez,  from  whom  I  verily  believe 
that  of  Amadis  was  drawn,  and  by  the  circumstance  that  his  elder  brother 
(a  most  excellent  man)  took  the  other  side.  I  know  of  no  subject  which 
would  afford  two  characters  so  striking  in  themselves  and  so  strikingly 
opposed." 

None  other  of  Southey's  books  reported  in  that  last  letter  as  on 
their  way  had  arrived,  when  Landor  replied  on  the  Gth  January, 
1825.  He  was  most  anxious  to  see  the  Colloquies,  he  now  told  him, 
and  he  hoped  he  would  abandon  his  idea  of  writing  a  larger  poem  in 
hexameters.  "The  Latin  heroic  verse  never  will  give  the  same 
pleasure,  whatever  may  be  the  wonder  and  admiration  it  excites,  as 
your  own  in  Roderick,  to  any  man  whatever ;  and  to  an  immense  ma- 
jority of  readers  its  harmony  will  be  in  great  part  lost.  Be  con-' 
tented  with  having  done  what  no  other  man  coidd  do,  and  with  hav- 
ing proved  what  hardly  any  one  could  have  believed."  On  the  25th 
of  the  following  May,  Southey  wrote  again  to  say  that  at  last  he  was 
at  press  with  the  Tale  of  Paraguay,  that  it  was  to  be  published 
next  month  if  not  delayed  by  the  engraving  of  the  plates  proposed 
to  be  given  with  it,  and  that  Landor  should  at  once  receive  it.  He 
added  that  Cuthbert  and  his  sisters  were  going  on  well,  but  that  he 
was  himself  the  worse  for  the  heat,  was  going  to  Holland  for  a  month 
to  set  up,  and  hoped  to  "return  in  tolerable  repair.  "  I  am  heartily 
glad,"  replied  Landor  (5th  July,  1825),  "  to  have  so  good  an  account 
of  your  family,  and  wish  that  you  yourself  were  nothing  the  worse  for 
wear :  but  as  the  world  is  and  will  be  the  better  for  it,  we  must 
strike  the  balance  with  equanimity.  But  surely  it  is  time  now  to 
consider  health  and  ease  above  all  other  things,  and  to  make  applica- 
tion a  mere  habit,  which,  even  as  such,  ought  to  slacken  as  we  ad- 
vance in  years.  Francis  Hare  dined  with  me  yesterday ;  and  was 
here  a  few  minutes  ago,  just  when  I  was  at  the  post-office.  He  will 
think  himself  most  fortunate  to  be  at  Florence  when  your  books 
come.  I  hardly  know  whether  to  congratulate  you  on  having  com- 
pleted the  Tale  of  Paraguay.  Nothing  is  so  delightful  as  the  pro- 
gress of  such  a  work.  However,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  comple- 
tion of  printing  a  thing  is  among  the  foremost  subjects  of 
congratulation ." 

In  all  the  letters  of  the  friends,  which  have  indeed  no  pleasanter 


382  THE  IMAGINARY  CONVERSATIONS.  [?sZ-.i' 

passages,  their  families  of  books  and  children  alternate  in  the  confi- 
dences thus  interchanged  between  them.  "Till  we  become  parents." 
Southey  wrote  in   1823  (8th  -May),  "we  know  not  the  treasures  of 

our  own  nature  ;  and  what  we  then  discover  may  make  us  believe 
that  there  are  yet  latent  affections  and  faculties  which  another  state 
of  existence  may  develop."  The  remark  originated  a  very  beautiful 
passage  in  the  dialogue  of  the  Ciceros,  the  first  draft  of  which  Lan- 
dor  had  just,  sent  over.  "I  am  delighted,"  he  says  (31st  May), 
"  with  your  observation  on  the  pleasure  we  derive  from  our  children.* 
It  induced  me  to  remember  that  I  had  not  attributed  to  Cicero  what 
I  should  have  done  on  this  occasion.  After  the  sentence  on  the 
pleasure  of  meeting  his  friends  in  a  future  state,  I  would  add,  Arc." 
The  addition  made,f  he  continues  :  "  Before  I  wrote  this  conversation, 
I  would  on  no  account  open  Plato.  I  have  since  read  twice  over  his 
dialogue  of  Socrates,  and  am  not  so  discouraged  as  I  might  have 
been.  1  have  given  Cicero  his  variety,  and  his  rambling  from  topic 
to  topic,  ever  pardonable  in  a  conversation  between  two  ;  but  the  few 
touches  of  paternal  tenderness  I  now  give  were  wanting,  and  1  should 
have  passed  many  sleepless  nights  at  the  faultiness  of  my  work  if  I 
had  omitted  them.  For  I  have  attempted  in  every  conversation  to 
give  not  only  one  opinion  of  the  speakers,  but  enough  to  show  their 
character." 

Replying  to  former  kindly   inquiries   in   that  same   year.  Southey 
had  told  his  friend  that  Time  was  setting  his  mark  upon  him,  but 

*  "You  saynothing,"  he  remark'  in  a  subsequent  lottcr  (5th  January,  1825),  "about 
Cuthbert.  I  wish  always  to  hear,  not  only  of  bis  health,  but  of  his  studies;  since,  if  I 
lay  down  any  plan,  which  I  ought  to  do,  for  Arnold,  I  would  wish  to  follow  yours.  Tell 
me  whether  you  employ  a  grammar  in  teaching  the  Latin,  and  what.  At  present  I 
have  thought  only  of  the  English  and  Italian:  and  proposed  to  add  the  French  while  the 
organs  arc  flexible.  I  began  with  it  at  eleven  or  twelve,  and  yet  I  never  could  pro- 
nounce it  quite  correctly,  although  I  have  resided  at  two  different  times  nearly  two 
yea^s  in  France." 

t  The  reader  will  not  be  sorry  that  I  should  subjoin  a  portion  of  this  addition  here. 

I  copy  it  from  the  letter,  which  docs  not  differ  from  tne  passages  as  printed.    "The 

pleasure  a  man  receives  from  his  children  resembles  that  which,  with  more  propriety 

than  any  i  may  attribute  to  the  Divinity:  for  to  suppose  that  his  chief  satis- 

■II  and  delight  should  arise  from  the  contemplation  of  what  he  has  done  or  can  do. 

is  to  place  him  on  a  level  with  a  runner  or  a  wrestler \nd  yet,  ah  Quinctus! 

there  i-  a  tear  that  Philosophy  cannot  dry.  and  a  pang  that  will  rise  as  we  approach 
the  Gods.  Two  things  tend  beyond  all  others,  after  philosophy,  to  inhibit  and  check 
(.nr  ruder  passions  a-  they  grow  and  swell  in  us.  and  to  keep  our  gentler  in  their  proper 
play;  and  these  two  things  are,  seasonable  sorrow  and  inoffensive  pleasure,  each  mod- 
sly  indulged.  ...  If  ever  you  have  remembered  the  anniversary  of  some  day 
whereon  a  dear  friend  was  l"-t  to  you,  tell  me  whether  that  anniversary  was  not  purer 
an<l  even  calmer  than  the  day  before.  .  .  .  When  my  Tulliola  was  torn  away  from  me, 
a  thousand  plans  were  in  readiness  for  immortalizing  her  memory,  and  raising  a  monu- 
ment up  to  the  magnitude  of  my  grief.  The  grief  itself  has  done  it.  .  .  .  The  Gods, 
who  have  given  us  our  affections,  permit  us  surely  the  uses  and  the  signs  of  them. 

Immoderate  grief,  like  everything  else  inn lerate,  is  useless  and  pernicious;  but  if  we 

did  not  tolerate  and  endure  it,  it'  we  did  not  prepare  tor  it,  meet  it,  commune  with  it,  if 
we  .lid  not  even  cherish  it  in  it-  season,  much  of  what  is  best  in  our  faculties,  much  of 
our  tenderness,  much  of  our  generosity,  much  of  our  patriotism,  much  also  of  our 
genius,  would  be  stifled  and  extinguished.  When  I  hear  any  one  call  upon  another  to  be 
manly  and  to  re-train  hi-  tears,  if  they  flow  from  the  social  and  the  kind  affections,  I 
doubt  the  humanity  and  distrust  the  wisdom  of  the  counsellor." 


JET.  47-S3-]         THE  SOUTHEY  CORRESPONDENCE.  383 

laid  his  hand  gently ;  having  as  yet  taken  nothing  from  him  but  the 
inclination  for  writing  poetry,  though  an  annual  catarrh  had  for  some 
years  severely  shaken  him.  To  this  Landor  now  rejoined  that  he 
could  not  consent  to  attribute  to  time  the  disinclination  Southey  felt 
at  present  to  write  poetry.  That  inclination,  he  suspected,  was  peri- 
odical and  not  regular.  History,  of  all  things,  was  the  most  un- 
friendly to  it,  —  worse  than  geometry.  "  That  catarrh  of  yours 
might  be  cured  forever  by  a  few  months'  residence  here  in  Tuscany. 
I  have,  an  immense  palace,  with  warm  and  cold  baths,  and  everything 
desirable.  Why  not  come  over  ]  We  will  visit  Vallombrosa  and 
other  delightful  places  together.  Here  are  several  public  libraries, 
cool  and  quiet ;  and  you  will  find  the  most  perfect  fi'eedom  from  all 
interruption  both  within  and  without." 

Two  years  later  (27th  September,  1825)  there  are  other  references 
to  this  palazzo  and  to  his  life  in  Italy,  which  may  be  thought  per- 
haps worth  preserving.  The  old  mingled  yarn  is  in  them.  They 
tell  us  of  sickness  and  idleness  :  of  another  child  born  to  him  (the 
last) ;  of  a  general  intolerance  of  talking  creatures,  with  much  kindly 
tolerance  of  the  dumb  creation  ;  of  an  ever-boiling  indignation 
against  actual  or  imaginary  enemies  of  freedom  ;  of  troubles  rising 
from  other  heats  besides  his  own  ;  of  the  consciousness  (founded  on 
nothing  particular)  that  by  the  rulers  alike  of  Italy  and  England  he 
is  marked  out  for  persecution  ;  and  of  his  grim  satisfaction  in  feeling 
that  he  is  no  contemptible  man  who  can  have  managed  to  exclude 
from  every  kind  of  preferment  in  the  state  not  only  his  chattering 
children  then  in  the  next  room  to  him,  but  his  posterity  to  the  latest 
descendants  ! 

"I  have  been  doing  nothing  for  some  time,  not  even  reading ;  for  my 
annual  quinsey  returned  upon  me  and  confined  me  eleven  days,  being  fol- 
lowed, as  usual,  by  a  bilious  fever.  This  affects  the  eyes,  and  indisposes 
one  from  books.  On  the  1st  of  last  month  I  had  another  son,  born  unhap- 
pily at  seven  months,  yet  doing  well  and  even  strong.  The  English  here 
talk  of  one  of  our  vessels  having  been  detained  by  the  Austrian  squadron 
before  Mesolungi.*  Some  say  it  was  a  merchant-ship,  laden  with  stores  ; 
others  that  it  was  a  brig  of  war.  0  for  Lord  Cochrane  with  a  couple  of 
frigates  under  the  arsenal  of  Venice  !  But  every  Christian  power  is  friendly 
to  Turkey  and  hostile  to  Greece.  Freedom  is  the  only  bad  thins-  in  their 
eyes ;  to  destroy  which  they  care  little  for  making  the  people  indifferent  to 
the  religion  of  their  country,  and  persuaded  that  any  other  is  as  good,  if 
not  better. 

"  How  have  I  envied  you  the  coolness  of  your  lake  and  mountains  all 
this  summer !  I  have  a  delicious  marble  bath  adjoining  my  bedroom  ;  but 
the  water  was  almost  as  warm  as  the  air.  My  favorite  walk  along  the  Arno 
has  also  been  rendered  impracticable.  The  police  has  issued  an  order  for 
killing  all  stray  dogs ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  walk  upon  the  banks  of  the 
river  without  seeing  those  creatures  rolling  down,  which  perhaps  at  the  same 
hour  the  day  before  were  displaying  so  much  happiness  and  fondness  and 
fidelity.     My  children  in  the  next  room  are  chattering  French,  and  contend- 

*  Missolonghi. 


384  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  [^?-K,7' 


1822  -  28. 


ing  in  Italian  on  the  propriety  of  each  other's  expressions.  You  are  right 
to  teach  Cuthbert  Latin.  The  learned  languages  will  be  of  little  or  no  use 
to  my  children.  They  and  my  latest  descendants  will  be  excluded  from 
every  kind  of  preferment  in  the  state.  I  am  no  contemptible  man  who 
Lave  insured  all  this." 

Let  me  add  that  parcels  of  books  are  continually  interchanged,  the 
arrivals  being  sadly  irregular,  and  the  losses  occasionally  great. 
Everything  of  Southey's  and  Wordsworth's,  with  others  they  thought 
likely  to  interest  their  friend,  went  out  to  Florence;  bounteous  are 
the  returns  in  kind  from  Landor  of  old  books  picked  up  in  Italy  ;  and 
of  frequent  recurrence,  in  the  letters  from  England  of  both  friends, 
are  complaints  of  delay  or  miscarriage,  sometimes  of  total  loss,  and 
(from  Wordsworth  oftcner  than  Southey)  of  damage  from  salt  water. 
"  I  am  truly  sensible  of  your  kindness,"  wrote  Wordsworth  at  the 
close  of  1823,  "  as  testified  by  the  agreeable,  and  allow  me  to  say 
valuable,  present  of  books  from  your  hand  ;  but  you  will  be  mortified 
to  hear,  as  I  was  bitterly  vexed,  that  some  of  them  have  been  en- 
tirely spoilt  by  the  salt  water,  and  scarcely  one  has  escaped  injury. 
The  two  volumes  de  Re  Rusticd  in  particular,  which  I  did  not  possess 
and  had  often  wished  to  consult,  are  sorely  damaged,  the  binding 
detached  from  the  book,  the  leaves  stained  and  I  fear  rotted.  The 
venerable  Bible  is  in  the  same  state;  indeed,  all  to  pieces.  These 
are  such  unpleasant  facts  that  I  doubt  whether  I  ought  not  to  have 
suppressed  them.  You  promise  me  a  beautiful  copy  of  Dante  ;  but 
I  ought  to  mention  that  I  possess  the  Parma  folio  of  1795,  much  the 
grandest  book  on  my  shelves,  presented  to  me  by  our  common  friend 
Mr.  Kenyon,  who,  by  the  by,  is  happily  married  since  I  last  wrote 
to  you,  and  has  taken  up  his  residence  at  Bath." 

Southey  was  more  fortunate  in  receiving  safely  what  had  been  sent 
to  him,  though  by  the  same  ship  ;  for  in  a  letter  of  nearly  the  same 
date  he  tells  Landor  that  he  found  the  box  of  books  on  his  return, 
and  they  had  escaped  all  damage  from  the  seas.  "As  yet  I  have 
only  had  time  to  place  them  upon  my  shelves,  and  to  see  that  many 
of  them  are  very  curious."  His  following  letter  is  filled  with  partic- 
ulars of  a  lost  parcel  sent  from  England  ;  *  but  in  that  which  succeeds 
he  lias  again,  while  Wordsworth  makes  further  complaint,  to  congrat- 
ulate himself  "that  the  books  you  sent  me  were  lucky  enough  to 
escape  all  injury."  There  is  a  fate  in  such  things  ;  and  though  boxes 
of  books  might  stray  into  other  houses  meanwhile,  they  were  sure  to 

*  u  It  is  quite  unaccountable  what  became  of  the  books  which  were  sent  with  the 
Vision  of  Judgment.  There  were  Humboldt's  Personal  Narrative  ami  Researches,  the 
former  five  vols,  in  six,  the  latter  two;  Wordsworth's  Memorial  of  a  Tour  on  (he  Con- 
tinent and  his  Ecclesiastical  Sketches ;  my  own  Bonk  of  the  Church  nud  the  first  volume 
of  the  Peninsular  War,  with  a  little  volume  of  Odes  and  the  "Expedition  of  Organ. 
They  were  sent  by  Longman,  and  received  byTaylor.  Thus  far  is  ascertained;  and 
Taylor's  people  Bay  they  were  pinked  with  the  Vision  of  Judgment.  I  have  a  note  1  ><•- 
fore  me  from  Jackson  and  Sons  saying  that  the  case  was  Bhipt  on  the  Agenora,  Captain 
GreenwelL,  which  vessel  was  consigned  to  Messrs.  Grant,  Pillans,  and  Co.,  of  Leghorn; 
and  to  that  house  they  refer  you  for  information." 


•» 


JET.  47-S3-]  THE    SOUTHEY    CORRESPONDENCE.  385 

find  their  way  to  Southey's  at  last.  "  He"  wrote  "Wordsworth  to  Lan- 
dor  in  January,  1824,  when  describing  more  damage  to  his  own  from 
the  water-rats,  "  appears  to  be  accumulating  books  in  a  way  that, 
with  my  weak  eyes,  appalls  me.  A  large  box  of  them,  directed  to 
him,  has  just  strayed  into  my  house,  through  I  know  not  what  blun- 
der in  the  conveyance."  Southey  was  in  London  at  the  time  ;  but 
"Wordsworth  adds  a  pleasant  picture  of  him  and  his.  "  You  hear  so 
often  from  Southey  that  it  is  wasting  time  to  mention  him.  I  saw 
Mrs.  Southey  and  four  of  his  children  the  other  day,  two  of  the  girls 
most  beautiful  creatures.  The  eldest  daughter  is  with  her  father  in 
town.  He  preserves  excellent  health  ;  and  except  that  his  hair  is 
grizzled,  a  juvenile  appearance,  with  more  of  youthful  spirits  than 
most  men." 

A  characteristic  letter  of  Landor's  on  these  bookish  misadventures 
acquaints  us  also  with  the  sort  of  books  that  were  exposed  to  such 
perils  of  the  sea.  It  is  dated  the  22d  of  March,  1824.  "Words- 
worth again  tells  me  that  the  books  sent  him  are  ruined  by  the  salt 
water  :  if  yours  are  in  the  same  condition  let  me  know,  for  I  will 
obtain  indemnity  for  such  criminal  negligence.  I  am  going  to  trust 
these  fellows  once  more.  What  I  could  recover  of  the  books  stolen 
at  Leghorn,  together  with  some  others,  are  embarked  on  board  the 
brig  Malvina,  Captain  James  Brook,  for  London.  On  the  other  side 
is  a  list  of  them.  I  have  also  sent  another  small  box  to  Hare,  and 
one  to  Wordsworth,  by  the  same  vessel."  Then,  after  alluding  to  the 
Conversations,  and  to  sundry  additions  and  insertions  which  even  at 
that  last  hour  he  had  been  sending  to  Taylor,  which  if  too  late  for 
insertion  were  to  be  added  in  the  notes,  or  even  after,  he  gives  the 
list. 

Folio. 

1.  Alberti  Magni  ad  Logicam  pertinentia.  1506.  2.  Italia  Magini.  3. 
Valerius  Maximus.  1503.  4.  Tullii  de  Officiis.  Yenetiis,  1508.  5.  Plinius 
Secundus.  Forbini,  Basilea?,  1525.  6.  Commentaria  in  Plinium.  Parisiis, 
1530.  7.  Divus  Thomas  in  8  Polit.  Aristotelis.  1514.  8.  Description  his- 
torique  et  geogr.  de  France.  9.  Fortificazioni  di  Buonanto  Lorini.  10. 
Begole  Militari  di  Mebys.  11.  Ptolemrei  libri  8.  1535.  12.  P.  Jovius. 
1578.  13.  Panvinii  Pontificum  Elogia  et  Imagines.  1533.  14.  Solinus  et 
Pomponius  Mela.  1509.  15.  Fulgosius.  16.  P.  iEmilius  de  rebus  gestis 
Francorum.  17.  F.  Aquinas  Fallacias.  1477.  18.  Budasus.  1557.  19.  W. 
Burlsei  Porphyrii  et  Aristot.  explicatio.  1481.  20.  Cansaei  Romanum 
Musseum.  21.  Tortelli  Orthographia.  1484.  22.  Vita  di  F.  Eugenio  di 
Savoia. 

Quarto. 

1.  Bluminated  Ms.  of  Ant.  Panormita.  1478.  2.  Ambrosii  Dictionarium. 
Biblicum.  1478.  3.  Joh.  Chrisostom  (black  letter).  4.  J.  Bussieres  His- 
toria.  2  vols.  5.  Memorie  Storiche  di  Sagredo.  6.  Casauboni  Epistoke. 
7.  Poesie  di  Casalde.  8.  Camilli  de  Questiis  Inarime  [?].  9.  Achillis  Bochii 
Symb.  (in  Symb.  18  is  a  guillotin).  10.  Relation  of  F.  Cortes.  1524.  11. 
Julius  Pollux.  12.  Tomasini  Elogia  clarorum  Virorum.  13.  Epistolaa 
Leonardi  Aretini.  2  vols. 

25 


38G  TIIE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  [?s"?*2sY' 

Smaller. 

1.  Epist  of  St.  Jerom  {for  Wordsworth,  to  whom  the  other  volume  is 
sent).  2.  Sennones  Kunebres.  141)2.  '.I.  Vita  di  M.  Aurelio.  4.  Rivolu- 
ziouc  di  Napoli  (G-iraffo).  5.  Poesie  di  Manso.  G.  Poesie  di  Luigi  Ala- 
inaniii.  1532.  7.  Ordini  del  Cavaleare  (G-risoni).  1553.  8.  Opusc. 
multarum  bonarum  Artium  (black  letter).  9.  Wecker  de  Secretis.  10.  P. 
Alois  Poemata  (sent  by  mistake  to  W.  instead  of  St.  Jerom).  11.  Historiae 
liu] iciatciuin.  Colinaeus,  1531.  12.  Gregorii  Turonensis.  Parisiis,  1561. 
13.  Leonis  Papa;  Homilise.  1573.  14.  Meditationes  Sanctorum  (black 
letter).  15.  Guerra  di  Candia.  16.  Scioppius  Suspeeta-  Lectioiies.  17. 
Barbarini  Poemata.  18.  Ms.  of  Voezuiphi  addrest  to  Filipo  Buonaparte  from 
the  siege  of  Vienna.  19.  Regole  di  Fortunio.  1534.  20.  Di  Vita  Christi 
di  Andilly.  21.  Epistote  Pauli  Sacrati.  22.  II  Danubio.  23.  Remundi 
Epigrammata.  24.  Crucii  Epistote.  25.  Opuscula  Spiritualia.  1537  (the 
engraving  at  the  end  designed  by  Titian).  26.  Ant.  Gerrusi  Carmina.  1550. 
27.  Ludovico  Dolce  Modo  di  accrescere  la  Memoria.  28.  Greg.  Nazian- 
zenus.  29.  Kenelm  Digby,  Theatrum  Sypatheticum.  30.  Acarisii  Quaes- 
tiones.  31.  G..  Ilornii  Orbis  Politicus.  32.  Rime  di  Ludovico  Rota.  33. 
Boetio  di  Consolaz.  Philos.  (black  letter).  34.  Confessions  reciproques, 
&c,  &c.  35.  La  Divina  Settimana.  36.  Ode  di  Casoni.  37.  Christias 
Vid;e  [?].  (Gryphius).  1566.  38.  J.  Propiniani  Orationes.  2  vols.  39.  Con- 
giura  de'  Fieschi.  1508.  40.  Epist.  Manutii.  Aldus,  1529.  41.  Sphaera 
Mundi.    1490* 

Southey's  latest  news  of  his  own  and  "Wordsworth's  undertakings  were 
sent  to  Landor  in  February,  1827.  He  was  then  busy  with  his  long- 
deferred  Colloquies,  which  at  last  were  in  the  press,  and  with  the  closing 
volume  of  his  Peninsular  War,  which  was  to  be  ready  by  Christmas 
if  he  lived  and  did  well.  Wordsworth  was  printing  a  new  edition  of 
his  poems,  which  he  was  rearranging  and  enlarging.  Some  fruits  of 
past  labor,  too,  would  shortly  reach  Landor.  Mr.  Kenyon  was  really 
tn  go  into  Italy  that  year,  and  would  carry  to  Florence  the  Tale  of 
Paraguay,  some  letters  in  reply  to  Charles  Butler  on  the  Roman 
Catholic  religion  which  he  was  very  sure  Landor  would  like,  and  the 
second  volume  of  the  Peninsular  War.  These  do  not  seem  however 
to  have  reached  Landor  until  late  in  the  following  year,  when  (No- 
vember 2srh)  he  acknowledges  their  arrival.  "The  poem  first  at- 
tracted me.  I  detest  theology  and  shrink  from  controversy.  What 
a  pity  1  thought  it  that  the  innocent  poor  creatures  "  (the  lovers  in 
the  poem)  "  could  not  be  left  in  the  enjoyment  of  both  a  purer  mo- 

*  Two  years  earlier  he  had  thus  described  to  his  uncle  Hill  {Letters.  III.  2^7)  a  simi- 
lar consignment  sent  him  by  his  friend.  "  Two  or  three  days  ago  I  received  a  rich 
present  from  Landor,  —  threescore  volumes,  of  all  sorts  and  kinds,  mine  that  are  with- 
out value,  and  some  thai  are  of  considerable  worth.  The  only  one  connected  with 
Portugal  is  Osoriusdt  Nobilitatt,  1542,  printed  at  Lisbon.  There  is  the  Speculum  I/is- 
'!<■  Vltwentu  Bdoacensu,  14*.»4 :  a  folio  Terence  printed  :tt  Milan  without  a  date, 
not  I  think  later  than  1500;  a  Milan  Sallust,  1601;  Laurentii  VaUensis  Opus  Eleganli- 
arum  Lingua  hat.  l-W,  —  all  folios;  a  great  many  volumes  of  Italian  poetry  and  mod- 
ern Latin;  one  volume  of  poems  m  the  (let se,  and  another  in  the  Neapolitan  or 

Sicilian  dialect.  I  know  not  which;  and  an  account  of  the  sacking  of  Rome  in  1627,  by 
Jaoopo  Buonaparte  who  was  present,  first  printed  in  17."><>  at  Lucca  with  the  false  date 
of  Cologne,  and  suppressed  hy  the  Austrian  influence,  so  that  very  few  copies  tire 
extant.  It  i-  :i  lung  while  since  I  have  had  so  miscellaneous  a  cargo  of  varieties." 
And  see  ante,  pp.  282,  284. 


,ET.  47-53.]  THE    SOUTHEY    CORRESPONDENCE.  387 

rality  and  a  purer  religion  than  professional  men  are  likely  to  reach  ! 
Their  death,  though  happy,  is  most  affecting,  Poetry  opens  many 
sources  of  tenderness  that  lie  forever  in  the  rock  without  it.  I 
doubt  whether  the  description  of  a  heavy  calamity  would  have  moved 
me  more  than  the  placid  end  of  these  lovers."  But  still  another  year 
had  to  pass  before  the  long-looked-for  Colloquies  reached  Florence. 
The  lady,  now  Mrs.  Hodson,  to  whom  as  Miss  Holford  he  had  written 
so  well  and  wisely  of  Wordsworth  *  long  before  he  had  any  personal 
intercourse  with  the  poet  of  Rydal  Mount,  had  received  them  from 
Southey,  and  intrusted  them  to  a  young  artist  whom  she  was  com- 
mending to  Landor's  kindness,  f  Acknowledging  their  receipt  at  the 
end  of  July  in  that  year  he  says  :  "  All  the  pleasure  I  received  from  your 
most  argumentative  and  eloquent  Colloquies  was  less  in  its  intensity 
than  my  sorrow  at  the  death  of  your  uncle,  Mr.  Hill.  For  I  well 
knew  the  unhappiness  it  must  have  caused  you  ;  and  not  only  you 
and  your  family,  but  many  deserving  men  unconnected  with  him  in 
relationship,  to  whom  his  friendship  and  wisdom'  would  have  been 
unerring  guides  through  life.  Although  I  saw  him  but  once,  I 
remember  his  features  perfectly,  and  discover,  which  I  should  not  have 
done  without  your  remark,  their  resemblance  to  Sir  Thomas  More's. 
But  his  countenance,  I  think,  was  of  a  loftier  cast  than  that  shrewd 
and  witty  man's.  The  one  would  rather  die  in  defence  of  his  opinion, 
and  the  other  in  defence  of  his  friend." 

With  one  further  reference  of  the  date  of  1827,  I  will  now  pass 
from  the  Southey  letters  to  Landor's  correspondence  with  members 
of  his  family.  In  the  March  of  that  year  he  told  Southey  that 
Francis  Hare  had  urged  him  incessantly  to  reprint  his  poetry,  and 
that  he  meant  to  do  so.  He  should  include  Count  Julian,  Gebir, 
about  half  those  printed  in  the  Simonidea,  and  some  trifling  ones 
written  since.  The  Julian  would  be  unaltered  ;  every  reference  to 
modern  times  and  things  would  be  omitted  from  the  Gebir  ;  t  and  he 

*  See  ante,  p.  194. 

t  "  I  wrote  to  Mrs.  Hodson  from  Lucca,"  Landor  replied  to  Souther's  mention  of 
that  lady's  inquiries  after  him,  "  and  I  hope  she  received  my  letter;  of  which  there  is 
some  doubt,  as  I  sent  it  by  a  waiter  through  a  shower  of  rain,  and  with  a  sixpence  to 
pay  the  postage:  two  things  much  against  it."  "Your  letter  reached  Mrs.  Hodson." 
say-  Southey  in  reply;  -'so  that  you  see  there  is  one  waiter  whose  conscience  i-  pro  i!' 
against  a  sixpenny  temptation.  Methinks  he  deserves  a  place  in  the  Legion  of  Honor. 
A  letter  of  mine  at  Geneva  was  destroyed  for  the  sake  of  a  smaller  sum." 

t  Every  reference,  he  meant,  to  Bonaparte.  He  had  already  publicly  apologized  for 
his  exaltation  of  him  in  Gebir;  and  the  passage,  which  appeared  in  his  preface  to  the 
Latin  poems  in  the  SimtmuJea,  is  so  characteristic  that  I  shall  append  it  here  "  Si  pro- 
lixior  quam  par  est  videatur  prtefatio,  paucis  habe,  lector,  rationem.  Rrevissimo 
quidem  operi  insisto,  me  contra  detrectatores  meos,  parum  cognitos,  defensurus. 
Nulla  enim  retas  aut  magis  superbum  aut  minus  arrogantem  tulit.  Est  in  Gebiro  meo 
quod  dolet  pudetque  scripsisse:  in  altera  editione  scriptum  celare  aut  prretermittere 
dedignabar.  De  laudibus  Ronapartis  loquor.  Quis  autem,  ut  illustrious  exemplis 
utar,  Ciceroni  vitio  vertendum  censeat,  quo  auctore  statuam  equestrem,  eamque  in 
rostris  deauratam,  Senatus,  ut  nemini  antea,  Marco  Lepido  poni  decreverit;  cum  ejus- 
dem  post  modo  scelus  amentiamque  vir  ille  prudentissimus  ac  civis  optimus  S.  C.  c'om- 
presserit.  Juvenem  virtute  bellica  prseclarum  juvenis  laudavi;  mendaeem,  sicarium, 
veneficum,  eo  tempore  pauci  comperierant ;  nobis  haudquaquam  notum  aut  etiam  sus- 


388  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ',' 

would  give  some  Latin  pieces.  He  had  just  written  one  stanza  to 
add  to  a  piece  that  Southey  liked  in  the  old  time  :  *  — 

"  Where  are  ye,  happy  days,  when  every  bird 
Poured  love  in  every  strata  ! 
Ye  days,  when  true  was  every  idle  word, 
Return,  return  again!  " 

But  he  doubted  whether  there  was  any  merit  in  them,  and  he  was 
certain  that  in  the  collection  he  was  making  he  should  leave  nothing 
for  gleaners  in  after-time.  "  I  am  now  indeed  induced  to  reprint  a 
part,  lest  hereafter  some  person  should  reprint  the  whole.  I  hope 
the  rest  will  never  be  lookt  for  or  thought  of."  He  expressed  the 
same  wish  in  the  preface  (dated  from  Florence  in  January,  1827), 
remarking  with  equal  truth  and  good  sense  that  it  is  only  the  wrctch- 
edest  of  poets  that  wish  all  they  ever  wrote  to  be  remembered,  and 
that  some  of  the  best  woidd  be  willing  to  lose  the  most.  The  volume 
was  published  in  1831  ;  but  not  many  readers,  and  still  fewer  pur- 
chasers, were  attracted  to  it. 

In  his  dedicatory  words  to  Francis  Hare  he  says  that  it  was  at  his 
persuasion,  and  through  his  attention,  that  he  published  his  Imagi- 
nary Conversations,  most  of  which,,  "  unless  you  had  animated  and  in- 
cited me,  would  have  remained  forever  unfinished." 

VIII.     FAMILY  LETTERS. 

With  his  mother  Landor  always  corresponded  regularly ;  and  his 
birthday  never  passed  without  a  present  from  her  which  made 
small  but  welcome  addition  to  his  income.  All  her  letters,  shrewd 
and  sensible  to  the  last,  have  the  affection  of  home  about  them. 
They  have  some  sort  of  encouragement  for  him  always  ;  give  him 
only  kindly  glimpses  of  the  past ;  never  tire  of  looking  forward  to  a 
future  when  he  shall  be  again  among  the  county  neighbors,  of  whom 
they  send  him  all  sorts  of  news;  express  not  much  interest,  it  must 
be  confessed,  in  his  literary  achievements;  but  display,  every  one  of 
them,  the  utmost  motherly  solicitude  for  the  welfare  and  the  future 
of  his  children.  I  will  show  this  by  a  few  extracts,  in  continuation  of 
those  formerly  quoted,f  where  she  and  her  son  alike  show  points  of 
character  ;  and  it  is  worth  remarking  that  her  handwriting  is  as  well 
formed  as  his  own,  though  by  wider  lines  and  larger  letters  it  is  fifty 
times  more  Legible. 

In  1822,  Bending  him  only  the  county  news,  she  tells  him  that 

pecttum  erat.  Haa  iaudes  postea  vellieahant,  qnfbns  non  ita  Bonapartis  assent  quam 
nostras  graves."  In  the  Bame  preface  (the  Latin  poems  including  the  verses  to  his  old 
master  James,  before  quoted,  p.  118) there  is  an  allusion  to  his  Rugby  days,  ■which  I 
overlooked  in  speaking  of  that  time.  He  admits  the  insubordination  which  gave 
ce  to  his  old  master.  "  Nocte  intempesta  aliquando  ezcubui,  libros  terens  quos 
interdiu  neglexeram :  dies  enim  ssspenumero  venando  consumebara,  aut  fundamjaci- 
endo,  aut  pngnis  agrestibns  conserendo  manns." 

*  In  the  Simtmidea,  beginning,  "As  round  the  parting  ray,"  &c. 

t  Ante,  pp.  292,293. 


^ET.  47-53-1  FAMILY   LETTERS.  389 

Leamington,  to  the  immense  annoyance  of  "Warwick,  is  becoming 
quite  a  fashionable  watering-place  ;  and  she  describes  her  daughters 
meeting  the  young  ladies  of  Studley  Castle,*  "  handsome  fine  girls, 
but  not  like  their  mother  in  beauty  or  manners."  In  the  December 
of  that  year  Landor  sends  her  a  miniature  of  his  boy  Arnold,  who 
seems  to  her  "  all  fun  and  merriment,  and  looks  a  happy  little  fellow. 
These  indeed  are  his  happiest  days  ;  but  I  hope  in  his  future  years 
he  will  not  have  a  hard  lot,  if  he  is  blessed  with  health  and  knows 
his  duty  to  God."  In  April  of  the  following  year  she  says  that  she 
always  feels  gratefully,  amid  her  growing  weakness,  that  she  had 
lived  to  an  unusual  age  with  almost  every  happiness  she  could  wish. 
On  his  forty-ninth  birthday  (30th  January,  1824),  which  oddly 
enough  she  mistakes  for  his  fiftieth,  she  thanks  him  for  having  sent 
her  a  picture  of  himself,  which  she  is  certain  must  be  a  good  likeness 
of  him  as  he  then  was.  He  had  said  he  was  so  altered  that  she  would 
not  know  him  ;  but  she  had  him  too  constantly  before  her  eyes  ever 
to  forget  his  face,  "  and  though  this  day  you  are  fifty,  I  hope  you 
will  have  many  happy  years  yet  to  enjoy.  I  think  sometimes  it  must 
be  impossible  that  I  should  have  lived  to  see  you  this  age.  Surely  it 
is  time  I  should  make  room  for  others,  for  I  have  passed  my  eighty- 
first  year,  have  had  as  many  blessings  as  fall  to  the  lot  of  mortals, 
and  am  very  willing  to  go.  Who  would  wish  to  outlive  all  their 
friends  1 " 

Her  next  letter  in  that  year  mentions  the  death  of  Lord  Byron  ;  "  a 
man  of  great  abilities,  which  had  given  him  the  power  of  doing  much 
good,  which  he  failed  to  do  " :  and  her  next,  the  publication  of  the 
Imaginary  Conversations,  which  had  now  been  out  between  four  and 
five  months.  "  I  have  heard  you  have  a  publication  just  come  out. 
For  God's  sake  do  not  hurt  your  eyes,  nor  rack  your  brains  too  much, 
to  amuse  the  world  by  writing  :  but  take  care  of  your  health,  which 
will  be  of  greater  consequence  to  your  family."  Nor  had  she  any- 
thing much  more  encouraging  to  offer  to  her  son's  ambition  even 
after  hearing  that  all  the  world  were  talking  of  the  book  he  had 
written.  "  I  have  heard  your  late  publication  highly  spoken  of 
by  many;  but  as  I  am  no  judge,  I  shall  say  nothing  relating  to 
it.  I  wish  you  to  take  care  of  your  eyes  and  health,  and  let  the 
world  go  on  as  it  has  done.  I  think  of  the  fate  of  Lord  Byron,  and 
that  those  who  have  the  greatest  abilities  have  the  greatest  mis- 
fortunes, —  because  they  have,  more  than  others,  mortifications  and 
disappointments." 

There  is  something  in  that  view  of  the  case  undoubtedly.  The 
world  really  did  care  little  to  be  amused  as  her  son  was  amusing  it, 
and  would  seem  to  have  been  quite  willing  to  go  on  as  before.  Never- 
theless the  power  to  amuse  or  amend  the  world  carries  with  it  a 
necessity  to  make  the  trial ;  the  Byrons  and  the  Landors  are  not  able 

*  Ante,  p.  37.  I  take  the  opportunity  of  desiring  the  render  to  substitute  "  fourteen 
miles  "  for  "  a  mile  and  a  half"  in  the  passage  here  referred  to,  the  former,  and  not  the 
latter,  being  the  distance  of  Studley  Castle  from  Warwick. 


390  tut:  imaginary  conversations. 


to  lie  mute,  what  over  the  penalties  of  speech  may  ho  ;  the  mothers 
who  bore  them  are  for  this  as  responsible  as  themselves;  and  the  ex- 
cellent old  lady  at  Ipsley  Court  would  probably  have  been  startled  to 
know  tn  what  extent  her  own  solid,  genuine,  and  noble  nature  had 
but  found  another  kind  of  utterance  in  the  genius  of  her  son.  With 
less  in  herself  of  the  substance  of  which  the  Conversations  were  mi 
she  would  have  been  readier  to  applaud  them. 

In  the  November  of  that  year  she  formally  proposed  to  Landor 
what  before  she  had  hinted  to  him,  that  she  should  be  permitted  to 
receive  and  educate  Arnold  in  England.*  She  did  not  like,  she  said, 
either  Italian  or  French  education.  She  should  wish  him  to  have  an 
English  education,  and  to  know  the  country  his  forefathers  were 
brought  up  in.  Landor  is  grateful,  but  cannot  consent  yet.  Ar- 
nold would  not  be  seven  years  old  until  March  ;  for  the  present  he  did 
not  think  he  could  live  a  single  month  without  him  ;  and  he  describes 
the  schoolmistress  he  goes  to  now,  saying  it  is  not  their  intention  to 
send  him  ever  to  any  school  in  Italy  from  which  he  cannot  daily  re- 
turn to  his  home,  for  he  means  himself  to  teach  him  Latin  and  Greek 
in  the  spring  ;  but  the  time  will  come  for  England,  and  for  the  garden 
his  grandmother  has  promised  him.  "  He  is  as  fond  of  it  as  I  was  at 
his  age.  If  ever  he  goes  to  any  public  school  it  shall  he  Eton,  and 
that  five  or  six  years  hence,  for  about  three  }'ears."  Alas,  the  time 
never  came.  No  year  passed  while  the  boy's  grandmother  lived  in 
which  the  offer  was  not  renewed.  But  if  the  opportunity  for  doing 
what  is  right  is  not  taken  in  the  day,  the  morrow  for  doing  it  never 
comes.  In  a  letter  to  his  sister  Ellen  two  months  later,  Landor  de- 
plores his  inability  to  have  done  what  was  right  in  that  case.  But 
he  had  refused  an  invitation  to  Rome  the  previous  year,  because  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  leave  Arnold.  "  In  fact,  I  do  not  ever  wish 
to  be  a  day  without  any  one  of  them  while  they  are  children.  They 
are  different  creatures  when  they  grow  up."  It  might  be  a  good  rea- 
son, hut  it  was  not  an  unselfish  one,  and  was  the  source  of  unutter- 
able misery. 

The  letter  of  his  sister  to  which  he  so  replied,  besides  telling  him 
all  they  meant  to  have  done  to  make  Arnold  happy,  had  been  full  of 
pleasant  talk  of  the  wonderful  things  they  were  hearing  about  the 
Conversations,  and  had  mentioned  an  omission  which  touched  Landor 
nearly.  "  1  could  not  resist  telling  you,"  she  wrote,  "a  wish  that 
many  have  expressed  that  Doctor  Parr  might  not  he  forgotten. 
Learned  men  have  desired  it,  not  ignorant  women  like  me.  The 
Doctor  himself  has  grieved  for  the  omission.     He  said  to  Charles  last 

*  Hi'  was  now  mx  years  old,  and  had  pleased  her  by  writing  her  a  letter  with  his 
own  hand,  which  Bhe  answered  thus :  — 

•■  My  dear  <  Irandson,  —  I  am  much  obliged  to  you  fur  your  letter,  and  shall  bo  glad  to 
see  you  here  next  spring.  If  you  are  fond  of  a  garden,  you  will  be  much  pleased  with 
mine,  for  it  i-  full  of  beautiful  flowers  in  the  summer;  and  you  may  have  a  little  par- 
don of  your  own  that  you  may  plant  as  you  like.  And  I  think  you  will  like  to  come 
nnd  Bee  your  uncles  and  aunt-.  My  love  to  your  brothers  and  sister.  Believe  me, 
dear  grandson,  your  affectionate,  K.  Landok." 


JET.  47-53.]  FAMILY    LETTERS.  39l 

week,  '  How  is  "Walter  1  I  hope  he  is  well.  0,  he  has  shown  a 
mighty  mind,  —  a  mighty  mind.'  "  The  kir.d  old  man  was  then  in  fail- 
ing health  ;  and  the  eager  letter  of  remembrance  Landor  straightway 
sent,  reached  him  only  on  his  death-bed.  It  enclosed  a  copy  of  what 
the  writer  afterwards  printed  as  a  preface  to  the  fourth  volume  of  the 
Conversations,  in  which  he  said  that  his  first  literary  exercises  were 
made  under  the  eye  and  guidance  of  his  venerable  friend,  corrected 
by  his  admonition,  and  animated  by  his  applause  ;  that  his  house,  his 
library,  his  heart,  had  been  always  open  to  him  ;  and  that  among  his 
few  friendships,  of  which  partly  by  fortune  and  partly  by  choice  he 
had  certainly  had  fewer  than  any  man,  he  should  remember  Parr's  to 
the  last  hour  of  his  existence  with  tender  gratitude.  "  My  admira- 
tion of  some  others  I  have  expressed  in  the  few  words  preceding  each 
volume  ;  my  esteem  and  love  of  yourself  I  have  expressed  in  still 
fewer  ;  but  with  such  feelings  as  that  man's  are  who  has  shaken  hands 
with  the  friends  that  fohWed  him  to  the  shore,  and  who  sees  from  the 
vessel  one  separate  from  the  rest,  one  whom  he  can  never  meet  again. 
May  you  enjoy  yet  for  some  years,  my  dear  friend,  all  that  can  be 
enjoyed  of  life.  I  am  myself  heartily  sated  of  it."  The  letter  was 
written  from  Florence  on  the  5th  of  February  ;  Parr  died  on  the  6th 
of  March  ;  and  Landor  heard  of  the  death  from  his  mother  on  the 
19th  of  April,  in  a  letter  shrewdly  wondering  how  the  doctor,  in  a 
world  of  which  he  complained  so  much,  should  have  managed  to  ac- 
quire so  many  of  the  good  things  of  it  as  to  be  able  to  leave  his  mar- 
ried daughter  thirty  thousand  pounds,  his  other  daughter  ten  thou- 
sand, sundry  sums  to  other  people,  and  four  thousand  pounds,  besides 
three  hundred  a  year,  to  the  second  Mrs.  Parr. 

In  the  same  letter  she  sends  him  messages  from  a  Roman  Catholic 
lady  (Mrs.  Willoughby)  who  remembered  him  "  at  school  at  little 
Treherne's  at  Knowle,"  *  and  who  thought  him  likely  to  prove  a  very 
proud  father,  although  she  did  also  recollect  that  the  only  shade  in 
his  chai*acter  was  a  "  want  of  patience."  A  couple  of  months  later 
she  tells  him  of  a  cold  she  has  caught,  and  her  daughter  Ellen  adds 
that  this  was  because  she  would  persist  in  sleeping  with  both  her 
windows  open  (she  was  now  eighty-two) ;  mentioning  also  in  the 
postscript  the  disastrous  end  of  his  old  Trinity  College  acquaintance, 
Mr.  Kett.t  His  mother's  next  letters,  at  the  end  of  1825,  told  him 
further  about  the  visitors  that  crowded  to  "  this  new  place  "  (Leaming- 
ton), driving  the  gentry  away  from  Warwick  ;  and  that  the  principal 
amusements  then  going  on  in  the  older  and  more  respectable  city 
appeared  to  be  lion-fighting  and  the  baiting  of  dogs,  for  which  one  of 
the  aldermen  had  patriotically  thrown  open  his  park  on  the  Hatton 
road.  In  1826  the  first  of  his  letters  from  home  is  begun  by  his 
sister  Ellen,  who,  having  occasion  to  speak  of  Llanthony,  reminds 
him  of  the  happy  weeks  that  she  and  her  mother  and  Elizabeth  had 
passed  there,  and  of  the  delightful  walks  they  had  taken  over  those 

*  See  ante,  p.  7.  t  Ante,  pp.  29,  35,  36,  220. 


392  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  [?8°?*af' 

beautiful  hills  and  through  that  peaceful  valley.  "  T  wish  your  son 
may  like  it,  and  live  there,  and  become  an  Englishman."  To  this, 
however,  the  old  lady  puts  a  characteristic  closing  page.  After  telling 
him  that  Dr.  John  Johnstone  was  going  to  write  Dr.  Parr's  life,  and 
that  she  thought  it  might  have  been  better  to  get  somebody  to  write 
it  who  was  accustomed  to  write  something  else  besides  prescriptions, 
she  hopes  he  will  settle  his  son  in  England  ;  but  she  would  like  to  see 
him  at  Ipsley  or  in  Staffordshire,  rather  than  among  those  Welsh  who 
had 'made  everything  so  uncomfortable. 

There  is  a  story  that  Landor,  six  years  after  this  date,  when  pay- 
ing his  first  visit  to  England  since  his  exile,  gave  unconsciously  a 
rather  striking  practical  comment  on  this  remark  of  his  mother's. 
He  had  come  with  his  cousin  and  agent  to  a  very  beautiful  spot  on 
the  banks  of  the  Trent  called  Carwardine  Spring,  when  he  stood 
suddenly  wrapt  in  admiration,  crying  out  excitedly,  "  Why  the  deuce 
did  not  I  buy  this  place  and  build  my  house  here,  instead  of  at  that 
confounded  Llanthony  ]  "  "  Rather,"  said  his  relation,  quietly,  "  why 
did  you  stll  this  place,  which  had  been  in  your  family  for  centuries  ]  " 
It  was  a  portion  of  his  father's  land  m  Staffordshire  obtained  by  in- 
termarriage with  the  old  family  of  the  Nobles,  and  Landor  had  sold 
it  to  Lord  Uxbridge  with  a  rich  wood  still  called  Noble's  Ruff,  when 
making  up  the  purchase-money  for  Llanthony. 

Landor's  last  letter  in  1825  had  amused  his  mother  not  a  little. 
He  had  told  her  that,  there  in  Florence,  he  had  not  more  than  two 
or  three  friends,  a  manageable  number;  but  that  there  were  some 
dozens  who  called  upon  him,  and  whom  he  could  not  receive.  One 
Mr.  Hogg,  however,  a  friend  of  Dr.  Lambe's,  had  come  to  him  lately 
and  been  very  welcome.  It  was  Mr.  Jefferson  Hogg,  Shelley's  friend 
and  fellow-collegian,  wdio  began  the  poet's  biography  a  few  years  ago 
and  was  stopped  for  plain-speaking.  "A  Mr.  Hare,  a  very  learned 
man,  was  sitting  with  me  one  morning  when  Mr.  Hogg  sent  in  his 
card  with  Dr.  Lambe's  name  also  on  it.  I  showed  it  to  Hare,  and 
told  him  I  now  thought  myself  La  Fontaine,  with  all  the  better  com- 
pany of  the  beasts  about  me.  He  was  delighted."  His  mother  seems 
to  have  been  delighted  too,  for  she  told  him,  in  reply,  that  she  knew 
how  he  would  laugh  himself  when  he  said  that  to  his  friend,  and  she 
spoke  of  the  election  for  Parliament  going  on  at  the  time  in  Warwick 
as  if  it  had  brought  up  not  the  better  but  the  very  worst  company 
of  beasts  about  them. 

In  the  same  letter  she  told  him  that  she  was  still  able  to  drive  out 
in  her  pony-carriage,  and  that  if  she  went  again  to  Ipsley  in  the 
summer  she  would  send  him  many  fruit-seeds,  slips,  and  cuttings  for 
his  garden.  Landor  meanwhile  had  written  again  both  to  her  and  to 
Ellen,  sending  through  the  latter  his  thanks  to  Elizabeth  for  her 
intended  present  of  poor  Parr's  portrait,  which  yet  he  was  afraid 
would  make  him  "melancholic";  that  being  sometimes  much  his 
disposition.     To   relieve   it,   and   improve   his  wife's  health,    he   had 


^T.  47-53.]  FAMILY   LETTERS.  393 

taken  a  country-house  for  three  years,  of  which  two  months  only 
were  expired.  (This  was  the  villa  Castiglione,  two  miles  out  of 
Florence.)  He  meant  to  pass  his  life  on  the  Continent,  having  met 
with  so  many  acts  of  injustice  and  unkindness  in  England.  Eleven 
years  had  domesticated  him ;  and  the  children  might  live  together 
after  his  death.  "  I  wish  Julia  would  consent  to  live  entirely  in  the 
country,  hut  she  cannot  exist  without  some  company  in  the  evening, 
—  one  or  two,  old  or  young.  For  my  part  I  could  live,  and  even 
enjoy  life,  if  I  never  were  to  see  any  other  face  than  those  of  my 
children." 

To  his  mother,  writing  on  the  8th  of  Fehruary,  182G,  he  described 
a  visit  he  was  then  making  at  Rome.  So  cold  had  the  winter  been 
in  Florence  that  only  his  previous  acceptance  of  his  friend  Hare's 
offer  to  give  him  a  place  in  his  carriage  for  this  journey  would  have 
tempted  him  from  home.  The  change  of  air  however  had  done  him 
good,  but  all  the  wonders  of  the  eternal  city  did  not  console  him  for 
the  absence  of  Arnold  and  Julia ;  and  though  he  had  promised  to 
remain  there  three  weeks,  he  should  return  within  the  fortnight.  He 
had  many  friends  with  carriages  in  Rome,  and  did  long  distances  : 
certainly  it  was  the  finest  city  in  the  world  :  never  in  ancient  times 
were  two  such  buildings  as  the  Vatican  and  St.  Peter's.  It  was  the 
only  place  in  the  world,  too,  where  he  had  himself  ever  met  with  very 
great  attention.  Both  natives  and  English  treated  him  magnificent- 
ly, and  every  evening  he  met  the  most  splendid  society.  But  this 
only  made  him  melancholy  :  for  he  thought  incessantly  of  Arnold, 
whom  he  had  never  before  been  twelve  hours  without  seeing,  and  of 
the  Greek  he  was  learning,  many  sentences  of  which  he  was  able  to 
speak  correctly.  To  which  it  may  not  be  inappropriate  to  add  that 
I  found  carefully  treasured  among  his  papers,  and  indorsed,  "  Arnold's 
first  letter  to  me  and  my  reply,"  what  follows  :  the  little  boy's  round 
text  being  in  letters  half  an  inch  long. 

"  My  dearest  Papa,  —  I  hope  you  are  well.  We  have  had  all  bad  colds. 
But  thank  God  we  are  now  quite  well  again.  Walter,  Charles,  and  Julia 
send  you  a  thousand  kisses.  And  I  send  you  ten  thousand,  and  I  wish  you 
to  come  back  again  with  all  my  heart.  And  believe  me,  my  dearest  papa, 
your  affectionate  son,  A.  S.  Landor."  "  January  31,  1826.  My  dearest 
Arnold,  —  I  received  your  letter  to-day  much  too  late  to  answer  it  by  the 
post ;  but  you  will  see  that  I  was  thinking  of  you  and  of  Julia  yesterday  by 
the  verses  I  send  you  on  the  other  side.  I  am  very  much  pleased  to  ob- 
serve that  you  write  better  than  I  do  ;  and,  if  you  continue  to  read  the 
Greek  nouns,  you  will  very  soon  know  more  Greek,  unless  I  begin  again  to 
study  it  every  day.  When  I  was  a  little  boy  I  did  not  let  any  one  get  be- 
fore me ;  and  you  seem  as  if  you  would  do  the  same.  I  promised  you  a 
Greek  book,  but  I  will  srive  you  two  if  you  go  on  well,  and  next  year  two 
others,  very  beautiful  and  entertaining.  I  shall  never  be  quite  happy  until 
I  see  you  again  and  put  my  cheek  upon  your  head.  Tell  my  sweet  Julia 
that,  if  I  see  twenty  little  girls,  I  will  not  romp  with  any  of  them  before  T 
romp  with  her ;  and  kiss  your  two  dear  brothers  for  me.     You  must  always 


394  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  'fte^af' 

love  thorn  as  much  as  I  love  you,  and  you  must  teach  thorn  how  to  ho  pood 
boys  .  which  I  cannot  do  so  well  as  you  can.  God  presen^  and  bless  you, 
my  own  Arnold.  My  heart  heats  as  if  it  would  fly  to  you,  my  own  fierce 
creature.     We  shall  very  soon  meet.     Love  your  Babuo." 

The  "  verses  on  the  other  side  "  were  those  to  his  "  little  household 
gods,"  written  the  day  before  his  letter  (his  birthday) ;  and  differing 
only  from  the  poem  as  printed,  in  the  stanza  that  tells  of  the  mar- 
vellous tales  he  will  relate  to  sister  and  brother  on  his  return  :  — 

"  Severing  the  bridge  behind,  how  Clelia 
Saved  the  whole  host  to  fight  again, 
And,  loftier  virtue!  how  Cornelia 

Lived  when  her  two  brave  sons  were  slain." 

Later  in  this  year  there  is  much  in  Landor's  letters  to  his  mother 
of  the  gayeties  in  Florence,  of  Lord  and  Lady  Normanby's  private 
theatricals,  of  the  Duchess  of  Hamilton's  parties,  and  of  the  enjoy- 
ment all  those  had  given  to  his  children.  In  December,  noticing  her 
mention  of  a  visit  of  his  sisters  to  Swansea,  following  her  usual  ad- 
juration to  him  to  return  to  live  again  among  them,  he  says  that  the 
streak  of  black  along  that  most  beautiful  coast  in  the  universe  had 
never  succeeded  in  rendering  him  quite  indifferent  to  Swansea.  How 
beautiful  did  he  think  the  sea-shore  covered  with  low  roses,*  yellow 
snapdragons,  and  thousands  of  other  plants,  nineteen  years  ago. 

"  Two  years  afterwards  the  detestable  tramroad  was  made  along  it.  Would 
to  God  there  was  no  trade  upon  earth  !  Besides,  before  this,  thousands  of 
small  vessels  covered  the  bay,  laden  with  lime,  and  whatever  else  is  now 
carried  with  those  train  wagons.  The  Gulf  of  Salerno,  I  hear,  is  much 
finer  than  Naples;  but  give  me  Swansea  for  scenery  and  climate.  I  prefer 
good  apples  to  bad  peaches.  If  ever  it  should  he  my  fortune,  which  I  can- 
nol  expeel  and  do  not  much  hope,  to  return  as  you  wish  to  England.  I  pass 
the  remainder  of  my  days  in  the  neighborhood  of  Swansea.  —  between 
that  place  and  the  Mumbles.  Nothing  but  the  education  and  settlement  of 
my  children  would  make  me  at  all  desirous  of  seeing  England  again." 

He  adds  that  Lord  Guildford  had  given  him  a  very  pressing  invita- 
tion to  the  Ionian  Islands,  but  be  did  not  think  he  should  ever  move 
farther  than  a  morning's  walk  from  the  table  where  he  was  writing. 
All  this  however  his  mother  treats  only  as  the  whim  of  the  hour,  and 
she  still  steadily  and  perse verimdy  keeps  before  him  the  necessity, 
for  his  children's  sake,  that  a  limit  should  lie  put  to  his  exile.  Re- 
plying to  these  again  in  his  birthday  letter  in  1S27,  he  says  that  cer- 
tainly they  lost  some  comforts  out  there  in  Florence,  but  they  had 
many  others  instead.  And  he,  for  his  part,  was  perfectly  reconciled 
to  bis  destiny  of  living  the  remainder  of  his  days  on  the  Continent, 
perhaps  altogether  in  Tuscany.  But  she  must  continue  to  send  him 
(what  she  had  threatened  to  discontinue)  all  the  Warwickshire  news, 
for  the  changes  interested  him.  In  four  months  be  should  have  com- 
pleted the  thirteenth  year  of  his  absence  from  England  ;  his  hair  was 

*  Son  ante.  p.  47. 


^ET.  47-53.]  FAMILY    LETTERS.  395 

growing  white ;  and  many  who  were  children  when  he  was  in  the 
county  must  now  have  children  of  their  own.  He  ends  the  letter  by 
telling  her  of  a  recent  unfavorable  season  in  Italy  as  bad  as  any  in 
England  of  which  sh#  had  ever  complained.  For  two  entire  months 
they  had  only  had  eight  fine  days ;  frost  and  snow  had  been  inces- 
sant ;  and  the  English  for  some  weeks  had  been  skating  round  the 
water  that  enclosed  the  city  walls. 

"  Yours  is  not  the  only  white  head  in  the  family,"  wrote  his  sister 
Elizabeth  in  answer.  "Charles's  hair  altered  completely  in  about  six 
months,  so  that  when  he  came  here  last  winter  my  mother  admired 
it,  and  wondered  to  see  it  become  just  the  same  as  when  he  was  a 
boy  :  a  beautiful  flaxen  head,  she  called  it  :  almost  every  hair  is 
white,  and  as  frizzy  and  abundant  as  ever."  She  tells  him  also  of 
other  people  changing,  such  as  his  nephew  Charles,  who,  though  not 
yet  fifteen,  was  as  tall  as  his  father  ;  and  of  some  people  quite  un- 
changeable, such  as  he  knew  his  old  friend  Dr.  Lambe  to  be,  who  had 
not  altered  the  least  in  the  world ;  and  their  mother,  who  seemed  in- 
deed smaller  than  ever,  but  was  very  nimble,  and  "  altogether  won- 
derful, as  her  writing  perfectly  without  glasses  at  eighty-four  proves." 
In  July  of  the  following  year  the  same  sister  announces  to  him  the 
deaths,  within  a  few  weeks  of  each  other,  of  two  sisters  of  their 
mother,  the  three  numbering  at  that  time  among  them  exactly  250 
years  ;  and  adds,  what  will  not  surprise  any  one  who  has  observed  as 
a  rule  how  death  is  regarded  by  the  extremely  old,  that  her  mother 
had  been  far  less  affected  than  she  expected  her  to  have  been  by  this 
event. 

The  last  tidings  of  Landor  himself  having  been  that  he  did  not 
think  it  likely  he  should  again  move  farther  than  a  morning's  walk 
from  the  table  where  he  was  writing,  of  course  his  Warwick  friends 
were  prepared  to  hear  any  day  that  Florence  no  longer  contained 
him.  Early  in  August  his  sister  Ellen,  writing  to  introduce  to  him 
a  clever  portrait-painter  and  his  wife,  was  told  in  his  reply  that  he 
had  gone  upon  a  pressing  invitation  to  Naples  ;  but  that  Mr.  Middle- 
ton  would  find  him,  on  the  27th  of  that  month,  again  "  at  villa  del 
marchese  Castiglione,  called  Poggio  alle  Male,  two  miles  from  Flor- 
ence, out  of  the  porto  San  Niccolb."  He  would  gladly  show  him  the 
curiosities  of  Florence  ;  his  wife  was  always  at  home  in  the  evening ; 
and  though  he  had  himself  been  in  the  habit,  when  living  in  the  city, 
of  going  to  the  Blessingtons'  from  eight  to  eleven,  he  did  not  go  over 
to  them  from  his  villa  more  than  once  or  twice  a  week,  the  distance 
being  three  good  miles.*  The  Blessingtons  were  friends  of  recent 
date,  but  greatly  liked  and  valued  ;  and  he  said  always  that  he  re- 
membered no  pleasanter  time  of  his  life  in  Italy  than  the  summer 
evenings  passed  with  them  in  the   casa   Pelosi,  on  its  terrace  over- 

*  The  letter  has  a  characteristic  postscript  in  which  he  says  that  "  as  Mr.  Middleton 
may  not  know  what  scoundrels  the  greater  part  of  the  Florence  innkeepers  are,  not  to 
say  thieves  and  assassins,"  he  subjoins  the  names  of  three  honest  ones. 


39G  THE   IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  £?jf' 

looking  the  Arno.  From  Lord  Blessington  hud  come  the  pressing 
invitation  to  accompany  him  in  his  yacht  to  Naples;  and,  he  wrote 
to  his  sister,  as  be  had  never  seen  Naples  and  never  could  see  it  to 
such  advantage  as  in  the  company  of  a  most  delightful  well-informed 
man,  and  as  four  hundred  a  year  did  not  afford  all  the  facilities  and 
agremens  of  forty  thousand,  she  might  be  assured  he  was  not  very 
reluctant  to  go.  Arnold  indeed  had  not  been  well,  but  the  fever  had 
now  quite  left  him  ;  and  there  being  strange  unaccountable  Bhells  to 
be  picked  up  for  him  on  the  shores  of  Naples,  of  Elba,  of  Salerno, 
and  twenty  other  places,  the  little  fellow  had  given  Babbo  leave  of 
absence  for  twenty-five  days.  But  before  his  leave  expired,  Babbo's 
pleasure  had  suffered  grievous  interruption. 

He  will  tell  it  best  himself.  Language  less  characteristic  would 
not  do  it  justice. 

"  It  all  began"  (letter  to  his  sister  Elizabeth,  on  the  1st  of  October.  1827) 
"the  day  after  I  left  Florence  for  Naples.  Arnold  had  had  a  fever  a  few 
days  betbre,  and  I  would  not  go  until  his  physician  told  me  he  was  conva- 
lescent. No1  receiving  any  letter  at  Naples,  I  was  almost  mad,  for  1  fancied 
his  illness  bad  returned.  I  hesitated  between  drowning  myself  and  going 
post  back.*  At  last  I  took  a  place  (the  only  one  ;  for  one  only  is  allowed 
with  the  postman  in  what  is  called  the  diligence).  Meanwhile  Lord  Elc->- 
ington  told  me  he  would  instantly  set  sail  if  I  wished  it,  and  that  I  could 
go  quicker  by  sea.  I  did  so;  and  we  arrived  in  four  days  at  Leghorn. 
Here  he  gave  me  a  note  enclosed  in  a  letter  to  him,  informing  me  that  Julia 
had  been  in  danger  of  her  life,  but  was  now  better.  I  found  her  quite  un- 
able to  speak  coherently.  And  unhappily  she  was  in  the  country.  Never- 
theless the  physician,  who  sometimes  passed  the  whole  day  with  her,  and 
once  slept  at  the  house,  never  omitted  for  forty-three  days  to  visit  her  twice 
a  day,  and  now  by  his  great  care  she  has  reached  Florence.  I  brought  her 
part  of  the  way  by  means  of  oxen,  on  the  sledire.  and  upon  two  mattres 
To-day  the  physician  will  attend  her  for  the  last  time." 

It  was  a  malignant  fever,  which  the  youngest  child  also  caught, 
but  recovered  in  sixteen  days,  during  three  of  which  life  had  been 
despaired  of;  and  in  that  interval  the  other  children  owed  their 
safety  chiefly  to  the  exertions  of  Lad}'  Blessington,  who  had  driven 
over  to  the  villa  anil  brought  them  into  Florence  for  a  time.f  These 
occurrences,  Landor  added,  had  turned  the  rest  of  his  hair  white, 
after  taking  off  what  was  refractory  and  would  not  turn  ;  but,  thank- 
ful not  to  have  lost  one  after  being  so  near  losing  three  of  his  family, 
they  had  left  him  at  the  last  "  strength'  and  spirits  better  than 
ever." 

In  the  same  letter  he  thanks  his  sister  for  Parr's  portrait.     Tarr 

*  Let  no  ono  imagine  that  this  is  too  extravagant  ovon  for  namlor.  It  runs  very 
nearly  parallel  with  a  Btory  told  always  with  much  enjoyment  by  hi-  brother  Chnrles 
of  his  Having  lost  hi-  road  to  a  friend's  house  where  a  party  we're  waiting  dinner  for 
him,  mill  startling  a  country  bumpkin  by  the  peremptory  demand  that  he  should  cither 
at  one-  show  him  the  way  or  rut  his  throat  upon  the  Bpot. 

t  I  found  a  letter  of  warm  affection  from  her  among  Landor's  papers,  dated  the  29th 
of  August,  1827,  which  confirms  every  part  of  this  statement. 


^T-  47-53-1  FAMILY    LETTERS.  397 

had  not  exactly  that  expression  when  they  last  met,  but  sixteen 
years  were  passed  since  then  ;  and  he  never  could  have  had  a  high  fore- 
head, nor  was  there  ever  that  distance  between  the  nose  and  upper 
lip  ;  however,  it  had  brought  to  him  the  features  of  his  delightful  old 
friend  as  strongly  as  if  it  had  represented  them  more  perfectly. 
With  a  request  made  by  his  other  sister,  he  complies  by  sending  her, 
on  the  18th  of  the  following  month,  some  account  of  his  Neapolitan 
voyage  ;  though  he  doubted  if  he  could  say  anything  new. 

"  Every  one  is  in  raptures  with  the  Bay  of  Naples.  Those  who  have  not 
seen  it  can  form  no  idea  of  its  beauty  from  anything  they  have  seen  else- 
where. The  villas  of  the  Neapolitans  are  upon  the  roadside  everywhere ; 
and  these  roads  are  dustier  than  any  other  in  the  world  and  noisier.  La 
Cava  is  of  all  places  one  of  the  most  beautiful.  It  lies  in  the  way  to  Pses- 
tum.  The  ruins  of  the  temples  here,  if  ruins  they  can  be  called,  are  mag- 
nificent: but  Grecian  architecture  does  not  turn  into  ruin  so  grandly  as 
Gothic.  York  cathedral  a  thousand  years  hence,  when  the  Americans  have 
conquered  and  devastated  the  country,  will  be  more  striking.  The  Lucrine 
Lake  is  a  poor  pond,  — if  poor  is  that  pond  which  produces  the  proprietor 
more  than  a  hundred  a  year  every  acre  of  it,  and  this  chiefly  by  the  cockles. 
Formerly  it  was  remarkable  for  the  flavor  of  its  oysters.  Lake  Avernus, 
one  would  imagine,  is  terrific.  On  the  contrary  it  is  a  pretty  little  round 
lake,  with  groves  full  of  birds  all  round.  I  did  not  see  the  Island  of  Capri, 
which  I  much  regret.  Elba  I  saw  on  my  return  :  a  very  beautiful  and  fer- 
tile island,  with  the  best  harbor  in  Italy.  I  am  inclined  to  think  the  people 
in  the  south  of  this  country  better  than  the  Tuscans.  I  never  met  with  a 
graver  or  sounder  man  than  the  Count  de  Camaldoli,  who  was  minister  to 
the  King  of  Naples  in  the  time  of  the  Constitution.  For  these  last  six 
weeks  I  have  seen  him  most  evenings,  and  conversed  Avith  him  the  greater 
part  of  them  unless  when  his  daughters  sang,  which  they  do  divinely." 

Writing  at  the  same  date  to  his  elder  sister,  he  tells  her  that  he 
had  just  heard  the  day  before  that  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  vol- 
umes of  his  Conversations  would  be  out  in  two  or  three  months,  early 
in  the  beginning  of  the  ensuing  year  certainly.  The  third  had  been 
printed  for  a  year  and  more,  but  the  publisher  had  delayed  it ;  and 
another  publisher  had  undertaken  the  fourth  and  fifth.  He  was  sick 
of  writing.  Never  would  he  write  anything  more.  He  had  burnt 
all  the  things  he  had  begun,  and  many  that  he  had  nearly  completed. 
He  was  now  occupied  in  collecting  pictures.  He  had  not  seen  so 
much  of  their  artist  friend  as  he  wished,  because  of  moving  to  his 
new  villa  ;  but  never  had  he  seen  any  one  more  delighted  at  their  last 
meeting  than  Mr.  Middleton  was  at  some  pictures  which  he  had  him- 
self lately  acquired  in  exchange  for  the  drawings  by  old  masters 
which  he  bought  in  Bath  eighteen  years  ago.  With  more  money  at 
command  he  could  have  made  a  fortune  by  the  purchase  of  pictures 
in  Italy.  A  man  must  live  on  the  spot,  and  visit  pictures  daily, 
thoroughly  to  master  the  subject.  He  was  but  a  child  at  it,  yet  the 
dealei's  thought  him  knowing.     More  of  this  hereafter. 

To  his  mother  he  writes  at  a  little  later  date,  to  express  his 
delight  at  having  heard  that  Ipsley  had  brought  back  her  strength, 


398  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  *%£-J: 

and  to  toll  her  that  while  she  and  the  rest  in  England  had  been  over- 
flowed with  ruin,  in  Italy  they  had  not  had  a  single  showerfcr  above  four 
months.  He  tolls  her  of  sickness  among  his  children,  and  says  that 
nothing  is  absurder  than  to  suppose  that  certain  disorders  could  come 

only  once.  In  the  same  country  they  might  never  return;  but  a 
new  climate  made  a  new  creature.  He  had  just  declined,  from  ina- 
bility to  leave  his  children,  an  invitation  from  the  Blessing  tons  to 
visit  them  in  Paris  ;  and  in  connection  with  this  he  answers  a  ques- 
tion from  his  mother  as  to  whether  the  lady  was  visited  by  the  Eng- 
lish, lie  admits  to  her  that  she  was  not  :  but  in  France  she  enjoyed 
the  first  society,  receiving  only  the  first;  and  never  had  he  talked 
with  a  woman  more  elegant  or  better  informed,  more  generous  or 
high-minded.  The  close  of  his  letter  is  addressed  to  his  two  sisters  ; 
notices  to  them  a  remark  of  his  mother's  to  which  he  had  not  replied 
in  writing  to  her;  and  is  amusingly  characteristic.  The  reader  al- 
ready knows  that  he  was  too  sanguine  in  expecting  that  the  conclud- 
ing series  of  his  Conversations  would  be  published  at  the  same  time 
as  his  third  volume.  The  latter  appeared  in  1828  ;  but  the  former 
was  still  delayed,  for  reasons  to  be  presently  described. 

"  My  mother  has  greatly  amused  me  by  wishing  the  very  thing  that  has 
been  done.  Southey  and  Hare  have  full  power  to  erase  whatever  they 
think  proper  to  erase  from  my  Imaginary  Conversations.  At  present,  as 
far  as  I  know,  they  have  exerted  their  authorit}-  over  only  two  paragraphs, 
which  they  thought  actionable.  As  for  the  rest,  they  would,  as  they  will 
tell  you,  as  soon  think  of  cancelling  a  scene  of  Shakespeare.  Doctor  Wade 
and  Doctor  limes  would  lie  braver.  ...  I  wrote  long  ago  to  thank  Charles 
for  a  clover  dialogue  lie  sent  me  between  the  old  king  and  another.  I  have 
lately  had  a  curious  anecdote  of  the  old  rogue.  Lord  Camden  and  Count 
Minister  were  deputed  to  make  inquiry  into  the  state  of  his  property,  and 
they  found  thai  he  had  mortgages  on  the  property  of  almost  every  prince 
in  Germany,  at  the  time  when  Pitt  brought  in  a  bill  to  exonerate  the  civil 
He  never  forgave  Lord  Camden  for  knowing  it.  Lord  C.  said  so. 
While  there  is  ;i  king  or  priest  on  earth,  as  poor  old  Lyttelton  said  .  .  .  hut 
what  poor  old  Lyttelton  said  I  shall  reserve  for  my  next  discourse.  And 
now  to.  cVe..  &c.  1  remain,  with  Julia's  love,  dear  Ellen  and  Elizabeth, 
your  ever  affectionate  brother,  W.  L." 

The  previous  year  (1827)  had  been  that  in  which  he  made  ac- 
quaintance with  "  the  kindest  and  most  generous  man  in  existence," 
Mr.  Ablett,  of  Llanbedr  Hall  in  Denbighshire,  the  intimacy  of  whose 
wife's  sister  (Mrs.  Young)  with  Mrs.  Dashwood,  a  cousin  of  the 
Han-,,  had  led  to  the  fortunate  meeting;*  and  through  Mr.  Ab- 
lett in  the  Bpring  of  1829  the  Fiesolan  villa  was  bought  which  will 
forever  he  associated  with  Landor's  name.     The  present  was  the  year 

*  I  quote  from  n  letter  of  Landor's  to  his  *i~ter  Elizabeth,  dated  in  April  of  tliis 
year.    "  Some  friends  of  mini'.  I  am  told,  are  going  to  Leamington:  one  i*  Mrs.  Dash- 

v. 1.  daughter  to  the  lute  Dean  of  St.  Asaph,  the  best  man  in  England.     If  by  chance 

von  should  see  her.  I  hope  von  "ill  make  much  of  her.  She  is  cousin  to  Francis 
Hare,  mv  particular  friend.  I  believe  a  Mrs.  Young  is  with  her.  This  lady. is  sister  to 
Mrs.  Ablett,  from  whom  and  her  husband  I  and  my  family  have  received  a  thousand 
acts  of  kindness." 


JET.  47-53.]  FAMILY    LETTERS.  399 

(1828)  when  the  celebrated  sculptor  Gibson  made,  for  Ablett,  a  bust 
of  Landor,  of  which  copies  in  marble  reached  England  in  this  and 
the  year  following.  It  was  the  year,  too,  when  his  sister  Arden  died, 
and  when  from  her,  and  from  another  friend  deceased,  some  small 
additions  were  made  to  his  fortune.  His  sister  Ellen  tells  him  of 
these  ;  and  even  her  dear  brother's  wisdom,  she  says  to  him  in  the 
course  of  her  letter,  which  she  had  long  thought  to  be  more  than 
mortals  are  blessed  with,  appeared  to  her  useless  compared  with  the 
humble  resignation  she  had  witnessed  at  both  death-beds.  At  the 
close  of  her  letter  she  mentions  his  old  friend  Mr.  Rough,*  who  had 
lately  reappeared  in  the  county,  as  having  several  times  inquired 
kindly  after  him,  and  as  having  said  that  the  Conversations  should 
have  produced  him  a  good  fortune.  This  last  touch  nettled  Landor, 
and  he  retorted  upon  his  old  companion  with  an  odd  mixture  of 
dislike  and  likinsr. 


■&■ 


"  The  mine  of  wealth  derived  from  my  Conversations  brought  me  three  hun- 
dred and  seventy-two  pounds,  the  two  editions.  One  hundred  and  seventy- 
two  the  first,  two  hundred  the  second.  As  to  that  impostor  Rough,  I  never 
hear  the  fellow  mentioned  without  fresh  contempt.  My  friend  Sir  Charles 
Wentworth  was  at  school  with  him,  and  related  to  me  many  anecdotes  of 
his  shabbiness  and  cowardice.  However,  if  he  had  continued  to  cultivate 
poetry  instead  of  those  thistles  called  law,  he  would  have  been  perhaps  the 
best  poet  of  the  age.  By  the  way,  you  have  not  read  Keats  and  Shelley ; 
read  them  !  " 

Some  other  notices  from  his  family  letters  of  this  date  may  also  be 
worth  giving.  The  title  of  the  poem  by  his  brother  Robert  was  The 
Impious  Feast;  and  it  well  justified  the  later  and  maturer  praise  it 
received  from  him  as  a  poem  of  very  various  power,  and  in  the  sus- 
tained structure  of  its  verse  possessing  a  striking  originality. 

Gibson's  bust,  and  his  brother  Robert's  poem. 

(25th  April,  1828.     To  his  sister  Elizabeth.) 

"  Gibson  came  to  me  the  very  day  Ackelon  brought  me  Robert's  poem, 
and  I  give  him  two  sittings,  one  in  the  morning,  one  in  the  evening. 
There  have  been  three  days,  and  there  will  be  four  more,  before  he  takes 
the  cast  in  plaster-of-Paris.  I  am  told  that  Chantry  is  equal  to  him  in  busts, 
but  very  inferior  in  genius.  The  one  is  English  upon  principle,  the  .other 
Attic.  On  Sunday  I  read  Robert's  preface,  which  is  well  written.  I  shall 
not  begin  the  poetry  till  I  can  give  it  an  undivided  attention ;  which  will 
be  when  I  get  into  the  country,  and  lie  under  the  vines  all  day.  I  hope  to 
begin  this  mode  of  life  on  the  1st  of  July." 

PICTURES    AND    PICTURE-DEALING. 

(19th  June,  1828.     To  his  sister  Ellen.) 

"  I  have  laid  out  nearly  £  100  in  pictures,  part  of  which  I  sold  again  for 
£  180,  and  the  better  part  is  left  yet.     If  I  had  had  £  3,000  eight  years  ago, 

*  See  ante,  pp.  66,  67,  and  S6  -  92. 


400  TIIE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  %?5a 


I  could  have  cleared  £12,000  in  the  two  first  years.  The  dealers  lure 
know  only  the  Florentine  school;  and  one  of  them,  the  best  and  must 
honest,  often  asks  my  opinion  even  on  this.  I  have  put  a  few  hundred 
pounds  into  his  pocket.  Our  friend  Mr.  Middleton  could  not  be  prevailed 
upon  to  buy  a  Raffaelle  for  £500.  It  is  worth  £2,000,  and  will  bring  it  ere- 
long. He  buys  Carlo  Dolces  and  gentry  of  that  kidney  ;  but  he  has  also 
bought  a  Pietro  Perugino,  who  in  my  opinion  comes  immediately  after 
Raffaelle  and  Frate  Bartolomeo.  I  could  have  had  it,  if  I  had  had  the 
money,  for  £15.  It  is  worth  about  £300.  He  gave  seventy,  I  think. 
His  picture  of  Julia  is  perfect  Arnold  is  much  handsomer  than  he  has  made 
him.     His  face  has  the  radiance  of  a  young  Apollo." 

This  portrait  of  his  eldest  son  and  daughter  by  Mr.  Middleton  was 
a  present  he  had  made  to  his  mother,  and  it  was  taken  to  her  by 
Augustus  Hare.  She  thought  it  priceless  ;  and  until  within  a  day  or 
two  of  her  death,  morning  and  evening,  used  to  salute  the  two  little 
faces,  and  wish  them  good  morning  and  good  night. 

SICKNESS    OF    THE    CHILDREN  !    CLIMATE    OF    ITALY. 

(12th  July  1828.     To  his  sister  Elizabeth.) 

"It  is  not  unlikely  that  in  another  year  I  may  have  to  remove  to  the 
borders  of  the  Rhine,  on  account  of  the  general,  badness  of  the  climate  in 
Italy.  I  should  very  much  regret  to  leave  Florence,  where  I  have  several 
friends,  excellent  and  well-informed  men:  English  you  may  suppose,  for 
none  such  are  to  be  found  among  the  natives.  The  greatest  loss  after  this 
would  be  the  public  library  and  then  the  picture-gallery.  But  the  children 
cannot  resist  the  heat,  and'  I  am  in  danger  every  summer  of  losing  one  or 
other  of  them.  We  have  had  no  rain  for  two  months,  and  there  is  no  ap- 
pearance of  any.  .  .  .  My  bust  is  finished,  or  rather  the  mould  for  it.  Neve* 
was  anything  in  the  world  so  perfectly  like.  Gibson  is  the  sculptor,  and  I 
doubt  whether  any  modern  one  excels  him." 

NEWS     OF     WEATHER     AND     OF     FRIENDS. 

(8th  December,  1828.     To  both  sisters.) 

"  I  am  too  economical  to  write  you  a  letter  each,  not  having  the  skill  of 
our  divines  in  dividing  and  sub-dividing  the  heads,. necks,  bodies,  and  ex- 
tremities of  my  discourses.     Although  I  am  sitting  before  the  fire,  I  can 

hardly  hold  my  pen  from  the  excess  of  cold.      We  have  had  ice  in  the  streets 

for  several  days.  What  has  happened  in  England  I  cannot  tell;  but  I  hail 
a  letter  from  Paris  dated  the  14th  of  November  in  which  Count  d'Orsay 
tells  me  that  there  was  -now  in  the  streets  six  inches  deep.  Such  a  season 
never  was  known.  .  .  .  This  morning  I  met  Sir  Robert  Lawley,  who  walked 
with  mi'  tin- half  an  hour,  and  made  many  inquiries  aboul  the  family.  He 
had  taken  it  ill  thai  I  had  declined  two  or  three  of  his  invitations  to  dinner- 
parties; bul  I  told  him  I  never  intended  to  be  at  one  anywhere  all  the  re- 
mainder of  my  life  .  .  .  My  friend  Hare  [Francis]  has  married  Miss  Paul, 
the  daughter  of  Sir  John  Paul,  and  has  £20,000  with  her.  His  brother 
Augustus  writes  me  word  that  he  follows  the  good  example  in  the  summer, 
and  thai  Lady  Jones  gives  him  £400  a  year.  She  is  his  aunt,  and  the 
widow  of  Sir  William.  Have  you  read  Southey's  Vindicice  Ecclesice  Angli- 
cancef  Be  has  senl  it  me?  it  contains  the  highest  eulogy  on  me  I  ever 
received  or  ever  shall." 


^E'r-  47~53-]  NEW    SERIES    0F    CONVERSATIONS.  401 

He  tells  them,  in  the  same  letter,  that  his  bust  at  Rome  was 
greatly  admired,  and  that  Ablett  had  allowed  him  to  have  a  copy- 
taken  for  his  wife  and  another  for  his  mother  ;  to  whom  his  next  let- 
ter is  written,  to  announce  that  he  is  sending  it  to  her.  This  is  his 
last  letter  of  the  year ;  and  in  it  he  urgently  entreat  sher  to  guard 
against  changes  in  the  weather.  On  the  second  of  that  month  he 
had  walked  through  a  bean-field  all  in-  flower,  and  seen  yellow 
and  white  butterflies  upon  them  ;  yet  on  the  following  day,  the  third, 
people-  were  collecting  ice  for  |he  ice-houses  ;  and  though  the  change- 
ableness  of  an  English  climate  was  nothing  in  comparison  with  that 
of  the  Italian,  where  there  was  sometimes  the  difference  of  sixteen 
degrees  between  the  front  of  the  house  and  the  back,  it  involved  the 
same  kind  of  danger.  The  anxiety  thus  expressed  was  but  too  well 
founded,  for  the  year  then  about  to  open  was  to  be  the  last  of  his 
mother's  life. 


IX.    NEW  SERIES  OF  CONVERSATIONS. 

• 

I  now  resume  the  narrative  of  the  Imaginary  Conversations  from 
the  point  at  which  it  was  left  on  the  piiblication  of  the  first  series. 
In  the  notice  sent  by  Julius  Hare,  in  July,  1824,  of  the  critical  no- 
tices that  had  appeared  of  the  book,  he  reported  from  Taylor  that  its 
sate  had  been  considerable  but  slow,  and  it  was  therefore  very  uncer- 
tain how  soon  it  might  become  necessary  to  print  a  second  edition. 
At  the  earliest  it  would  certainly  not  be  published  till  June  in  the 
following  year,  so  that  there  would  be  ample  time  for  all  the  emenda- 
tions Landor  might  deem  it  advisable  to  make.  Were  they,  then,  to 
keep  back  the  new  dialogues  in  order  to  see  whether  a  second  edition 
might  be  wanted  next  spring  1  Or  should  they  print  a  third  volume 
by  itself,  which  might  come  out  at  Christmas  %  At  present  the  manu- 
script in  hand  looked  less  than  its  brethren,  but  he  dared  say  it  would 
find  itself  considerably  enlarged  before  it  could  see  the  light.  Landor 
had  seemed  so  desirous  of  printing  immediately  one  particular  con- 
versation having  reference  to  the  grand  duke,  that  Taylor  had  pro- 
posed to  him  to  insert  it  in  his  magazine  ;  but  feeling  some  doubts 
whether  this  would  be  approved,  Hare  had  for  the  present  declined 
the  offer. 

At  the  close  of  the  same  letter  there  are  uneasy  references  to  the 
omissions,  Hare  remarking  that  the  Middleton,  if  he  can  "  persuade 
Taylor,"  shall  be  inserted  in  the  second  edition  in  its  original  shape. 
Most  unwillingly  had  he  acceded  to  any  alteration,,  he  added,  except 
as  to  the  two  lines  Southey  consented  to  erase  ;  "  but  Taylor  was  so 
fixed,  that  the  only  way  of  saving  any  part  of  it  was  by  some  modifi- 
cation, which  was  as  slight  as  he  would  let  it  be.  As  so  much  has 
come  out  without  offending,  he  will  perhaps  not  be  quite  so  scrupu- 
lous next  time."  In  so  speaking  to  Landor  of  his  publisher,  allow- 
ance enough  was  hardly  made  for  its  probable  effect  on  Landors  con- 

26 


402  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ^5/' 


tinned  relations  with  Taylor.  He  was  not  the  man  to  suffer  patiently 
such  a  censorship  over  his  writings,  or  that  his  bookseller  Bhould  he 
permitted  to  usurp  an  authority  which  such  men  as  Southey  and 
Hare  saw  no  sufficient  ground  for  exerting.*  In  circumstances  the 
most  favorable,  even  when  sanctioned  or  committed  by  Southey,  the 
omissions  had 'been  a  sore  subject  with  him,  and  in  especial  when 
dictated  by  considerations  wholly  personal  to  himself.  "  You  carried 
your  tenderness  too  far,"  he  wrote  to  Southey  about  a  passage  left 
out  of  the  Puntomichino,  "in  suppressing  my  story  of  the  thirteen 
lest  I  should  be  assassinated.  Had  1  ray  choice  of  a  death,  it  should 
be  this,  unless  I  could  render  some  essential  service  to  mankind  by 
any  other." 

The  completion  of  the  third  volume  to  which  Hare's  letter  referred 
was  sent  over  by  Landor  to  Southey  four  months  after  that  letter  was 
written.  "  I  have  tinished,"  he  writes  on  the  4th  November,  1824,  "  and 
send  herewith  for  publication  the  third  and  last  volume  ;  or  rather  a 
few  supplementary  passages  to  it,  for  the  greater  part  was  finished  long 
ago.  I  had  cqmposed  parts,  and  large  ones,  for  the  following  :  Ma- 
homet and  Sergius  ;  Charlemagne  and  the  Pope  ;  Tiberius  and  Agrip- 
pina  ;  Seneca  and  Epictetus  ;  Ovid  and  a  Gothic  poet  ;  Francis  the 
First  and  Leonardo  ;  the  Black  Prince  and  the  King  of  France ; 
Queen  Anne  and  Harley  ;  Alexander  and  Torus  ;  Sertorius  and  the 
Ambassadors  of  Mithridates  ;  Sextus  Pompeius,  Octavius,  and  Anto- 
nius  ;  Queen  Mary  and  Philip;  Algernon  Sydney,  Russell,  and  Lady 
Rachel  ;  Harrington  and  Penn  ;t  Charles  the  Second  and  Sir  Edward 
Seymour  (prototype  of  Whig  roguery)  ;  St.  Louis  and  the  Sultan  of 
Egypt  ;  Fenelon  and  Bossuct  ;  Cornelia  and  Caius  Gracchus.  This 
l&sl  and  the  Tiberius  would  have  been  better  than  anything  of  any 
kind  1  have  ever  done.  I  shed  a  great  many  tears  as  often  as  I  at- 
tempted the  Tiberius.  He  is  represented  by  Suetonius  to  have  seen 
Agrippina  but  once  after  their  forced  separation  and  his  marriage 
with  Julia,  and  to  have  been  deeply  affected  ;  so  that  care  was  taken 
they  never  should  meet  again.  1  make  him  grateful  to  Augustus  and 
Livia.  hut  attributing  all  his  misery  to  their  ambition.}  Agrippina 
draws  their  characters  and  gives  some  imaginary  conversations.  Ti- 
berius betrays  gradually  his  suspicious  character,  but  love  predomi- 
nates. Bis  description  of  the  senate';  his  hatred  of  it ;  his  resolution 
to  retire  to  Caprea,  which  he  describes;  his  eternal  absence  from 
Agrippina,  — evident  marks  of  madness  on  the  mention  of  it.  If  I 
hail  preserved  any  one  scrap  of  this,  1  would  send  it.  although  it  would 
be  g 1  only  by  its  contexture.     It  appears  to  me  that  1  should  have 

*  There  i<  an  Million  in  his  next  letter  to  Southey  (11th  November,  1824),  which 
Shows  the  feeling  :it  work  in  hia  mind  respecting  Taylor.    "  In  what  progress  my  third 
volume  is  I  am  quite  ignorant,  not  having  heard  from  Julius  Hare  fnv  seven 
mi'l  publishers  being  personages  of  too  nigh  importance  to  communicate  with  such 
humble  men  as  I  am." 

t  Of  this  there  li\-  already  been  occasion  to  remark  (nn<e,p.  374)  that  it  wascertaii  ly 
written  and  destroyed. 

J  See  ante,  p.  40. 


,ET.  47-53-]  NEW    SERIES   OF    CONVERSATIONS.  403 

made  a  great  deal  more  of  Tiberius  than  I  have  of  Gebir  and  Count 
Julian  ;  but  I  had  done  nothing  which  satisfied  me  in  the  part  of 
Agrippina,  and  might  perhaps  have  been  a  year  before  I  could  become 
acquainted  with  her  for  the  purpose."  Sufficiently  long,  that  is,  to 
dispense  with  those  helps  by  way  of  explanation  on  points  of  history 
and  character,  which  in  a  dramatic  composition  the  audience  (and 
there  must  always  be  an  audience  for  a  drama,  real  or  imaginary)  can 
never  altogether  dispense  with  :  the  result  of  such  too  consummate 
form  of'  the  dramatic  art  being,  that  it  meets  the  other  extreme  of  a 
complete  ignorance  of  its  conditions,  and  is,  for  purposes  of  the 
stage  and  as  far  as  any  audience  is  concerned,  no  art  that  in  the  least 
addresses  itself  to  them.* 

"  Cornelia  and  Caius  Gracchus,"  he  continues,  "  was  the  other  con- 
versation on  which  I  should  have  exerted  all  my  energy.  Hardly 
anything  was  done  in  it.  This  volume  would  have  been  more  elabo- 
rate and  more  important  than  the  others,  and  would  have  cost  me 
double  the  time  of  both.  Three  are  enough  :  they  will  raise  against 
me  almost  every  man  in  England.  I  have  not  yet  received  my  copy, 
but  I  have  made  large  additions.  Whether  there  will  ever  be  another 
edition  is  uncertain  however.  My  heart  beats  often  for  your  Collo- 
quies. I  am  glad  that  you  have  adorned  them  with  some  scenery.  I 
do  not  recollect  that  I  have  done  anything  of  the  kind^except  on  the 
entrance  to  Ashbourne,  where  Walton  is  the  speaker.  I  stand  agape 
at  myself,"  he  says  abruptly,  at  the  close  of  this  letter.  "  Not  only 
have  1  dared  to  introduce  Cicero  and  Demosthenes,  Bacon  and  Hook- 
er, but  Shakespeare  himself,  to  whom  they  are  cradled  infants. 
What  will  you  think  of  me  1  Here  for  the  first  time  I  shrink  and 
shudder." 

,  The  intention. thus  expressed  being,  as  we  see,  to  close  with  a  third 
volume,  the  subjects  enumerated  are  to  show  us  what  was  lost  by 
that  decision  ;  and  it  is  curious  enough  that,  though  the  three  vol- 
umes expanded  ultimately  to  as  much  as  three  times  that  bulk,  only 
'  the  first,  third,  and  fourth  dialogue  in  the  list,  admirably  chosen  as 
most  of  the  subjects  are,  ever  reappeared  ;  those  three  being  ulti- 
mately sent  over  for  the  third  volume. t  We  shall  find  shortly  how- 
ever that  in  a  fit  of  temper  what  he  called  the  fourth  volume  was 
flung  into  the  fire,  and  this  may  account  for  the  loss.  The  Shake- 
speare took  ultimately  another  shape  ;  and  the  Queen  Mary  and 
Philip,  though  actually  sent  over  to  Hare,  was  lost  on  its  way  to  the 
printer ;  but,  out  of  all  the  rest,  of  onhy  the  three  named  do  we  hear 
again,  and  as  to  one  of  them  a  letter  of  seven  days'  later  date  gives 
further  curious  detail.  On  the  11th  of  November  he  wrote  to  tell 
Southey  that  he  had  been  able  after  all  to  accomplish  the  Tiberius 
and  Agrippina  (or,  as  he  now  called  her,  Vipsania)  ;  and  thus  he  de- 
scribed the  achievement.    "  I  have  been  spending  the  greater  part  of 

*  See  remarks  on  Count  Julian,  ante,  pp.  162,  163. 

t  Mahomet  and  Sergius  was  kept  over  to  the  fourth  volume. 


404  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  *$£2-J[' 

two  months  at  castel  Ruggiero,  the  villa  of  the  commissary -general 
here,  Buccellato  ;  and  it  is  here,  among  the  rocks  of  the  torrent  Emo, 
thai  I  found  my  Vipsania,  on  the  5th  of  October.  The  hand  that 
conducted  her  to  Tiberius  felt  itself  as  strong  almost  as  that  which 
led  Alcestis  to  her  husband.  It  has  however  so  shaken  me  at  last 
that  the  least  thing  affects  me  violently,  my  ear  particularly.  The 
current  would  have  been  impassable  if  I  had  not  thrown  in  the  midst 
of  it  the  discourses  of  Augustus  and  Livia,  reported  in  part  by  Tibe- 
rius and  in  part  by  Vipsania."  These  breaks  to  the  current  were 
nevertheless  afterwards  removed ;  *  and  of  the  dialogue  as  it  then  re- 
mained, and  now  stands  among  the  Conversations,  Julius  Hare  wrote 
to  Landor,  in  a  letter  dated  the  24th  June,  1826,  that  he  should  feel 
little  hesitation  in  declaring  it  the  greatest  English  poem  since  the 
death  of  Milton. 

For  the  completion  of  the  third  volume  Landor  now  of  course 
waited  impatiently,  making  as  little  allowance  as  he  usually  did  for 
the  delays  interposed  by  his  own  incessant  alterations  or  additions. 
"Julius  Hare  assures  me,"  he  writes  on  the  6th  of  January,  1826, 
"  that  the  third  volume  of  my  Conversations  will  come  out  at  the  end 
of  January.  He  however  had  not  then  received  two  sheets  closely 
written  on  a  conversation  between  the  late  Due  de  Kichelieu  and 
others.  1  am  as  heartily  glad  to  clear  my  table  drawer  of  copies  and 
fragments,  as  !  was  the  other  day  to  sweep  off  the  stale  remedies  and 
sordid  accompaniments  of  a  ten  days'  quinsey."  The  difference  was, 
that  the  attacks  of  composition  being  of  regular  and  rapid  recur- 
rence, the  copies  and  fragments  were  in  continual  accumulation. 
"You  had  better,"  wrote  Hare  soon  after  the  above  date,  "let  us 
stop  the  printing  off  until  I  ascertain  more  clearly  how  far  the  dia- 
logues 1  have  will  extend  ;  when  others,  if  necessary,  may  be  added." 

Thus  stood  matters  at  the  time  of  Hazlitt's  visit  to  Italy  in  that 
year,  and  while  Leigh  Hunt,  at  the  close  of  the  unsettled  days  of  his 
Italian  life  which  followed  the  deaths  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  was  still 
lingering  in  the  neighborhood  of  Florence.  Neither  of  them  appears 
to  have  had  any  great  liking  for  Taylor,  and  both  permitted  them- 
selves to  speak  of  him  to  Landor,  and  of  the  profit  that  such  a  book 

the  Conversations  should  have  brought  its  author,  in  a  way  that 
the  circumstances  did  not  wan-ant.  "With  the  feeling  rankling 
against  Taylor  for  the  censorship  he  had  claimed  and  exercised,  it 
was  as  it'  a  match  had  been  put  to  a  barrel  of  gunpowder  ;  and  ex- 
plosion followed  accordingly. 

The  ostensible  occasion  was  a  letter  from  Taylor,  written  in  half- 
playful  mood  and  innocent  enough,  though  with  some  allusions  not 

*  The  new  form  of  the  conversation  is  thus  described  in  a  letter  of  April,  1*25. 
"  Repentance  came  over  me  for  my  violence  done  to  Vipsania,  ajid  I  wrote  a  new  con- 
versation between  her  and  Tiberius.  I  could  not  recollect  one  sentence  of  the  old,  and 
have  omitted  the  calmer  part,  the  characteristic  speeches  of  the  courtiers,  &c.     After 

four  hours  I  completed,  what  does  uot  hid 1  console  me  for  the  first,  bnta  creature  of 

passion  and  interest." 


JKT.  47-53-1  NEW   SERIES    OF   CONVERSATIONS.  405 

happily  chosen,  and  an  assumption  he  ought  not  to  have  taken  for 
granted.  It  expressed  his  regret  for  the  omissions  he  had  caused  to 
be  made  in  one  or  two  of  the  dialogues,  and  then  said  there  was 
another  omission  for  which  he  owed  Landor  an  apology  :  the  not  hav- 
ing placed  at  his  bankers  the  half-profit  of  the  first  edition,  which 
however  he  might  perhaps  be  excused  from  doing,  as  the  reprint  of 
the  work  might  possibly  alter  the  face  of  the  account,  and  leave  him 
creditor.  This  was  assuming  that  the  second  edition  was  to  be  print- 
ed on  the  same  terms  as  the  first,  for  which,  as  it  afterwards  appeared, 
Hare  had  not  given  him  authority ;  but  remembering  Landor's  tone 
at  the  outset,  -and  his  haughty  professions  of  indifference  to  profit, 
the  error  was  at  least  a  pardonable  one,  though  expressed  with  amaz- 
ing want  of  judgment.  Landor  at  once  fired  up  at  it,  and  his  letters 
fell  like  a  thunderbolt  on  Taylor  and  Hare. 

The  epithets  applied  to  the  former  need  not  be  repeated.  Suffice 
it  that  he  was  forbidden  to  continue  the  printing  of  any  part  of  the 
new  edition  of  the  Conversations  ;  and  that  in  a  communication  of  the 
same  date  to  Hare  (1st  April,  1825)  Landor  enclosed,  with  further 
remarks,  a  copy  of  what  he  had  written  to  Taylor.  Greatly  did  he 
regret  that  he  had  had  anything  to  do  with  so  insincere  a  man.  "  He 
knows  very  well  what  I  hear  from  Mr.  Hazlitt,  that  those  booksellers 
who. engage  to  take  half  the  profits  never  take  only  half  the  risk; 
yet  with  this  uncustomary  advantage  on  his  side,  and  having  sold  all 
the  copies  three  months  ago,  he  delays  the  payment  of  what  is  due 
on  the  plea  that  I  may  hereafter  be  indebted  to  him  for  something 
not  ordered  or  contemplated  by  me.  What  has  the  reprint  to  do 
with  what  is  already  printed  ]  And  why  should  I  not  receive  a  far- 
thing now  because  I  may  possibly  be  indebted  to  him  at  some  future 
time  %  I  shall  consult  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  and  other  English  authors 
now  at  Florence  on  what  is  best  to  do  or  to  say  on  this  business. 
They  know  the  man." 

In  a  letter  to  Southey,  ten  days  later,  he  enters  more  into  detail ; 
and  from  this  it  would  seem  not  only  that  some  letters  Taylor  should 
have  answered  he  had  left  unanswered,  but  that  while  Landor  un- 
doubtedly himself  had  sanctioned  the  printing  of  the  third  volume, 
he  did  not  know  that  any  part  of  the  second  edition  had  gone  to 
press,  and  it  had  really  been  his  intention  to  require  previously  some 
new  arrangement.  "My  third  volume  of  the  Conversations'''  he 
wrote,  "ought  to  have  been  nearly  printed  ere  this,  but  the,  &c„  &c, 
of  Taylor  will  probably  be  the  reason  why  it  never  will  appear." 
Then  he  describes,  in  very  forcible  phrase,  the,  &c,  <fcc,  and  says  it 
was  with  astonishment  and  consternation  he  had  heard,  only  the 
other  day  from  Hare,  of  the  printing  off  of  two  sheets  of  the  second 
edition.  "  It  had  been  my  firm  resolution  to  make  a  very  different 
contract  for  this  ;  and  above  all  to  stipulate,  as  he  had  broken  his 
first  engagement,  that  he  should  either  print  all  that  you  and  Hare 
had  admitted,  or  nothing.     Principally  however  I  was  advised  to  de- 


40G  TIIE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ^a^J' 


1&22-  28. 


maud  a  fixt  sum  in  ready  money,  as  the  value  of  the  work  was  now 
ascertained  and  acknowledged,  and  as  he  himself  had  declared  his 
opinion  that  so  much  sense  had  never  been  put  into  a  book  since  the 
time  of  Bacon.  Exaggerated  and  silly  as  this  opinion  of  his  may  be, 
what  must  the  man  himself  be  to  act  as  he  has  done  !  What  have  I 
to  do  with  their  booksellers'  accounts  I  He  might  print  a  second 
edition,  and  then  a  third,  and  then  a  fourth,  and  say  after  all,  who 
knows  whether  the  next  edition  I  print  may  not  leave  you  in  my 
debt  !  But  I  never  intended  that  he  should  print  a  second  until  I 
received  all  the  money  due  to  me  for  the  first,  nor  until  he  had  signed 
such  conditions  as  I  thought  proper  to  stipulate.  Hare  had  no  in- 
structions from  me,  nor  any  authority  whatever  to  agree  on  my  part." 
He  atlds  some  reasons  for  suspeeting  foul  play  (drawn  from  the  larger 
number  printed  of  the  third  volume  than  had  been  printed  of  the 
first  and  second)  winch  are  unreasonable  as  the  rest  of  his  letter  ; 
reiterates  what  he  had  suffered  by  not  receiving  what  was  due  to 
him,  of  which  he  had  promised  a  portion  for  some  pictures  lately 
bought  ;  and  then,  in  language  which  I  preserve  for  the  astounding 
statement  it  conveys,  but  otherwise  not  to  be  read  with  gravity,  tells 
Southey  he  has  made  a  bonfire  of  that  fourth  volume  of  Conversa- 
tions, the  mysterious  disappearance  of  the  proposed  contents  of  which 
has  already  been  remarked.  "  His  first  villany  in  making  me  disap- 
point the  person  with  whom  I  had  agreed  for  the  pictures,  instigated 
me  to  throw  my  fourth  volume,  in  its  imperfect  state,  into  the  fire, 
and  has  cost  me  nine  tenths  of  my  fame  as  a  writer.  His  next  vil- 
lany will  entail  perhaps  a  chancery  suit  on  my  children,  — for  at  its 
commencement  1  blow  my  brains  out.  Can  you  conceive  the  base- 
ness  of  this  fellow?  He  addressed  to  Mina  in  his  own  name,  with 
much  complimentary  phraseology,  the  books  I  ordered  him  to  send 
to  that  great  man  ;  and  has  the  impudence  to  send  me  a  copy  of  his 
note,  and  M ina's  in  reply.  By  the  latter  it  appears  that  his  gift 
to  Mina  produced  the  thanks  of  the  latter  to  him,  and  yet  that  very 
copy  is  charged  among  the  rest  to  my  account.  Mr.  Hazlitt,  Mr. 
Leigh  Hunt.  I, ..id  Dillon,  Mr.  Brown,  and  some  other  authors  of  va- 
rious kinds,  have  been  made  acquainted,  one  from  another,  with  this 
whole  affair  ;  and  they  speak  of  it  as  a  thing  unprecedented.  I  have 
desired  Mr.  Hare  to  offer  the  copyright  (as  was  recommended  to  me) 
to  Constable  of  Edinburgh;  if  he  refuses  it,  to  Longman.  In  the 
latter  case  you  may  have  more  weight  with  him  than  the  hook  itself 
would."  Then  he  describes  his  having  rewritten  the  Tiberius  and 
Yipsania,  and  thus  concludes  :  "  It  is  well  I  did  it  before  Taylor  had 
given  me  a  fresh  proof  of  his  intolerable  roguery.  This  cures  me  for- 
ever, if   I  live,  of  writing  what    could    he   published  ;   and  I  will  take 

g 1  care  that  my  son  shall    not    suffer  in  the  same  way.      Not  a  line 

of  any  kind  will  I  leave  behind  me.  My  children  shall  he  carefully 
warned  against  literature.  To  fence,  to  swim,  to  speak  French,  are 
the  most  they  shall  learn.'' 


^ET.  47-53-]  NEW   SERIES    OF   CONVERSATIONS.  407 

Southey  took  every  part  of  this  letter  with  equal  gravity.  As  to 
its  closing  lines,  he  told  his  friend  that  the  only  abiding  pleasures, 
the  only  permanent  satisfactions,  this  world  affords,  were  to  be  found 
in  religion  and  literature  ;  that  he  could  not  give  his  children  an  apt- 
itude for  either,  if  they  had  it  not ;  but  that,  trusting  to  time  and 
providence  for  the  increase,  he  could  prepare  the  soil  and  sow  the 
seed.  "  Give  your  son  as  much  Greek  and  Latin  as  he  can  learn 
without  making  learning  a  painful  task.  His  place  in  society  will 
require  them.  Should  he  make  no  use  of  his  knowledge  when  he 
grows  up,  it  will  do  him  no  harm  ;  but  if  he  should  have  will  and 
ability  to  profit  by  such  knowledge,  it  will  be  a  grievous  misfortune 
to  be  without  it."  Then  as  to  Taylor's  conduct,  he  says  that  one 
part  of  it  will  bear  a  good  explanation,  for  that  the  larger  number 
printed  of  the  third  than  of  the  other  volumes  is  what  he  has  him- 
self had  experience  of,  in  perfect  good  faith,  with  his  History  of 
Brazil  and  other  books.  But  that  is  the  only  thing  he  defends. 
All  the  other  parts  of  Taylor's  conduct  had  appeared  to  him  as  they 
did  to  Landor  ;  but  what  vexed  him  was  that  such  a  writer  should 
destroy  a  single  line,  or  forbear  writing  one,  because  a  bookseller 
showed  himself  to  be  no  better  than  what  the  spirit  of  trade  made 
him.  "  That  spirit  is  a  vile  one,  and  it  is  better  to  be  pillaged  by  it 
than  possessed.     This  is  my  comfort  always." 

Not  so  did  Hare  accept  Landor's  charges  against  his  friend.  He 
met  them  in  a  way  that  did  Taylor  justice,  and  himself  much  honor ; 
nor  could  I  have  justified  my  present  revival  of  them,  necessary  to 
the  purpose  of  this  book  as  the  mention  of  them  was,  if  I  had  not 
been  able  to  accompany  them  by  a  refutation  so  complete.  He  ad- 
mits that  there  had  been  delays  in  replying  to  letters  calling  for  im- 
mediate answer,  but  shows  that  a  portion  of  this  blame  had  been  his 
own  ;  and,  confirming  both  what  Landor  alleged  of  his  having  given  no 
express  authority  to  permit  Taylor  to  print  a  second  edition,  and  what 
Hazlitt  had  said  of  the  custom  of  publishers  bearingthe  whole  risk  when 
allowed  to  share  the  profits,  reminds  him  as  to  the  latter  that  the  custom 
had  been  departed  from  in  Taylor's  case  not  at  his  but  at  their  instance, 
and  as  to  the  former,  gives  him  the  reasonable  grounds  there  were  for 
supposing  that  an  authority,  understood  if  not  expressed,  did  actually 
exist.*  "  The  two  volumes  were  printed,  and  in  spite  of  what  Haz- 
litt did  to  retard  the  sale,  went  off  rapidly  enough.  You  sent  over 
materials  for  a   third  volume,   and  additions  and  corrections  for   a 

*  Hare's  letter  of  July  14th  {ante,  pp.  368,  369,  401)  silently  assumes  such  an  under- 
standing; and  in  a  letter  of  the  22d  of  March  preceding,  introducing  Captain  Shad  well 
Clerke  to  Southey,  Landor  himself  had  written  thus:  "  I  transmit  to  Taylor  by  Captain 
Clerke  five  other  conversations.  For.  according  to  Hare,  a  new  edition  will  probably  be 
required  soon.  My  copies  have  not  arrived  yet,  but  I  expect  them  daily."  Sending  on 
this  letter  to  Southey  on  the  24th  of  May,  the  Captain  accompanied  it  by  an  amiable 
picttrre  of  their  common  friend.  "  The  eve  of  Captain  Clerke's  departure  from  Flor- 
ence was  passed  with  the  admirable  author  of  the  /maainary  Omversations,  who,  in  the 
bosom  of  a  charming  family,  surrounded  by  his  honks  and  pictures,  seems  to  have  real- 
ized a  little  domestic  Utopia  which  no  one  woi.ll  be  mure  qualified  to  appreciate  than 
Mr.  Southey." 


408  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  [*££-J.' 

Mil  edition.  When  writing  to  you  I  spoke  of  it  as  likely  to  be 
soon  called  f'<  >r.  I  saw  nothing  in  your  letters  implying  any  hesita- 
tion about  it,  or  any  wish  to  enter  into  a  new  compact.  On  the  con- 
trary, von  frequently  told  us  that  you  should  have  nothing  more  to 
Bend  tor  any  of  the  three  volumes;  and  though  I  knew  your  produc- 
tiveness too  well  to  understand  this  literally,  I  drew  from  it  that  you 
were  satisfied,  and  that  we  might  begin  printing  the  three  volumes  if 
occasion  required."  In  proof  that  Taylor  had  no  eagerness  to  take 
advantage  of  his  position  by  hastening  the  reprint  with  any  notion 
of  profit,  Hare  states  that  on  making  it  known  there  was  room  in 
the  market  for  a  new  edition,  he  had  also  said  expressly  that  the 
Middleton  dialogue  would  prevent  his  having  anything  to  do  with  it, 
and  it  was  only  after  much  correspondence  this  reluctance  had  been 
overcome.*  Landor's  information  that  "  another  man  "  might  have 
expected  several  hundreds  for  the  Conversations,  Hare  disposes  of  by 
remarking  that  it  was  a  belief  not  shared  by  the  London  puhlishers, 
or  so  many  would  not  have  refused  the  book  ;  and  the  assertion  that 
Taylor  desired  to  evade  the  payments  actually  due,  is  refuted  at 
every  point  with  irresistible  evidence.  The  offence  in  short  is  nar- 
rowed to  the  opening  admission  that  there  had  been  improper  delays 
in  replying  to  letters  and  forwarding  accounts :  it  seemed  to  Hare 
that  this  was  the  only  thing  blameworthy  in  the  whole  of  Taylor's 
conduct  :  nor  could  he  for  his  pai*t  visit  such  a  fault  very  heavily. 
"  I  cannot,  because  I  often  commit  it  myself;  I  cannot,  because  I 
rememlier  what  you  make  Cicero  say,  that  '  neither  to  give  nor  take 
offence  are  surely  the  two  things  most  delightful  in  human  life.'  On 
the  calmest  review  of  the  whole  matter,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have 
been  three  or  four  times  to  blame  for  delaying  to  write  to  you,  and 
that  'fax  lor  has  been  so  once  or  twice  ;  but  surely  there  is  no  vil- 
lany  in  this,  or  I  must  be  a  fourfold  villain."  He  then  spoke  of 
Landor's  complaint  that  Taylor  had  crept  into  Mina's  notice  under 
his  skirts.  The  fact  was,  as  Hare  believed,  that  Taylor  having  been 
desired  to  send  Mina  a  copy  of  the  Conversations,  6ent  of  course  a 
note  with  them  explaining  why  he  sent  them  ;  and  surely  Landor 
would  not  blame  him  for  having  seized  occasion  to  express  in  it  his 
admiration  for  so  <_rreat  a  man.  Mina  acknowledged  the  receipt  in  a 
note  to  Taylor,  who  valued  it  as  he  ought,  but  Mina  deferred  thank- 
ing Landor  till  he  could  send  him  a  copy  of  the  work  he  was  himself 
projecting  ;  f  and   that  he  did  send  him  this  copy  was  a  proof  that 

*  "  This  led  to  *  correspondence;  T  wrote  several  letters  on  the  subject,  one  of  which 
entered  into  all  the  details,  and  seemed  to  me  completely  to  show  the  futility  of  his 
fears;  at  all  events  it  induced  him  to  give  up  his  objections  altogether,  and  I  rejoiced  to 
find  that  the  world  contains  one  person  on  whom  reasoning  enn  produce  some  effect. 
A-  to  the  story  in  the  Puntomichxno,  1  had  always  wished  to  keep  it:  that  omission  was 
owinfr  solely  to  Sonthey." 

t  This  production  was  a  pamphlet  descriptive  of  his  services;  and  to  bofh  the 
pamphlet  and  letter  of  the  great  Spanish  soldier  Landor  referred  in  writing  to  Southey 
of  his  book  on  the  Peninsular  WaT  in  September  of  this  year  (lS'2r>).  "Ihopeyon 
have  been  able  to  obtain  some  materials  from  Mina  for  the  latter  part  of  your  Peninsn- 


MT.  47-53.]  NE^   SERIES   OF   CONVERSATIONS.  409 

Taylor  could  not,  as  had  been  suspected,  have  sent  the  Conversations 
as  coming  from  himself.  Hare  wound  up  his  letter  by  saying  that 
after  Landor's  outrageous  attack  he  had  felt  it  his  duty  to  come  for- 
ward in  behalf  of  his  friend  ;  and  he  declared  finally,  that  so  far 
from  Taylor  meriting  such  treatment,  Landor,  on  the  contrary,  was 
under  considerable  obligations  to  Taylor  for  the  pains  and  care  h^ 
had  bestowed  on  the  Conversations.  The  letter  was  dated  from  Trin- 
ity College  on  the  21st  April,  1825. 

When  it  was  written  Taylor's  own  reply  to  the  charges  had  not 
been  received ;  but  Hare,  on  being  made  acquainted  with  them,  had 
immediately  written  as  above  acquitting  him  of  blame,  and  Taylor's 
letter  reached  Cambridge  the  day  after  Hare's  went  from  that  place 
to  Landor.  It  confirmed  Hare's  statement  on  every  point ;  and  the 
money  account  enclosed  with  it,  for  which  a  check  had  already  been 
sent  to  Landor's  agent  at  Rugely,  established  everything  with  scru- 
pulous accuracy.  He  confessed  his  fault  in  having  left  some  letters 
unanswered,  but  admitted  no  other.  "  I  detained  Mina's  book  and 
note  in  the  hope  of  procuring  some  safe-conduct  for  it,  so  many  of 
our  parcels  having  failed  in  reaching  Mr.  Landor.  We  have  now 
sent  it  to  M.  Morsa  under  cover,  as  desired.*     Of  course,  with  all 

lar  History-  The  summary  of  his  exploits,  which  he  sent  to  me,  contains  little  more 
than  what  I  knew  already:  but  I  am  certain  that  he  has  it  in  his  power  to  throw  the 
clearest  light  on  some  most  important  transactions.  Whether  the  French  were  the 
foolisher  in  the  invasion  of  Spain,  or  we  the  baser  in  permitting  it,  is  indeed  a  problem. 
The  Rev  Xetto,  I  see  by  the  papers,  has  hanged  the  only  man  left  in  his  dominions 
capable  of  rendering  him  any  great  service.  The  Italians  talk  with  admiration  of  Lord 
Cochrane's  meditated  services  in  favor  of  the  Greeks.  It  remains  to  be  proved 
whether  his  anchor  can  be  weighed  up  from  the  foot  of  Modern  Faith,  —  the  Christian 
Faith  that  devotes  herself  to  the  service  of  her  sister  the  Mahometan.  I  shall  quote,  in 
the  Conversations  I  am  about  to  print,  your  remarks  on  the  conduct  of  Ferdinand 
towards  his  father.  The  impartiality  you  have  shown  to  all  parties  will  render  the 
book  of  the  highest  value,  even  to  those  who  cannot  estimate  the  labor  of  research  re- 
quired for  it,  nor  the  purity  of  its  composition.  Now,  for  the  first  time,  I  cease  to  regret 
that  anything  could  have  withdrawn  you  from  poetry." 

*  I  found  Mina's  note  among  Landor's  papers,  and  subjoin  an  accurate  copy  of  it. 
The  second  volume  of  the  Conversations  had  been  dedicated  to  him  in  language  of 
magnificent  eulogy,  and  this  is  his  acknowledgment. 

.  "  Plymouth,  22  de  Junio,  1825. 

"  Muy  Seiior  mio,  —  Con  algun  atraso  Heg6  a  mis  manos  la  apreciable  carta  de  V.  de 
1°  de  abril  ultimo,  a  la  que  mis  padecimientos  fisicos  (que  me  obligaron  a  salir  de 
Londres)  no  me  ban  permitido  contextar  hasta  ahora. 

"  Ciertamente  ignoraba  yo  que  los  dos  primeros  tomos  de  la  obra,  Imaginary  Conver- 
sations of  Literary  Men  and  Statesmen,  que  me  presento  Mr.  Taylor,  fuesen  por  encargo 
de  V.  Tal  es  la  razon  de  no  haber  dicho  a  V.  nada  sobre  el  particular,  cuando  tube  el 
honor  de  remitirle  el  pegueno  extracto  de  mi  vida.  Mas  ahora  que  lo  s6,  debo  dar  a, 
V.,  como  lo  egeeuto,  las  devidas  gracias  por  la  atencion  de  mandarme  su  obra;  igual- 
mente  que  se  las  doy  por  la  honra  que  me  dispenso  dedicandome  el  segundo  de  dichos 
tomos,  y  por  las  expresiones  con  que  entonces  en  esa  dedicatoria,  y  despues  en  su 
carta,  me  ha  querido  V.  favorecer,  aunque  en  mi  no  concurra  merito  para  ellas. 

"Aprecio  infinito  las  advertencias  que  para  mi  gobierno  se  sirve  V.  hacerme,  de 
las  que  me  aprovechare  si  llegase  el  caso;  quedando  entretanto  muy  reconocido  a 
esta  bondad  de  V. 

"  Tengo  una  gran  satisfaccion  en  asegurar  a  V.  que  soy  con  la  mayor  sinceridad 

"  De  V.  muy  atto  y  obdo  servidor, 

"FE.  ESPOZ  Y  MINA. 

"  To  iValler  Savage  Landor,  Esqre." 


410  THE    IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  [^-aa" 

my  admiration  for  Landor'a  genius,  I  must  decline  all  future  concern 
with  bis  works  ;  but  1  doubt  not  another  publisher  will  readily  now 
be  found.  Even  the  timid  firm  of  Longmans,  who  once,  1  believe, 
published  for  him,  would  probably  be  tempted  now."  Nor  was  it  the 
worst  part  of  his  letter  where  he  thanked  Hare  for  having  defended 
him  even  before  lie  could  himself  be  heard.  "You  have  done  me, 
on  a  trying  occasion,  the  most  important  service  I  ever  received,  and 
I  cannot  but  henceforth  regard  you  as  a  friend  whose  esteem  1  hope 
never  to  forfeit.  1  ought  not  to  have  been  afraid,  knowing  you  ;  but 
.somehow  I  never  expect  any  high  degree  of  virtue  from  my  fellow- 
creatures.  This  arises  perhaps  from  my  never  having  put  it  to  the 
test  before.  1  always  dreaded  making  the  experiment ;  henceforth  I 
shall  take  a  higher  standard." 

Writing  again  from  Trinity  College  on  Sunday  the  24th  April,  Hare 
sent  this  letter  to  Landor,  telling  him  that  he  would  see  from  it  how 
much  pain  he  had  been  giving  to  a  most  simple-hearted  and  amiable 
man.  He  would  also,  Hare  trusted,  have  become  convinced  how  fu- 
tile had  been  the  grounds  of  his  indignation  ;  and  he  would  be  thank- 
ful that  his  friend  had  had  it  in  his  power  not  to  suffer  the  wound 
to  rankle,  but  could  instantly  soothe  and  heal  it.  "  You  say,  in  the 
conversation  on  the  death  of  the  grand-duke,  'Lose  nothing,  as  you 
hope  for  heaven,  of  that  which  may  give  you  a  better  opinion  of 
your  fellow-creatures,  —  a  just  and  noble  one  of  God's  great  work.' 
The  principle  is  a  truly  beautiful  one,  and  I  rejoice  much  in  having 
been  the  means  of  leading  Taylor  towards  it.  0  that  you  yourself 
would  more  regularly  act  according  to  it,  and  believe,  when  you  see 
something  that  appears  not  quite  right,  that  it  may  as  often  be  a 
mistake  as  a  misdeed  !  "  Beneath  all  Landor'a  wild  irascibility  there 
was  a  noble  nature.  He  accepted  silently  this  wise  rebuke.  Taylors 
imed  censorship  of  his  writings  remained  still  a  point  of  offence 
which  Hare  had  too  lightly  passed  over  ;  but  not  another  complaint 
was  made  by  hijn.  Taylor  was  afterwards  spoken  of  with  respect, 
and  in  Bare  increased  confidence  was  placed.  Upon  the  last  letter 
reaching  Landor  he  gave  amusing  proof  of  it.  He  had  been  sending 
meanwhile  a  succession  of  instructions,  each  recalling  the  last,  and 
Hare  thus  referred  to  them  in  a  postscript.  "  About  a  new  publisher 
I  do  not  know  what  to  do.  As  your  second  letter  contradicts  the 
first,  your  third  says  you  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  either  Long- 
man or  Constable,  and  I  fear  a  fourth  may  come  with  a  new  scheme, 
what  : i i 1 1  I  to  do  '  After  having  failed  once  so  egregiously,  I  do  not  like 
trusting  anything  but  your  express  desire  ;  and  any  way  the  second 
edition  now  cannot  come  out  before  Christmas."  The  fourth  letter 
brought  the  express  desire  that  Hare  should  act  for  the  best  accord- 
ing to  his  own  judgment,  and  gave  him  also  full  authority. 

Not  until  August,  L826,  was  Hare  able  to  send  over  a  copy  of  this 
second  edition  to  Landor  in  Italv.  Writing  to  his  brother  Francis  in 
October  of  that  year,  he  tells  him  that  he  had,  by  Hayter  the  painter, 


^ET.  47  —  53.]  NEW   SERIES   OF   CONVERSATIONS.  411 

sent  out  the  volumes  two  months  before  ;  that  the  third  volume, 
though  printed,  was  not  yet  published  ;  that  this  volume  was  still 
better  than  its  predecessors  ;  and  that  the  second  edition  had  been  in 
an  equal  degree  improved  and  enlarged.  Mr.  Colburn  was  the  new 
publisher  ;  and,  for  the  impression  printed  of  the  edition  and  of  the 
additional  volume  not  yet  issued,  had  paid  two -hundred  pounds. 
Against  the  better  advice  of  Julius  Hare,  however,  he  had  declined 
to  issue  the  new  volume,  until  the  success  of  the  second  edition  had 
been  ascertained ;  and  this  falling  short  of  his  expectations,  the 
other  was  held  over  until  the  beginning  of  1828.  There  is  neverthe- 
less no  further  complaint  from  Landor.  The  eagerness  of  invention 
has  been  upon  him  during  all  these  months,  and  the  delight  of  giving 
form  to  his  fancies  has  sufficed  for  him.  In  this  the  man  of  genius 
finds  a  comfort  against  many  troubles.  Dialogue  after  dialogue  had 
been  written  in  the  interval  with  astonishing  ease  and  enjoyment ; 
and  in  a  letter  to  Southey  of  the  27th  September,  1825,  there  is  this 
characteristic  passage  :  "  Julius  Hare  having  told  me  that  1  had  sent 
enough  materials  for  two  more  volumes,  I  hope  to  see  two  more  printed 
by  the  end  of  January."  *  The  thing  was  not  possible  in  the  most 
favorable  circumstances.  As  it  was,  two  more  Januarys  were  to  pass 
before  even  his  third  volume  saw  the  light ;  and  for  that  fourth  and 
fifth  another  publisher  had  to  be  found. 

At  the  end  of  June,  1826,  a  few  clays  after  the  second  edition  ap- 
peared in  London,  Julius  Hare  wrote  to  express  his  opinion  of  it,  and 
also  of  the  unpublished  third  volume.  That  the  second  was  superior 
to  the  first  edition  was  implied  in  its  having  nearly  400  pages  more, 
the  new  parts  being  always  worthy  of  the  old,  and  often  superior  to 
them.  Many  of  the  conversations  seemed  to  him  to  have  been  very 
much  improved,  especially  the  Porson,  the  Alexander,  the  Franklin, 
the  Lascy,  the  Puntomichino,  the  Aristotle,  and  the  Chatham,  which 
last  was  now  become  worthy  of  a  place  among  the  rest.  In  the 
former  edition  he  hardly  thought  it  was.     In  the  Cicero  too  he  had 

*  In  the  same  letter  he  tells  Southey  what  lie  calls  a  pleasant  anecdote  of  "  some 
fellow  at  Edinburgh"  having  admitted  into  his  magazine  a  silly  and  indisoriminating 

eulogy  on  the  Conversit'wns,  and  being  ordered  some  months  afterwards  to  apologize  to 
his  readers  for  having  done  so.  "In  this  there  i*  more  than  Scotch  baseness;  more 
malignity  than  armed  the  sycophantic  ruffian  against  Keats.  It  shall  not  pass  unchas- 
tised."  The  chastisement  he  inflicted  in  his  conversation  with  his  Florentine  and  Eng- 
lish visitors  by  describing  the  Scotch  magazine-men,  after  rifling  him  and  thanking 
him,  as  retaining  the  pilfer  and  retracting  the  thanks;  and  by  throwing  out  his  famous 
challenge  to  the  "  sturdiest  of  the  connection,"  that  he  was  to  take  the  ten  worst  out  of 
the  seventy  conversations,  and  if  he  equalled  them  in  ten  years  he  would  not  only  cor- 
rect in  future  (under  the  rose)  his  English  for  him,  but  give  him  a  hot  wheaten  roll  and 
a  pint  of  brown  stout  for  his  breakfast.  This,  with  what  he  said  of  Hazlitt,  disappeared 
from  the  revised  dialogues;  but  it  was  not  more  honorable  to  him  to  have  praised  that 
masterly  writer  for  criticism  more  vivid  and  vigorous  than  any  that  had  appeared  in 
the  century,  than  for  the  objection  he  made  to  its  employment  at  any  time  in  keeping 
up  literary  enmities.  He  grieved  over  all  such,  he  said,  "but  particularly  when  they 
are  exercised  against  the  ornaments  and  glories  of  our  country,  against  a  Wordsworth 
and  a  Southey.  For  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  love  in  general  those  men  most  who 
have  thought  most  differently  from  me,  on  subjects  wherein  others  pardon  no  discord- 
ance." 


412  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  .    [*?°*J' 


found  many  additions  that  had  delighted  him,  and  above  all  the  ex- 
quisite allegory,  to  which  he  would  pay  the  highest  praise  by  saying 
it  was  the  most  Platonic  passage  in  the  two  volumes.  Very  often 
also  the  logical  connection  was  more  distinctly  la-ought  out,  and  the 
whole  had  certainly  acquired  more  of  the  tone  of  conversation. 
"  Still,  in  the  highest  merits  of  composition,  in  the  delineation  of 
character  and  of  passion,  and  in  irony  (such  irony  as  I  find  in  the 
Coleraine  and  the  Bossuet,  and  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Peter,  the 
Richelieu,  and  the  Soliman),  the  third  volume  is  decidedly  superior. 
The  Tiberius  I  should  feel  little  hesitation  in  declaring  the  greatest 
English  poem  since  the  death  of  Milton."  In  some  cases,  Hare  went 
on  to  say,  as  in  the  Leopold  and  the  Tooke,  he  feared  Landor  would 
miss  the  callida  junctura ;  and  once  or  twice  the  insertions  had  been 
injurious.  The  note  at  the  end  of  the  Chatham  was  more  contempt- 
uous as  it  first  stood  ;  and  he  had  felt  a  good  many  doubts  about  the 
addition  to  the  Anne  Boleyn.  That  to  the  Jane  Grey  was  perfect. 
He  had  thought  it  impossible  to  add  to  it  without  injury;*  but  the 
addition  had  even  increased  its  unity,  and  more  fully  brought  out  Jane's 
pm-e  simplicity.  Hare  had  taken  no  steps  yet  toward  printing  the 
new  conversations.  "  One  should  wait,  I  think,  to  determine,  by  the 
sale  of  the  third  volume,  what  number  of  copies  to  print.  Have  you 
heard  of  Southey  being  returned  to  Parliament  for  the  borough  of 
Downton  1  I  suppose  it  is  that  he  may  contend  the  Roman  Catholics. 
In  his  ViniJicixB  he  has  a  note  on  the  Imaginary  Conversations." 
Since  the  date  of  his  previous  letter  Hare  had  taken  orders  in  the 
English  Church ;  but  he  continued  still  for  the  present  at  Trinity 
College. 

At  this  time  Southey  had  not  replied  to  Landor's  letters  for  some 
months,  and  it  was  not  until  February,  1827,  he  explained  his  silence. 
A  I  >ad  accident  had  deprived  him  of  the  benefit  he  expected  from  his 
trip  to  Holland  in  1825  ;  and  the  shock  that  awaited  him  on  his 
return  from  another  visit  in  182G,  when  he  lost  his  youngest  daughter, 
again  undid  all  the  good  that  had  been  done.  It  is  a  melancholy  let- 
ter  he  now  writes  to  his  old  friend,  sad  even  for  the  cheery  way  in 
which  lie  speaks  of  the  old  busy  projects  that  are  about  him  still, 
because  it  reveals  the  consciousness  that  any  other  life  than  the  life 
of  labor  that  had  so  early  broken  him  down  has  ceased  to  be  possible 
for  him  now.  Landor's  reply  is  full  of  grief.  The  pleasure  he  looked 
for  and  began  to  receive  from  Southey's  letter  had  ceased  at  once,  at 
the  first  words  almost  ;  and  never  in  the  whole  course  of  his  existence 
had  he  been  oppressed  by  a  heavier  sorrow  than  he  had  suffered  the 
whole  of  that  .lay  from  what  it  told  him.  "The  last  I  heard  of  you 
was  that  you  were  elected  member  of  Parliament,  and  that  you  had 
declined  to  take  your  seat  from  a  want  of  qualification.  ^  hat  a 
scandal  to  the  administrators  of  public  affairs,  to  the  country,  to   the 

*  In  his  pripor  in  the  London  Mngasxnt  he  had  said  <->f  it,  "  Anne  Boleyn  will  be  wel- 
comed us  their  companion  by  Antigone,  Imogen,  Ophelia,  and  Desdemoiuu" 


MT.  47-53.]  NEW    SERIES    OF    COXVERSATIONS.  413 

age  !  "  He  informs  him  (the  date  is  March,  1827)  of  his  own  visit  to 
Rome  in  the  winter,  and  of  his  having  remained  a  whole  month,  be- 
cause of  many  friends  he  had  in  the  place  well  acquainted  with  the 
sites  of  the  antiquities,  and  some  who  were  ready  to  show  them  to 
him  all  day  long,  Francis  Hare  in  particular.  But  Florence  was  a 
better  city  to  live  in,  and  he  doubted  if  he  should  ever  leave  it. 
Had  Southey  quite  given  up  his  idea  of  coming  into  Italy  1  Might 
not  such  a  total  change  of  scene  be  useful  both  to  him  and  Mrs. 
Southey]  France  and  Holland  had  many  things  in  common  with 
England ;  the  fate  of  the  country  and  the  feel  of  the  air  were  the 
same  ;  but  Italy  had  nothing  in  common.  "  AVe  are  at  the  exti-emity 
of  the  Old  World  ;  France,  with  Germany,  England,  &c,  is  the  mid- 
dle one."  Then  he  tells  Southey  that  a  copy  of  his  second  edition 
has  gone  to  him,  that  the  third  volume  will  soon  be  on  its  way,  and 
that  he  has  finished  two  more  volumes,  a  fourth  and  a  fifth. 
"  Whether  they  will  ever  be  printed  I  know  not,  and  never  will 
inquire.     This  is  left  with  Julius  Hare." 

There  was  precisely  the  same  uncertainty  a  year  and  a  half  later, 
but  it  had  not  meanwhile  restrained  his  ardor  of  composition ;  and 
the  result  was  told  to  Southey  in  November,  1828.  Francis  Hare 
had  urged  him,  he  said,  letter  after  letter,  to  make  up  the  hundred 
of  his  conversations.  He  had  thrown  away  many  half-written  ones, 
but  at  last  he  had  completed  the  number,  and  perhaps  he  had  done 
amiss  in  admitting  any  that  contained  living  characters.  When 
Southey  should  have  read  the  third  volume,  which  at  last  was  issued, 
and  a  copy  of  the  sheets  of  the  fourth  which  would  be  sent  along 
with  it,  he  was  to  say  whether  their  contents  were,  as  Julius  Hare 
fancied,  better  than  the  two  first.  He  feared  himself  they  might  not 
be.  But  about  the  two  last  being  better  (what  he  had  sent  for  one 
volume  having  expanded  into  two)  he  had  no  doubt ;  and  very  anx- 
ious and  restless  he  had  been  that  each  duad  should  excel  the  pre- 
ceding. "  I  have  had  no  letter  from  Julius  Hare  since  the  month  of 
March,  but  I  have  received  the  third  volume,  and  the  fourth  also, 
though  without  the  dedication.  What  progress  is  made  in  the  fifth 
and  sixth  I  am  quite  ignorant." 

In  that  March  letter  Hare  *  had  only  announced  to  him  the  expan- 
sion of  his  fifth  volume  into  two,  and  had  given  him  little  hope  of  its 
going  to  press  as  yet.  But  the  fourth  and  fifth  were  in  hand  ;  Mr. 
Ainsworth  was  to  be  the  publisher  ;  and  infinite  had  been  Hare's 
troubles  in  connection  with  them.  The  printer  had  not  recently  been 
making  much  progress,  but  had  promised  to  resume  his  former  dili- 
gence ;  and  the  publisher  was  still  objecting  strongly  to  the  balk  of 
the  volumes.  "  One  of  between  500  and  550  pages  makes  a  very 
good  octavo  ;  if  it  be  larger  the  expense  becomes  very  heavy,  and  it 

*  At  the  end  of  it  he  announced  his  brother  Francis's  approaching  marriage,  and 
spoke  of  the  pleasure  they  all  felt  "  at  the  prospect  of  his  ceasing  to  lead  the  life  of  a 
vagrant." 


414:  THE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  !™™sY* 

is  impossible  to  make  a  proportionate  augmentation  in  the  price. 
Now  the  last  calculation,  certainly  not  over-rated,  gives  us  1500  pages 
for  the  fourth  and  fifth  volumes,  and  1  think,  therefore,  you  must 
determine  on  having  a  sixth.''  Still  there  came  fresh  disputes  as 
time  wont  on;  a  full  year  had  interposed  before  Hare  wrote  again; 
he  had  in  the  interval  been  obliged  to  withdraw  the  two  printed  vol- 
umes from  the  publisher  who  had  undertaken  them;  and  it  took  a 
good  deal  of  time  (Hai*e  wrote  at  the  end  of  July,  1829)  to  rind  a 
substitute.  "The  Conversations  are  too  classical  and  substantial  for 
the  morbid  and  frivolous  taste  of  the  English  public,  and  few  pub- 
lishers, except  m^v  friend  Taylor,  look  beyond  the  salableness  of  a 
work.  Duncan  has  at  length  agreed  on  the  terms  of  sharing  the 
profits,  if  there  are  any.  The  sixth  volume  is  not  yet  gone  to  a 
printer,  and,  as  I  am  going  abroad  for  a  couple  of  months,  must  wait 
till  October.  I  would  that  it  were  in  my  power  to  extend  my  jour- 
ney as  far  as  Florence,  that  our  epistolary  might  be  succeeded  by  a 
personal  acquaintance  ;  but  I  fear  my  time  will  not  allow  of  that,  as 
I  must  spend  some  days  at  Bonn  to  learn  report  of  Niebuhr's  second 
volume."  He  and  Thirlwall  were  now  engaged  in  translating  that 
remarkable  hook  ;  and.  two  years  before,  he  and  his  brother  Augustus 
hadi  published  anonymously  their  Guesses  at  Truth. 

The  weeks  were  passed  at  Bonn,  but  the  journey  was  not  extended 
to  Florence,  and  until  Landor's  visit  to  England  in  1832  the  friends 
did  not  see  each  other.  With  the  publication  by  Mr.  Duncan  in  1829 
of  the  volumes  above  named,  Hare's  connection  with  the  Imaginary 
Conversations  may  be  said  to  have  ceased.  For  the  sixth  volume  he 
failed  to  find  a  publisher  at  his  return,  and  that  task  somewhat 
later  devolved  upon  me. 

Meanwhile,  in  a  letter  of  April,  1829,  Southey  told  Landor  that  the 
first  volume  of  his  unpublished  series  (the  first  of  the  volumes  after- 
wards issued  by  Mr.  Duncan)  had  been  sent  to  him.  Some  things  in 
it  he  wished  away,  but  as  to  very,  very  many  more  Landor  would 
know  how  truly  they  must  have  delighted  his  old  friend:  and  in 
especial,  he  said,  Lucullus  and  Caesar  had  thoroughly  pleased  him  as 
through  every  line  of  it  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  all.  Southey 
added,  in  reference  to  certain  passages  on  Keats  and  Shelley,  in 
whose  marvellous  geniUB  and  untimely  fate  Landor  had  of  late  become 
deeply  interested  by  intercourse  as  well  with  their  writings  as  with 
persona]  friends  of  both,  that  he  had  been  deceived  concerning  Shel- 
ley :  nol  8  to  his  geniuB,  which  was  of  a  very  high  order  indeed,  hut 
as  to  his  character.  He  had  himself  believed  as  long  as  it  was  possi- 
ble that  Shelley's  errors  were  only  errors  of  opinion,  and  that  he 
would  ripen  into  a  right  minded  man.  But  now  he  knew  how  bitter 
was  the  mistake  he  had  made. 

It  remains  only  that,  as  with  the  first  series  of  the  Conversations,  I 
should  give  accounl  "f  what  the  second  series  contained  ;  but,  the 
general  character  of  the  work  and  its  mode  of  treatment  having  been 


JET.  47 -.53-1  CONTENTS   OP    THE   NEW   SERIES.  415 

sufficiently  placed  before  the  reader,  the  task  that  now  awaits  me  is 
easier,  and  may,  with  a  few  prominent  exceptions,  be  briefly  dismissed. 

X.     CONTENTS   OF  THE  NEW   SERIES. 

The  three  volumes  contained  only  nine  more  dialogues  than  were 
in  the  first  series,  but  some  were  of  greater  length.  Eleven  of  the 
subjects  were  taken  from  modern  politics ;  three  were  of  a  personal 
turn  and  character ;  sixteen  were  illustrations  of  biography,  eight  of 
them  relating  to  English  woi'thies,  and  the  other  eight  to  Italian, 
French,  or  German  ;  five  might  be  classed  as  historical,  the  speakers 
being  rulers  or  princes  of  past  times  ;  and  there  were  five  Greek  and 
five  Roman  conversations.     I  will  take  them  generally  in  this  order. 

It  was  Landor's  settled  opinion,  frequently  expressed  during  his 
residence  in  Italy,  that  the  sovereigns  of  the  Continent  then  reigning 
were  responsible  for  all  the  revolutionary  tendencies  that  agitated 
Europe  at  the  time  ;  and  the  violent  reaction  witnessed  by  him  even 
before  his  return  to  England  was  but  the  fulfilment  of  what  he  had 
confidently  foretold.  Prominent  among  the  princes  that  seemed  to 
him  despicable,  and  for  characterizing  whom  as  the  most  ignorant  and 
gross  barbarians  that  had  appeared  since  the  revival  of  letters  he  is 
indeed  not  harshly  to  be  judged,  were  the  French  and  Spanish  Bour- 
bons, the  kings  of  Spain  and  Portugal,  the  rulers  of  Austria  and 
France,  and  the  Pope  (Leo  XII.)  with  his  confederates  in  Italy.  In 
one  of  the  political  dialogues  the  speakers  are  Don  Victor  Saez  and 
El  Rey  Netto  ;  in  a  second  the  latter  prince  reappears  with  his 
brother  sovereign  of  Portugal,  its  title  being  Don  Ferdinand  and  Don 
John-Mary  Luis ;  in  a  third,  Miguel  and  his  mother  are  introduced  ; 
and  in  a  fourth  we  have  Leo  XII.  and  his  valet  Gigi.  Throughout 
them  the  principal  object  is  to  show  the  inseparable  connection  of 
tyranny  and  superstition  with  cruelty  ;  of  cowardice  with  religious 
persecution  ;  and  of  all  with  unspeakable  silliness.  Landor's  apology 
for  sometimes  putting  better  talk  into  his  dialogues  than  his  assumed 
talkers  were  capable  of,  will  here  only  apply  in  a  -Rabelaisian  sense. 
Not  a  redeeming  grace  is  given  them  here,  unless  in  that  relish  for  their 
own  baseness  which  in  the  expression  of  it  has  a  gusto  of  enjoyment 
so  intense  as  to  amount  to  genius.  Few  are  the  passages  extractable 
from  these  dialogues  that  might  not  shock  a  reader  unprepared  for  the 
lengths  of  infernal  malignity  and  ferocious  cruelty  which  fanaticism 
of  any  kind  will  not  scruple  to  defend  under  the  pretences  of  religion ; 
and  only  three  or  four  times  does  Landor  plainly  confess  to  the  hid- 
den meanings  of  satire  underlying  these  repulsive  utterances.  One 
is  where  Victor  Saez  tells  his  master  that  a  legitimate  king  can  never 
have  a  surer  ally  than  what  is  called  a  constitutional  minister,  because 
it  is  the  experience  of  all  those  gentry  that  the  people  are  a  football 
to  be  fed  with  air,  and  that  the  party  always  sure  to  be  the  winner  is 
the  one  that  kicks  it  farthest.     Another  is  in  the  information  commu- 


41G  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  l*£2KJ?' 


1822   28. 


nicated  by  Miguel  to  his  mother,  on  the  remark  of  somebody  that 
the  wit  of  "  Don  Jorge  da  ( lannin  "  would  immortalize  him,  that  it 
was  nil  -nod  nowadays  people  trying  to  make  themselves  immortal, 
for  that  immortality,  his  confessor  told  him,  had  become  so  creaky 
and  crazy  that  he  would  not  be  tempted  by  an  annuity  upon  it  at 
three  years'  purchase  :  in  short,  that  true  immortality  in  this  world 
tan  come  only  from  the  Pope,  two  centuries  or  so  after  burial,  and 
when  all  but  his  Holiness  have  forgotten  the  deeds  and  existence  of 
the  defunct  about  to  be  beatified.  A  third  is  where  Don  Ferdinand 
describes  to  his  royal  brother  the  two  principal  English  ministers, 
(alining  and  Castlereagh,  as  the  hot-water  and  cold-water  ducts  of 
the  grand  vapor-bath  by  which  the  Holy  Alliance  meant  to  cure  all 
the  maladies  of  nations,  the  one  talking  like  a  liberal  while  the  other 
is  crying  down  liberality  of  all  kinds,  but  both  in  a  conspiracy  to 
chouse  the  people,  and  snatch  the  bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  the 
popular  party.  And  a  fourth  is  where  the  Pope's  valet  tells  his  Holi- 
ness that  he  had  heard  only  a  few  days  before  of  some  one  having 
said  that  the  representative  of  St.  Peter  and  the  monarchs  his  friends 
and  allies,  striving  and  struggling  to  throw  back  the  world  upon  the 
remains  of  chaos,  reminded  him  of  nothing  so  much  as  the  little  fig- 
ures round  Greek  vases,  which  strained  at  one  thing  and  stood  in  one 
place  for  ages,  and  had  no  more  to  do  in  the  supporting  or  moving 
of  the  vases  than  the  worms  have.  Ah  !  cries  Leo,  that  is  not  your 
language.  "  Not  an  Italian's,  not  a  Continental's !  It  breathes  the 
bluff  air  of  England." 

Of  the  political  dialogues  two  more  have  each  a  crowned  head  for 
its  hero,  the  King  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  being  one,  and  the  King 
of  Ava  the  other  :  the  object  being,  in  the  first,  to  exhibit  the  igno- 
rance of  a  savage  who  should  imagine  that  court-dresses  were  an 
absurdity,  or  should  expect  that  a  title  implying  a  duty  earned  with 
it  the  duty  implied  ;  and  in  the  second,  to  caricature  the  claims  as 
will  as  the  achievements  of  royalty  in  the  Western  world  by  showing 
that  what  a  monarch  of  Ava  cannot  but  regard  as  falsehoods  incredi- 
ble and  preposterous  have  been  for  scores  of  years  in  Europe  ordina- 
ry matter  of-fact  occurrences.  Two  others  bring  in  leading  European 
statesmen.  In  the  one,  Yillele  and  Corhiere,  displaying  between 
them  tin'  condition  of  contempt  to  which  they  have  reduced  the 
country  tiny  govern,  rejoice  to  have  so  gagged  France  that  she  dares 
not  even  talk  of  the  Napoleon  for  whose  glory  she  had  sacrificed  so 
much  :  and,  having  nevertheless  no  alternative  but  to  consent  to  the 
recognition  of  Greece,  find  it  not  their  least  bitter  mortification  to 
be  thereby  obliged  to  agree  with  "an  idle  visionary,  an  obscure  and 
ignorant  writer,  who  in  a  work  entitled  Imaginary  Conversations  had 
been  hired  by  some  low  bookseller  to  vilify  all  the  great  men  of  the 
present  age,  to  magnify  all  the  philosophers  and  republicans  of  the 
past,  and  to  propose  the  means  of  erecting  Greece  into  an  indepen- 
dent state."     In  the  other,  Pitt  lias  a  farewell  interview  with  Canning, 


JET-  47 -53l  CONTENTS    OF    THE    NEW    SERIES.  417 

in  which  his  experience  of  the  proper  way  of  serving  the  state  is  im- 
parted much  after  the  manner  of  Swift  in  advising  servants  of  a  lower 
grade,  amounting  in  the  whole,  we  may  say,  to  three  leading  sugges- 
tions :  that  he  is  to  speak  like  an'  honest  man,  to  act  like  a  dis- 
honest one,  and  to  be  perfectly  indifferent  what  he  is  called.  A 
striking  passage  on  Pitt's  poverty  occurs  in  this  dialogue  ;  and  I  can- 
not pass  unnoticed  another  in  which,  reassuring  his  2^fotege  against 
the  doubts  that  beset  him,  Pitt  says  he  '11  find  the  country  going  on 
just  a*  it  has  gone  on.  "  Bad  enough,  God  knows  !  "  exclaims  Can- 
ning. "  Yes,"  rejoins  Pitt,  "  but  only  for  the  country.  People  will 
see  that  the  fields  and  the  cattle,  the  streets  and  the  inhabitants,  look 
as  usual.  The  houses  stand,  the  chimneys  smoke,  the  pavements  hold 
together  ;  this  will  make  them  wonder  at  your  genius  in  keeping  them 
up,  after  all  the  prophecies  they  have  heard  about  their  going  down. 
Men  draw  their  ideas  from  sight  and  hearing.  They  do  not  know  that 
the  ruin  of  a  nation  is  in  its  probity,  its  confidence,  its  comforts." 

The  remaining  three  dialogues,  strictly  political,  had  reference  to 
the  Greek  revolution.  In  the  Photo-Zavellas  and  Kaido  the  aspira- 
tion of  the  Greeks  for  independence,  even  as  early  as  the  beginning 
of  the  century,  receives  affecting  illustration ;  a  yoimg  chieftain  re- 
sisting the  importunity  of  his  sister  that  he  should  not  place  himself 
in  the  power  of  one  of  the  pashas,  and  quietly  sacrificing  life  that 
his  countrymen  may  be  undeceived.  The  same  purpose  of  illus- 
trating Greek  nobleness  and  hardihood  is  also  in  the  conversation  of 
Odysseus,  Tersitza,  Acrive,  and  Trelawney,  where,  by  means  of  a  visit 
made  by  an  English  sympathizer  with  the  existing  struggle,  Shelley's 
and  Byron's  friend,  to  an  outlawed  Greek  family  in  their  fastness  or 
cavern  on  Parnassus,  their  character  and  aspirations  are  vividly  re- 
produced, in  language  picturesque  as  the  mountain  scene  and  eloquent 
with  all  its  associations.  "  Nations  live  and  remember,"  says  Odys- 
seus accounting  for  his  countrymen  in  arms,  "  when  princes  have 
fallen  asleep  by  the  side  of  their  fathers,  and  dynasties  have  passed 
away."  Finally,  in  Nicholas  and  Michel  we  have  the  struggle  on  its 
political  side  ;  the  Czar's  brother  informing  him  of  the  position  in 
reference  to  it  taken  up  by  European  states,  and  reporting  also  views 
and  prophecies  respecting  it  acquired  from  a  travelling  Englishman ; 
the  Czar  himself  thinking  so  highly  of  these  that  he  is  eager  to  offer 
to  so  wise  a  man  the  star  of  a  privy  councillor  and  a  post  on  the 
Caspian ;  and  Michel's  comment  on  the  offer  giving  us  plainly  to  in- 
fer wlfo  the  wise  man  was.  "  He  informed  me  that  having  lately 
been  conversant  with  Sophocles  and  Plato,  he  entertained  the  best- 
founded  hopes,  in  case  of  a  maritime  war,  he  should  be-  nominated,  on 
some  vacancy,  as  worthy  of  bearing  his  Britannic  Majesty's  commis- 
sion of  purser  to  a  fire-ship."  * 

*  In  a  preface  afterwards  cancelled  Landor  declared  that  his  political  dialogues  had 
been  the  most  difficult  part  of  his  task,  for  that  "  a  man  does  not  lose  so  much  breath 
by  raising  his  hand  above  his  head  as  by  stooping  to  tie  his  shoestring  " ;  and  to  this  a 

27 


418  TIIE   IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  _l:J- 

Of  the  three  conversations  having  a  personal  interest,  the  first, 
between  Lord  Coleraine,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Bloomsbury,  and  the-  Rev.  Mr. 
Swan,  with  much  ironical  humor  contrasted  a  couple  of  clergymen 
of  the  same  church,  the  one  a  perfect  type  of  what  her  liberal  and  for- 
bearing practice  shoidd  be,  the  other  a  methodistical  impostor  who 
forces  himself  into  the  sick-room  of  a  racketing,  gaming,  dissolute 
Irish  lord,  by  whom  before  his  day  of  grace  he  had  been  plucked  at 
the  gaming-table,  in  the  hope  to  get  his  money  back  as  a  legacy  from 
the  dying  sinner.  The  second  was  in  the  form  of  a  narrative,  com- 
prising several  other  dialogues  besides  that  from  which  it  took  its 
title  of  the  Due  de  Richelieu,  Sir  Firebrace  Cotes,  Lady  Glengrin, 
and  Mr.  Normanby  :  giving  under  the  latter  name  some  vigorous  ex- 
periences only  slightly  disguised  from  Landor's  own ;  showing  Tom 
Paine  in  his  lodgings  in  Paris  shortly  after  Robespierre's  fall  ;  in  the 
notices  of  Norman  by's  life  including  a  full-length  sketch  of  his  father 
the  village  schoolmaster,  some  persecutions  for  opinion  which  even  a 
life  so  humble  could  not  then  escape,  and  some  love  adventures  in 
which  a  very  genuine  old-world  humor  alternates  with  delightful  pa- 
thos ;  describing  an  Irishman's  journey  from  Florence  to  Rome ;  * 
and  closing  with  some  sketches  of  Ireland  herself,  impartial  in  their 
sunshine  and  their  shade.  This  dialogue  was  a  special  favorite  with 
Emerson,  and  deserved  to  be  :  for  though  travelling  far  afield,  and  too 
often  losing  connection  by  the  way,  it  contains  passages  of  mirth  as 
well  as  sadness  in  a  strain  of  tender  delicacy  not  always  usual  with 
Landor  ;  and  in  several  places,  as  where  Normanby  relates  his  having 
called  in  an  auctioneer  to  sell  his  father's  library,  and  what  the  good 
schoolmaster  thought  of  particular  books  f  is  noted  side  by  side  with 

few  lino*  from  a  letter  to  myself  may  perhaps  be  worth  adding.  "  Of  course  the 
fellows  who  attack  me  for  personalities  in  my  conversations,  and  for  personalities  :ibout 
creatures  perishable  and  sordid  as  themselves,  never  heard  of  Plato,  or  have  the  least 
notion  that  that  earliest  and  most  celebrated  composer  of  prose  dialogue  has  introduced 

i temporaries  of  as  worthless  and  almost  as  mischievous  a  character  a-  the  worst  in 

mine.  Rely  upon  it  that  tin-  hook  which  carries  about  it  nothing  to  mark  its  own  age 
will  rarely  be  very  interesting  to  another." 

*  From  it-  succession  of  pictures  one  mav  be  taken.  "We  slept  at  Siena.  ...  In 
tin'  morning,  instead  of  vineyards  and  cornfields,  a  vast  barren  country,  cracked  by  the 
lwat,  lay  wide  open  before  me.  It  looked  like  some  starved  monster,  fr whose  pow- 
erless bones  one  -till  wishes  one's  self  away.  No  hedge  was  there,  no  tree,  nor  bird  of  any 
kind  to  inhabit  them  if  there  had  been.  I  saw  no  animal  but  one  long  Bnake,  lying  in 
the  middle  of  the  road." 

t  A  part  of  what  he  said  to  his  gon  when  he  gave  him  Potter's  JEschylus  to  rend  shall 
be  preserved  here.  "  Christopher,  I  doubt  not  that  Thespis  was  preferred  to  him  by 
the  graver  critics;  there  was  something  bo  unaffected  in  a  cart,  ami  so  little  of  decep- 
tion in  wine-dregs;  and  vet,  Christopher,  the  Prometheus  is  the  grandest  poetrcal  con- 
ception that  ever  entered  into  the  heart  of  man.  Homer  could  no  more  have  written 
this  tragedy  than  £schylus  could  have  written  the  Iliad.  Mind  me,  1  do  no:  compare 
them.  An  elephant  could  not  beget  a  lion,  nor  a  lion  an  elephant.  Critic-  talk  most 
about  the  titSbtt  in  sublimity:  the  Jupiter,  the  Neptune.  Magnitude  and  power  are 
sublime  but  in  the  second  degree,  managed  as  they  mav  he.  Where  the  heart  i-  not 
shaken,  the  gods  thunder  and  stride  in  vain.  True' sublimity  is  the  perfection  of  the 
pathetic,  which  ha-  other  sources  than  pity;  generosity  for  instance,  and  self-devotion. 
When  the  generous  and  self-devoted  man  sutlers,  there  come-  pity:  the  basi  of  the 
sublime  i-  then  above  the  water,  anil  the  poet,  with  or  without  the  gods,  can  e  •  rate  it 
above  the  skies.  Terror  i-  but  the  relic  of  a  childish  feeliug:  pity  is  not  given  to  chil- 
dren." 


JET.  47-53.]  CONTENTS    OP    THE    NEW    SERIES.  419 

what  the  man  of  the  hammer  thought  of  them,  we  have  things  as 
characteristic  as  any  in  the  conversations.  The  grandest  old  preach- 
ers are  passed  in  review.  "  Lord  help  us  !  we  have  newer  things  by 
years  and  years."  When  Leighton,  Taylor,  Barrow,  are  dwelt  upon, 
maybe,  says  the  auctioneer,  maybe  ;  but  here  is  "  Doctor  Hugh  Blair, 
with  his  noble  cassock  and  five-guinea  wig,"  close,  trim,  and  hard,  as 
the  feathers  round  an  owlet's  eye,  he  outsells  them  twenty  to  one." 
Whereat  poor  Mr.  Normanby  has  to  content  himself  with  a  philo- 
sophical reflection  which  Landor  found  frequently  useful  in  his  own 
case  :  "  Let  no  writer  be  solicitous  of  Fame  ;  she  is  more  uncertain 
and  more  blind  than  Fortune  :  let  them  do  for  the  best  and  be  pre- 
pared for  the  worst."  But  in  sayings  of  individual  significance  the 
hist  of  these  personal  dialogues  was  the  richest  of  all. 

Landor  here  was  principal  speaker  himself,  talking  with  two  vis- 
itors at  his  palazzo,  an  Englishman  and  a  Florentine,  of  such  divers 
topics  as  arise  in  common  conversation,  but  with  a  mastery  of  every 
subject  handled  and  a  precision  of  style  that  common  talk  is 
stranger  to.  The  date  of  the  dialogue  was  the  time  of  the  death  of 
the  reigning  grand-duke  (son  of  Leopold)  whose  virtues  receive  un- 
grudging homage,  though,  in  displaying  by  some  touching  stories  his 
delicate  consideration  for  the  meanest  of  his  subjects,  it  is  thought 
necessary  at  the  same  time  to  make  grim  apology  for  such  trifling 
and  idling  in  a  man  of  his  rank  at  a  crisis  "  when  the  first  princes 
and  opera-dancers  in  the  world  were  at  the  congress  of  Verona  fixing 
the  fate  of  nations."  Opinion  is  also  given  of  the  city  ruled  by  Fer- 
dinand, though  in  terms  of  less  unmixed  eulogy  than  are  applied  to 
her  ruler  ;  for  we  are  told  that  they  are  a  stinging  as  well  as  honeyed 
little  creatures  who  inhabit  that  central  hive,  not  created  for  the 
gloom  of  Dante,  bvit  alive  and  alert  in  the  daylight  of  Petrarch  and 
Boccaccio.  Those  opinions  of  Shelley,  too,  we  find  to  be  here  ex- 
pressed which  Southey  thought  to  be  less  merited  by  his  character 
than  his  poetry  ;  *  and  with  these  were  joined  some  remarks  on 
Keats  in  a  spirit  of  keener  appreciation.  Ranking  him  with  Burns 
and  Chaucer,  not  merely  for  the  freshness  of  his  apprehension  of  ob- 
jects of  common 'life  and  external  nature,  but  for  what  Sidney  calls 
"  the  elementish  and  ethereal  "  parts  of  poetry,  Landor  goes  deeper 
in  his  criticism  of  Keats  than  is  always  his  wont  ;  and  since  the  dia- 
logue was  written  two  more  generations  of  readers  of  poetry  have 
gone  far  to  confirm  its  judgment,  that  "  time  alone  was  wanting  to 
complete  a  poet  who  already  surpassed  all  his  contemporaries  in  this 
country  in  the   poet's  most  subtle  attributes."  f     Landor  adds  how 

*  Ante,  p.  414.     Something  will  have  to  be  said  of  this  hereafter. 

t  I  forbear  from  preserving  now  the  scathing  words  directed  against  the  malignity 
of  personal  abuse  which  then  disgraced  literature,  and  imbittered,  if  it  did  not  actually 
shorten,  the  young  poet's  closing  days.  But  those  were  followed  by  a  fine  remark: 
"  Fame  often  rests  at  first  upon  something  accidental;  and  often  too  is  swept  away,  or 
for  a  time  removed:  but  neither  genius  nor  glory  is  conferred  at  once:  nor  do  they 
glimmer  and  fall  at  a  shout,  like  drops  in  a  grotto.     Their  foundations  in  the  beginning 


420  THE    IMAGINARY   CONVERSATIONS.  *&£-& 

great  was  his  own  regret  that  it  had  not  been  his  fortune  in  Italy  to 
know  cither  of  these  young  men  who  within  so  short  ;i  space  of  time 
had  added  two  more  immortal  names  to  the  cemeteries  of  Rome. 
With  Knits  the  opportunity  had  not  arisen;  and  from  Shelley  he 
had  turned  away  when  they  both  lived  in  Pisa,  because  of  a  story  of 
the  tragedy  of  the  poet's  first  wife  told  him  by  Mackintosh.  But 
what  he  further  says  in  this  dialogue  of  his  general  avoidance  of  the 
society  of  literary  men,  from  a  disinclination  to  take  part  in  their 
differences,  and  to  receive  displeasure  or  uneasiness  at  the  recital  of 
their  injuries,  is  within  my  experience  true.  Nor  less  true,  as  I 
tested  abundantly  during  my  long  intimacy  with  him,  is  what  he  re- 
marks upon  his  English  visitor's  request  that  he  would  repeat  verses 
he  had  written  on  Keats  and  Burns.  "  I  rarely  do  retain  in  memory 
anything  of  my  own,  and  probably  you  will  never  find  a  man  who 
has  heard  me  repeat  a  line."  Of  his  writings  generally  he  adds  that 
he  is  far  from  certain  that  in  their  inferences  they  are  all  quite 
sound  ;  but  he  believes  that  the}*  will  give  such  exercise  in  discussing 
them  as  may  tend  to  make  other  men's  healthier.  "  I  have  walked 
always  where  I  must  breathe  hard,  and  where  such  breathing  was 
my  luxury  :  I  now  sit  somewhat  stiller,  and  have  fewer  aspirations  : 
but  1  inhale  the  same  atmosphere  yet."  All  the  indifference  he  pro- 
fessed to  the  good  opinion  of  his  contemporaries,  I  cannot  say  that 
he  felt  ;  but  of  the  tricks  and  arts  of  authorship  he  had  none,  and  at 
the  least  no  man  had  a  better  title  to  say  that  whether  his  books  were 
read  in  that  age  or  the  next  was  a  matter  no  more  adding  to  his 
anxiety  or  occupying  his  speculation  than  whether  it  should  be  that 
morning  or  the  next  afternoon. 

The  subject  reappears  in  perhaps  the  finest  of  all  the  sixteen  dia- 
loguea  I  have  classed  as  illustrations  of  biography,  where  Newton 
talks  with  his  old  tutor  Barrow  at  Cambridge  before  going  up  for  his 
master's  degree.  Much  of  this  is  a  comment  on  Bacon's  Essays, 
which  it  is  not  extravagant  to  say  is  as  good  as  the  essays  themselves  ; 
much  has  a  personal  reference ;  and  every  part  is  suggestive  in  the 
highest  degree.  "  Rise,  but  let  no  man  lift  you,"  is  the  counsel  of 
the  old  divine.  "  The  best  thing  is  to  stand  above  the  world  ;  the 
next  is,  to  stand  apart  from  it  on  any  side.  .  .  .  Have  no  intercourse 
with  small  authors  :  cultivate  the  highest  :  to  reverence  and  to  de- 
fend   them.  .  .  .  Those  who  have  the  longest  wing's  have  the  most 


- 


difficulty  in  the  first  mount inijr.   .  .   .*     Do  not  be  ambitious  of  an 


'■^ 


may  1"'  scooped  away  by  the  Blow  machinery  of  malicious  labor;  but  after  a  season 
they  increase  with  every  surge  that  comes  against  them,  and  harden  at  every  tempest 
to  which  they  arc  exposed."  It  is  to  be  added,  of  our  own  days,  that  if  "malic 
labor"  now  Beldom  besets  the  •-tart  of  the  yonng  claimant  for  the  laurel,  we  seem,  on 
the  other  hand,  to  be  falling  into  the  as  profitless  and  dangerous  habit  of  conferring 
genius  and  glory  all  at  once.  The  danger  now,  to  the  old  hands  as  well  as  the  new  be- 
ginner-, is  on  the  side  of  excessive  riWuse. 

*  The  theme  is  pursued  in  another  passage,  where  the  slow  recognition  of  genius  is 
likened  to  the  tardy  discovery  of  the  precious  metals.  "Thus  it  i-  with  writers  who 
are  to  have  a  currency  through  ages.    In  the  beginning  they  are  confounded  with 


j"ET.47-c3-1  CONTEXTS    OF   THE   NEW   SERIES.  421 

early  fame  :  such  is  apt  to  shrivel  and  to  drop  under  the  tree.  .  .  . 
Reputation  is  casual  :  the  wise  may  long  want  it,  the  unwise  may  soon 
acquire  it,  a  servant  may  further  it,  a  spiteful  man  may  obstruct  it,  a 
passionate  man  may  maim  it,  and  whole  gangs  are  ready  to  waylay  it 
as  it  mounts  the  hill."  Newton  having  remarked  as  to  some  point 
that  he  is  not  quite  satisfied  :  "  those  who  are  quite  satisfied,"  rejoins 
his  friend,  "  sit  still  and  do  nothing  :  those  who  are  not  quite  satis- 
fied are  the  benefactors  of  the  world."  To  another  of  Newton's  mis- 
givings there  is  also  a  word  of  reassurance  wisely  as  well  as  widely 
applicable,  where  Barrow  tells  him  that  quickness  is  among  the  least 
of  the  mind's  properties,  belonging  to  her  in  almost  her  lowest  state, 
not  abandoning  her  when  reason  itself  has  gone,  and  abounding  on 
the  race-course  and  at  the  card-table  :  "  education  does  not  give  it, 
and  reflection  takes  away  from  it."  So,  where  the  same  speaker  calls 
Newton  a  great  inventor,  says  it  is  a  silliness  to  apply  the  quality  of 
invention  in  literature  mostly  or  altogether  to  poetry  or  romance,  and 
pronounces  the  imagination  of  the  philosopher  to  be  more  wonderful 
than  anything  within  the  range  of  fiction,  —  or  vdiere,  speaking  in 
the  same  strain  of  secrets  of  science,  he  declares  that  in  every  great 
mind  there  must  be  some,  for  that  every  deep  inquirer  has  discovered 
more  than  he  thought  it  prudent  to  avow,  as  almost  every  shallow  one 
throws  out  more  than  he  has  well  discovered,  —  we  have  still,  in 
these  as  in  numberless  other  instances,  the  sort  of  sayings  all  the 
dialogues  are  rich  in  (this  one  singularly  so),  sayings  that  seem  to 
have  so  wanted  to  be  said  that  the  utterance  makes  them  common 
property.  I  have  heard  Landor  humorously  complain  of  the  many 
poachers  without  license  or  acknowledgment  who  thus  had  sported 
over  the  manor  of  this  very  conversation,  protesting  that  he  could 
forgive  them  if  in  taking  his  sentences  they  would  take  as  well  the 
advice  contained  in  them,  and  declaring  with  his  hearty  laugh  that 
never  had  he  put  so  much  wisdom  into  so  few  syllables  as  in  the  last 
words  of  Barrow  to  Newton.  The  younger  Isaac  has  asked  the 
elder  whether  a  studious  man  ought  to  think  of  matrimony,  and  the 
elder  has  replied  that  poets,  mathematicians,  and  painters  never 
should  ;  but  that  other  studious  men  might,  after  reflecting  upon  it 
twenty  years.  Newton  thereupon  shows  himself  disposed  to  give  up 
his  mathematics  and  reflect  the  twenty  years.  To  which  says  Bar- 
row :  "  Begin  to  reflect  on  it  after  the  twenty,  and  continue  to  reflect 
on  it  all  the  remainder  ;  I  mean  at  intervals,  and  quite  leisurely.  It 
will  save  to  you  many  prayers,  and  may  suggest  to  you  one  thanks- 
giving." 

Another  equally  attractive   dialogue  in  the   class  of  which  I  am 
speaking  was  the  Penn  and  Peterborough,  founded  on  that  passage  of 

most  others;  soon  they  fall  into  some  secondary  class;  next  into  one  rather  less  obscure 
and  humble;  by  degrees  they  are  liberated  from  the  dross  and  lumber  that  hamper 
them;  and,  being  once  above  the  heads  of  contemporaries,  rise  slowly  and  waveringly, 
then  regularly  and  erectly,  then  rapidly  and  majestically,  till  the  vision  strains  and 
aches  as  it  pursues  them  in  their  ethereal  elevation." 


422  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ^Sf^sft' 

Spence  where  the  friend  of  Swift  and  Pope  says  he  took  a  trip  once 
with  l'enn  to  his  colony  of  Pennsylvania  ;  introducing  the  friends  as 
they  traverse  on  horseback  the  yet  untamed  forests  stretching  in  the 
direction  of  the  Pacific,  and  for  its  principal  themes  of  talk  opening 
out  fields  of  speculation  and  inquiry  as  vast  and  unreclaimed  ;  forms 
and  tenets  of  religion  and  government,  institutions  and  establish- 
ments in  their  tendencies  spiritual  or  social,  and  the  direction  or 
extent  to  which  new  communities  should  take  example  from  old  in 
the  arrangements,  usages,  and  graces  of  life.  The  dialogue  is  a  very 
picturesque  as  well  as  powerful  one.  It  would  be  hard  to  say  which 
speaker  talks  the  best,  and  the  horses  are  as  good  a  contrast  as  the 
men  who  ride  them.  The  stout  contemplative  black  mare  with  her 
bushy  inane  and  tail,  white  in  one  fetlock  and  hoof  and  with  a  broad 
white  streak  down  her  forehead,  one  feels  to  be  as  much  the  proper 
animal  to  carry  Penn,  as,  in  the  high-bred  gelding  with  his  silvery  tail 
and  body  bright  and  flashy  as  a  marigold,  wide-nostrilled,  loud- 
snorting,  and  slyly-snapping  at  his  comrade,  quick-paced,  tricky,  and 
mettlesome,  we  see  the  very  beast  to  be  bestridden  by  Peterborough  ; 
and  Landor's  sympathy  being  quite  as  much  with  Penn's  dislike  of 
establishments  and  liking  for  republics  as  with  Peterborough's  free- 
thinking  and  aristocratic  tastes,  fairer  play  than  usual  is  shown  to 
both  sides  in  all  the  arguments.  These  of  course  I  turn  away  from 
lure  ;  having  only  space  remaining  for  a  few  pregnant  words  wherein 
the  mischievous  cry  that  would  exclude  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Milton, 
supposing  them  likewise  to  have  received  the  requisites  of  fortune, 
from  being  ever  proposed  or  thought  of  for  election  in  any  borough 
where  they  might  happen  to  be  born,  because  forsooth  it  is  men  of 
business  that  are  wanted,  and  not  men  of  books  or  genius,  is  disposed 
of  by  Penn  :  "As  if  men  of  genius  are  not  men  of  business  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word  ;  of  business  in  which  the  State  and 
Society  are  implicated  for  ages  !  " 

Of  the  other  six  conversations  taken  from  English  biography  there 
are  four,  the  Leofric  and  Godiva,  the  John  of  (Jaunt  and  Joanna  of 
Kent,  the  Lady  Lisle  and  Elizabeth  Gaunt,  and  the  Walton,  Cotton, 
and  Oldways,  which  take  rank  -with  the  Jane  Grey  and  the  Anne 
Boleyn  as  very  exquisite  prose-poems.  Godiva  was  a  favorite  heroine 
of  l.ni'lor's  ;  in  ins  boyhood  he  used  to  steal  away  from  Warwick  to 
attend  her  fairs  and  festivals;*  and  with  consummate  delicacy  he 
has  treated  her  in  this  scene,  showing  how  Leofric's  vow  was  made 
and  her  own  resolution  taken,  and  what  were  her  timid  tender 
thoughts  the  oighl  before  she  rode  through  the  city.  The  time  of 
the  John  of  Gaunt  scene  is  when  the  people  have  risen  against  his 
Buspected  intention  of  seizing  his  nephew's  crown  ;  when  he  is  saved 
only  by  the  interference  of  the  popular  idol,  his  brother's  widow,  the 
mother  of  the  child  he  would  have  wronged;  and  the  stronghold 
which  angry  missiles  had  wellnigh  shaken  down  is  in  almost  greater 

*  See  ante,  p.  335. 


^T- 47-53-1  CONTENTS    OP   THE   NEW   SERIES.  423 

danger  of  being  rent  asunder  by  wild  acclamations  of  joy.  "  Lan- 
caster !  "  exclaims  Joanna  ;  "  what  a  voice  have  the  People  when  they 
speak  out !  It  shakes  me  with  astonishment,  almost  with  consterna- 
tion, while  it  establishes  the  throne ;  what  must  it  be  when  it  is 
lifted  up  in  vengeance !  "  The  time  chosen  in  the  third  scene  is 
when  that  Elizabeth  Gaunt  is  brought  to  Lady  Lisle's  condemned 
cell  whom  Penn  saw  place  round  her  body  with  her  own  hands  the 
fagots  that  were  to  consume  her  for  the  same  crime  as  Lady  Lisle's, 
of  having  given  shelter  to  one  of  Monmouth's  adherents  ;  but  unlike 
her  fellow-martyr  in  the  fact  that  she  had  not  thereby  saved  a  be- 
loved one  who  loved  her,  but  only  a  wretch  who  had  saved  himself 
afterwards  from  fresh  peril  by  betraying  his  preserver.  Yet  there  is 
no  feeling  in  her  heart  of  anger  or  reproach.  Her  sole  anxiety  is  that 
self-reproach  should  be  saved  to  him,  that  the  taunts  of  others  may 
not  reach  him,  that  the  knowledge  of  her  death  should  be  withheld 
from  him.  "  I  saved  his  life,"  she  says,  "an  unprofitable  and  I  fear 
a  joyless  one  ;  he  by  God's  grace  has  thrown  open  to  me,  earlier  than 
I  ever  ventured  to  expect  it,  the  avenue  to  eternal  bliss."  The  cry 
raised  by  Lady  Lisle  at  these  words,  which  at  once  makes  us  feel  that 
from  both  sufferers  the  bitterness  of  death  has  passed  away,  closes 
worthily  this  pathetic  little  poem.  Nor  is  the  fourth,  the  Walton 
and  Cotton,  a  less  beautiful  though  a  quite  different  idyl ;  fresh  as  a 
page  of  Izaak's  own  writing ;  a  natural  country  landscape  overrun 
with  charming  thoughts  ;  and  with  a  sweet  soberness  in  its  cheerful- 
ness and  sunshine  that,  as  Walton  says  of  the  effect  upon  himself  of 
sights  and  sounds  of  nature,  makes  us  readier  to  live  and  less  un- 
ready to  die.  "  We  mortals  are  odd  fishes,"  the  old  angler  adds. 
"  We  care  not  how  many  see  us  in  choler,  when  we  rave  and  bluster 
and  make  as  much  noise  and  bustle  as  we  can ;  but  if  the  kindest  and 
most  generous  affection  comes  across  us,  we  suppress  every  sign  of  it, 
and  hide  ourselves  in  nooks  and  coverts."  He  is  moved  to  the  say- 
ing by  some  early  love-pieces  of  Doctor  Donne's,  which  the  old  retired 
tutor  whom  he  and  Cotton  are  visiting,  and  who  in  his  youth  had 
been  Donue's  curate,  has  preserved  and  exhibits  for  their  admira- 
tion.* 

Briefest  mention  may  suffice  for  the  two  concluding  subjects  from 
English  biography,  Archbishop  Boulter  and  Philip  Savage,  and  Rom- 
illy  and  Perceval ;  the  one  a  discourse  on  Irish  grievances  and  reme- 

*  The  style  of  Donne  is  so  happily  caught  in  one  of  these  pieces,  not  its  extrava- 
gance only  but  its  genius,  that  I  cannot  resist  quoting  it  here.  "  He  must  have  had  an 
eye  on  the  Psalmist,"  savs  the  good  Oldways  in  reading  it;  "  for  I  would  not  asseverate 
that  he  was  inspired,  Master  Walton,  in  the  theological  sense  of  the  word;  but  I  do 
verily  believe  I  discover  here  a  thread  of  the  mantle:  — 

"  She  was  so  beautiful,  had  God  but  died 

For  her,  and  none  beside, 
Reeling  with  holy  joy  from  east  to  west 

Earth  would  have  sunk  down  blest; 
And,  burning  with  bright  zeal,  the  buoyant  Sun 

Cried  through  his  worlds,  Well  done  J  " 


424  THE   IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ?&?*■* 


1B22  -  28. 


dies,  and  the  other  a  discussion  of  English  law  and  lawyers  ;  this  last 
being  also  one  of  the  themes  taken  up  by  Malesherbes  and  Rousseau, 
in  the  first  of  the  eight  dialogues  where  famous  foreigners  converse. 
It  is  hardly  so  striking  as  might  have  been  expected  from  Landor's 
knowledge  of  Rousseau  and  the  startling  resemblance  between  them 
in  points  of  character,  but  what  is  good  in  Rousseau's  part  is  very 
good ;  as  the  fretful  talk  about  society  and  the  court,  the  petulant 
attack  on  Montesquieu  and  Voltaire,  and  the  impassioned  eulogy  on 
Joan  of.  Arc.  The  best  things  however  are  said  by  Malesherbes,  who 
tells  his  friend  that  in  his  politics  he  cuts  down  a  forest  to  make  a 
toothpick  and  cannot  make  even  that  out  of  it,  and  that  his  moral 
questionings  and  misery  are  mere  self-invited  torture.  "It  is  as 
much  at  3Tour  arbitration  on  what  theme  you  shall  meditate  as  in 
what  meadow  you  shall  botanize  ;  and  you  have  as  much  at  your 
option  the  choice  of  your  thoughts  as  of  the  keys  in  your  harpsi- 
chord." Why,  if  that  were  true,  says  Rousseau,  who  could  be  un- 
happy !  "  Those,"  Malesherbes  replies,  "  of  whom  it  is  not  true." 
In  two  others  of  these  dialogues  French  immortals  appear,  in  glimpses 
perhaps  more  characteristic  :  Montaigne  talking  with  Joseph  Scaliger 
in  his  lightest,  wittiest,  least  reverent  fashion ;  and  Bossuet,  sent  by 
the  king  to  compliment  one  of  his  child-mistresses  on  her  elevation 
to  the  rank  of  duchess,  listening  with  a  half-mournful,  half-smiling 
gravity  to  the  giddy,  vain,  wild,  gentle,  childish,  joyous  girl,  until  at 
last  the  very  danger  of  the  good-hearted  sinful  little  creature  moves 
him  to  tell  the  truth  to  her,  and  as  the  courtier  drops  from  him  the 
God  rises  and  speaks.  There  is  hardly  a  finer  thing  than  this  in  the 
whole  of  the  conversations. 

Wolfgang  and  Henry  of  Melchtal,  Beniowski  and  Aphanasia,  Cath- 
erine and  DaschkofT,  and  two  dialogues  of  Boccaccio  and  Petrarch, 
Chaucer  taking  part  in  the  second,  complete  the  biographical  scries. 
The  first  reanimates  with  dramatic  intensity  and  force  one  of  the  old 
Swiss  legends  of  the  tyranny  overthrown  by  Tell  ;  and  the  way  in 
which  the  rough  quaint  humor  of  the  peasantry  is  brought  out  in  the 
quiet  unpretending  homeliness  of  their  resistance  to  the  Austrian, 
gives  a  wonderful  beauty  to  the  pathos  of  the  closing  picture  where 
Melchtal  has  to  lose  his  eyes  for  sheltering  his  beloved  son.  The 
second  is  an  incident  of  Russian  story  in  which  a  Siberian  maiden 
effects  the  liberation  of  a  Polish  youth,  for  whose  safe  custody  the 
Empress  Catherine  has  made  her  father  responsible,  and  after  a 
struggle,  in  which  love  conquers  all,  flies  with  him.  The  third  brings 
upon  the  scene,  with  appalling  vividness,  Catherine  herself,  who  is 
shown  with  her  maid  Daschkoff  outside  the  chamber  door  within  which 
Orloff  and  the  rest  are  murdering  her  husband.  The  two  last  are 
delightful  specimens  of  humor  and  character,  the  one  showing  us 
Boccaccio  visited  by  Petrarch  in  his  villa  at  Fiesole,  and  the  other 
Petrarch  pacing  the  cathedral  <rreen  at  Arezzo  with  Chaucer  and  the 
author  of  the  Decameron.     The   happy  adaptation   of  scene   in  both 


JET.  47-53.]  CONTEXTS    OF    THE    NEW    SERIES.  425 

dialogues  is  perfect,  and  the  design  is  to  reproduce  as  exactly  as  pos- 
sible the  respective  styles  of  these  three  great  masters  of  dramatic 
narration.  Chaucer  relates  in  language  of  a  vigorous  simplicity  by 
what  adventures  Sir  Magnus,  one  of  the  half-witted  Lucys  of  Charle- 
cote,  becomes  educated  and  humanized  by  the  wars  in  which  his  social 
rank  compels  him  to  engage  ;  and,  with  such  bright  exactness  of  local 
coloring  as  a  Warwickshire  Chaucer  might  have  laid  on  every  scene, 
he  astonishes  his  Italian  friends  with  a  Warwickshire  knight's  ways 
of  life  in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Petrarch  in  his  turn 
regales  his  friends  with  a  story  of  a  stately  conceited  knight  of  Gisors, 
betrayed  by  the  intensity  of  his  selfishness  into  marrying  the  loosest 
impropriety  instead  of  the  most  strait-laced  strictness.  While  Boc- 
caccio carries  off  the  prize  of  laughter  from  both  by  his  tale  of  the 
jealous  wife,  who  had  put  her  maid  into  her  own  bed  and  gone  to 
sleep  in  Jaconetta's  on  the  very  night  when  the  husband  has  pro- 
ceeded in  penitence  to  his  proper  place  of  rest.  This  would  trans- 
late into  a  page  of  the  Decameron,  and  yet  is  excelled  by  what  Boc- 
caccio had  told  his  friend  in  the  first  of  the  dialogues  of  Monna  Tita 
Monalda's  love-story,  where  the  artlessness  of  the  narrative  has  a 
very  subtle  charm,  and  impropriety  itself  partakes  of  the  innocence 
of  the  father  it  confesses  to.  "  Now,  Messer  Francesco,  I  must  in- 
form you  that  Father  Fontesecco  has  the  heart  of  flower.  It  feels 
nothing,  it  wants  nothing  ;  it  is  pure  and  simple,  and  full  of  its  own 
little  light.  Innocent  as  a  child,  as  an  angel,  nothing  ever  troubled 
him,  but  how  to  devise  what  he  should  confess.  A  confession  costs 
him  more  trouble  to  invent  than  any  giornata  in  my  Decameron  cost 
me." 

Of  the  five  historical  dialogues  three  have  their  scenes  in  the  East. 
The  Alexander  and  Priest  of  Haramon  is  a  grim  laugh  at  the 
vainglorious  pretensions  of  the  conqueror,  who,  demanding  from  the 
priest  confirmation  of  the  vulgar  belief  that  not  Philip  but  Jupiter 
was  his  father,  the  deity  having  found  his  way  to  his  mother  under 
the  form  of  a  serpent,  not  only  receives  this  sacred  testimony,  but 
information,  that,  other  issue  of  the  same  intrigue  having  given  him 
a  sister  also  god-begotten,  it  is  Jove's  will  that,  like  the  Persian  mon- 
archs  whose  sceptre  was  become  his,  brother  and  sister  should  marry ; 
and  eagerly  following  the  priest  thereupon  to  the  cavern  in  the  tem- 
ple where  his  bride  is  said  to  be  awaiting  him,  not  indeed  with  all  the 
family  comeliness  in  her  face  but  with  a  form  that  is  awful  and  ma- 
jestic, he  finds  "  a -vast  panting  snake."  The  Mahomet  and  Sergius 
shows  the  prophet,  disgusted  with  the  corruptions  of  the  old  religion, 
consulting  the  Nestorian  monk  upon  the  several  points  of  the  new, 
which  he  designs  to  be  embodied  in  his  Koran ;  and,  the  object  being 
wholly  satirical,  the  witty  side  of  the  father  of  the  faithful  is  all  that 
is  presented  to  us,  not  without  something  of  resemblance  to  Landor 
himself,  notably  in  his  laugh.  When  he  has  told  Sergius  that  he 
means  to  strengthen  the  Oriental  against  the  Occidental  Church  by 


426  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  ^ULt 


permitting  priests  to  marry,  and  the  monk  objects  on  the  ground  that 
if  the  new  church  bids  them  have  wives  of  their  own  she  may  ho 
likely  booh  to  come  to  such  a  pass  as  t<>  bid  them  have  none  but  their 
own,  which  would  be  "a  grievous  detriment  to  the  vital  interests  of 
the  faith,"  the  effect  of  the  saying  on  the  prophet  is  thus  described: 
'•  Mahomet,  thou  art  the  heartiest  laugher  under  heaven.  Prithee 
let  thy  beard  cover  thy  throat  again.  There  now!  thy  turban  has 
fall)  11  behind  thee.  Art  thou  in  fits'?  By  my  soul,  I  will  lay  this 
thong  across  thy  loins,  if  thou  tossest  and  screamest  in  such  a  man- 
ner, to  the  scandal  of  the  monastery."  Before  he  leaves  however  he 
has  reestablished  the  monk's  faith  in  him.  Telling  him  that  under 
an  oath  to  secrecy  he  had  unfolded  to  Labid  the  poet  what  he  in- 
tended for  the  first  chapters  of  his  Koran,  and  that  Labid  had  there- 
upon cried  out  that  he  was  a  greater  poet  than  himself,  "  Begone  up- 
on thy  mission  this  instant!"  exclaims  Sergius.  "Miracles  like 
others  have  been  performed  everywhere  ;  like  this,  never  upon  earth. 
A  poet,  good  or  bad,  to  acknowledge  a  superior !  Methinks  I  see  the 
pope  already  in  adoration  at  thy  feet,  and  hear  the  patriarchs  calling 
thee  father.  I  myself  am  half  a  convert.  Hie  thee  homeward: 
God  speed  thee  !  "  The  Soliman  and  Mufti  exhibits  a  counsellor  of 
the  great  sultan  giving  him  reasons  why  his  order  to  have  the  Koran 
translated  into  the  languages  of  all  nations  should  not  be  complied 
with.  "0  son  of  Selim !  if  every  man  reads,  one  or  two  in  every 
province  will  think."  The  finest  thing  in  the  dialogue  is  the  sudden 
Burging-up  at  its  close  of  that  Eastern  passion  for  pleasure  in  which 
all  goodness  and  wisdom  are  submerged  and  perish. 

The  remaining  two  subjects  from  history,  treated  briefly,  but  both 
of  them  in  the  highest  degree  dramatic,  were  William  Wallace  and 
Edward  the  First,  in  which  at  the  supreme  moment  of  his  victory  the 
Scottish  conqueror  suffers  ignominous  defeat,  in  discovering  that 
splendid  life  is  as  powerless  as  hideous  death  to  bend  the  conquered 
to  his  will  ;  and  Peter  the  Great  and  Alexis,  where  the  son  is  brought 
back  a  captive  after  his  flight  to  Vienna,  and  his  father,  loading  him 
with  brutal  and  coarse  reproach,  remits  him  for  trial  to  the  senate, 
and  hear-;  afterwards  of  his  death.  Despite  the  too  repulsive  bar- 
barism of  Peter,  there  is  something  grand  in  this  dialogue.  One 
that  the  poor  youth  himself  has  a  consciousness,  all  the  time, 
that  this  monster  of  a  father  of  his  has  a  necessary  work  in  hand  for 
the  continuing  or  perfecting  of  which  the  justice  and  tenderness  of 
his  nun  nature  disqualify  him  ;  and  it  is  this  that  breaks  his  heart, 
not  his  father's  death  warrant.  The  philosophy  applicable  to  this 
pari  of  the  subject  may  be  said  rnther  to  underlie  the  dialogue  than 
to  be  written  in  it,  but  it  is  there  ;  and  no  one  would  have  relished 
more  keenly  than  Landor  that  portion  of  Carlyle's  wonderful  book  in 
which  the  father  of  Friedrich  lives  for  us  airain. 

The  five  Greek  dialogues  were  Anacreon  and  Polycrates,  X<  no]  hon 
and  Cyrus  the  younger,  the  second  conversation  of  Demosthenes  and 


<*T.  47-53-]  CONTEXTS   OF   THE   NEW   SERIES.  427 

Eubulides,   Diogenes  and   Plato,   and  Epicurus,   Leontion,  and  Ter- 
nissa.     The  first  is  a  dramatization  of  one  of  the  most  delightful  of 
the  narratives  of  Herodotus,  the  ring  of  Polycrates,  into  which  Anac- 
reon,  who  had  been  friend  to  Polycrates  before  he  became  tyrant  of 
Samos,  is  introduced  by  way  of  contrast  ;  the  poet  showing  himself 
the  shrewder  of  the  two  even  in  the  craft  of  government,  warning 
the   other  that  tyrants  never  perish  from  tyranny  but  always  from 
folly,   and  showing  him  his  only  safe  counsellors.      "  You,  my  dear 
friend,,  who  are   a  usurper,  for  which  courage,  prudence,  affability, 
liberality,  are  necessary,  would  surely  blush  to  act  no  better  or  mure 
humanely  than  an  hereditary  and  established  king."     Lessons,  of  gov- 
ernment and  religion  are  conveyed  in  the  talk  also  of  Xenophon  and 
Cyrus  ;  but   the   disciple    of  "  Socrates  the    Mage "  has   hardly   on 
either  theme  the  better  of  the  Persian  prince,  on  whom  there  seems 
to  have  fallen  some  light  from  the  East  prophetic  of  a  wisdom  wiser 
than  the  Athenian.*     The  second  conversation  of  Demosthenes  and 
Eubulides  was  one  of  Julius  Hare's  especial  favorites,  and  justly,  for 
in  parts  of  it  the  mind  of  the  writer  is  at  its  highest  elevation.     The 
time  is  just  upon  the  death  of  Philip,  when  all  Athens  has  crowded 
"  buzzing  "  with  the  news  into  her  central  streets,  leaving  to  the  two 
friends  the  country  and  fresh  air,  and,  "  what  is  itself  the  least  tran- 
quil thing  in  nature,  but  is  the  most  potent  tranquillizer  of  an  excited 
soul,  the   sea."     To  this  fine  passage  I  will  add  that  other  in  which 
the    great  orator,   disturbed   by  the  levity  of  his  countrymen  at   a 
moment    when   they   had   need  of  their  steadiest  resolve,   recalls  a 
former  and  nobler  time.     "  I  have  seen  the  day,  Eubulides,  when  the 
most  august  of  cities  had  but  one  voice  within  her  walls  ;  and  when 
the  stranger  on  entering  them  stopped  at  the  silence  of  the  gateway, 
and  said,  'Demosthenes  is  speaking  in  the  assembly  of  the  people.' ' 
I  expressed  a  doubt  to  Landor  once,  I  remember,  whether  in  both 
these  conversations  he  had  not  made  the  language  of  Demosthenes 
too  figurative  ;  and  he  made  me  a  very  ingenious  reply.     He  had  in- 
troduced him  in  both,  he  said,  talking  with  a  professed  rhetorician, 
and    very   differently   therefore  from  his  usual  practice  before   the 
Athenian  commonalty.     When  indeed,  even  here,  he  had  shown  him 
in  argument  on  a  matter  of  fact,  a  project  of  policy,  or  an  applica- 
tion of  law,  he  had  given  him  his  good  sense  and  had  not  shorn  away 
a  hair  from  his   strength.     But  all  this  was  very  different  business 
from  a  country  walk  with  an  ancient  master  of  scholastic  exercises  ; 
and  might  it  not  fairly  be  supposed  that  Demosthenes  would  be  glad 
enough  of  that  opportunity  to  change  his  habit  of  speaking  when  in 

*  At  the  close,  when  Cyrus  and  Xenophon  take  their  spears  for  a  tiger-hunt,  a 
tigress  which  a  peasant  has  stumbled  on  in  her  lair  is  thus  described,  as  she  lies  suck- 
ling her  cubs:  "On  perceiving  the  countryman,  she  drew  up  her  feet  gently,  and 
squared  her  mouth,  and  rounded  her  eyes,  slumberous  with  content ;  and  they  looked, 
he  says,  like  sea-grottos,  obscurely  green,  interminably  deep,  at  once  awakening  fear 
and  stilling  and  compressing  it.  .  .*  .  He  passed  away  gently,  as  if  he  had  seen  noth- 
ing; and  she  lay  still,  panting." 


•IL'8  TOE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATION'S.  T'00-  )' 


1.  22-S& 


public)  On  the  margin  of  the  dialogue  at  the  time  I  made  a  note 
of  t  lie  illustration  employed  by  him.  "  A  man  who  has  long  been 
travelling  sits  down  willingly,  but  lies  down  more  so  \  for  a  total 
change  <>f  posture  is  more  grateful  to  him  and  more  natural  than  a 
partial  The  man  himself  is  unaltered  by  it  :  his  dimensions,  the 
girth  of  his  loins,  and  the  breadth  of  his  shoulders  are  the  same." 
The  objection  is  not  altogether  met,  but  we  Bee  his  sensitive  anxiety 
to  be  thought  to  have  preserved  in  these  writings  what  is  supposed 
by  many  of  his  critics  to  have  formed  no  part  of  their  plan.  The 
intrusion  of  himself  into  a  dialogue,  it  should  be  kept  in  mind,  does 
not  necessarily  always  exclude  the  rightful  speaker.  Demosthenes 
tells  Eubulides  how  he  composed  his  orations,  and  it  is  not  less  true 
of  the  old  Greek  because  it  happens  to  be  also  the  way  in  which 
Landjor  composed  his  conversations.  "  It  is  my  practice,  and  ever 
has  been,  to  walk  quite  alone.  In  my  walks  I  collect  my  arguments, 
arrange  my  sentences,  and  utter  them  aloud.  Eloquence  with  me 
can  do  little  else  in  the  city  than  put  on  her  bracelets,  tighten  her 
sandals,  and  show  herself  to  the  people.  Her  health  and  vigor 
and  beauty,  if  she  has  any,  are  the  fruits  of  the  open  fields."*  There 
are  one  or  two  still  living  in  Florence  who  have  frequently  met  Lan- 
dor  composing  his  dialogues  aloud  among  the  hills  at  Fiesole. 

It  is  the  same  when  Plato  challenges  his  assailant  Diogenes,  in  the 
conversation  that  bears  their  names,  to  demonstrate  where  and  in 
what  manner  he  has  made  Socrates  appear  less  sagacious  and  less 
eloquent  than  he  was  ;  and  enjoins  him  to  consider  the  great  difficul- 
ty of  finding  new  thoughts  and  new  expressions  for  those  who  had 
more  of  them  than  any  other  men,  and  of  representing  them  in  all 
the  brilliancy  of  their  wit  and  in  all  the  majesty  of  their  genius. 
"  I  do  not  assert  that  I  have  done  it  ;  but  if  1  have  not,  what  man 
has]  what  man  has  come  so  nigh  to  it  1  He  who  could  bring  with- 
out disparagement  Socrates,  or  Solon,  or  Diogenes  through  a  dia- 
logue, is  much  nearer  in  his  intellectual  powers  to  them  than  any  other 
is  near  to  him."  Here  again  it  is  not  the  less  Plato  speaking  because 
it  is  Landor  also,  to  whom  it  is  difficult  not  to  apply  a  number  of 
other  sayings  in  this  very  dialogue  ;  which  has  otherwise,  in  the  tone 
adopted  as  to  Plato,  the  same  defect  I  have  indicated  in  speaking  of 
the  Chesterfield  and  Chatham.  The  truth  is,  that  Landor's  recent 
study  of  Plato's  writings  had  been  such  as  to  substitute,  almost  nc- 
irih.  small  critical  objections  for  a  larger  and  wiser  appreciation. 
He  had  been  so  bent,  he  once  told  me,  upon  finding  for  himself  what 
there  was  in  the  famous  philosopher,  that  he  went  daily  for  several 
weeks  or  months  into  the  Magliabechian  library  at  Florence,  and,  re- 
freshing his  neglected  Greek,  read  the  whole  of  the  dialogues  in  the 
original  from  beginning  to  end.      I  was  no  longer  surprised  at  the  re- 

*  So  also  in  a  dialogue  about  t.i  In'  named:  "  I  assemble  mid  arrange  my  thoughts," 
Bays  Epicurus,  ■•with  freedom  and  with  pleasure  in  the  fresh  air  and  open  sky;  ami 
they  an-  more  lively  an. I  vigorous  and  exuberant  when  I  catch  them  as  I  walk  about 
and  commune  with  them  in  Bilence  and  .-collision." 


JET  47-53.]  CONTEXTS    OF    THE    NEW    SERIES.  429 

suit,  though  nothing  more  was  said.  Nevertheless,  there  are  amaz- 
ingly fine  things  put  into  Plato's  mouth.  There  is  one  where  he 
accounts  for  our  not  seeing  the  stars  at  eventide,  oftener  because 
there  are  glimmerings  of  light  than  because  there  are  clouds  inter- 
vening. "  Thus  many  truths  escape  us  from  the  obscurity  we  stand 
in ;  but  many  more  from  that  crepuscular  state  of  mind  which  in- 
duceth  us  to  sit  down  satisfied  with  our  imaginations  and  unsus- 
picious of  our  knowledge."  But  this  sets  the  wrath  of  Diogenes  in 
motion  all  the  same.  "  Keep  always  to  the  point,  or  with  an  eye 
upon  it,"  he  retorts  ;  "  and  instead  of  saying  things  to  make  people 
stare  and  wonder,  say  what  will  withhold  them  hereafter  from  won- 
dering and  staring.  This  is  philosophy  ;  t<}  make  remote  things  tan- 
gible, common  things  extensively  useful,  useful  things  extensively 
common,  and  to  leave  the  least  necessary  for  the  last."  Of  the  say- 
ings having  personal  reference,  some  may  be  even  the  more  interest- 
ing and  better  worth  quoting  for  the  fact  that  nothing  personal  was 
intended  by  them.  As,  where  the  remark  occurs  that  great  men 
too  often  have  greater  faults  than  little  men  can  find  room  for ; 
where  it  is  said  of  Aristotle  that  he  makes  you  learn  more  than  he 
teaches,  and  whenever  he  presents  to  his  readers  one  full-blown 
thought  there  are  several  buds  about  it  which  are  to  open  in  the  cool 
of  the  study  ;  where  it  is  claimed  for  every  great  writer  that  he  is  a 
writer  of  history,  let  him  treat  on  almost  what  subject  he  may,  for 
that  he  carries  with  him  for  thousands  of  years  a  portion  of  his 
times  ;  and  where  Diogenes  prefigures  the  fate  of  all  such  enlighten- 
ers  of  the  earth.  "  The  sun  colors  the  sky  most  deeply  and  most 
diffusely  when  he  hath  sunk  below  the  horizon  ;  and  they  who  never 
said,  How  beneficently  he  shines !  say  at  last,  How  brightly  he 
set ! " 

Such  sayings  might  be  yet  more  largely  added  from  the  last  of 
these  Greek  dialogues,  the  Epicurus,  Leontion,  and  Ternissa  ;  the 
conversation  which,  upon  the  whole,  I  should  say,  was  Landor's 
supreme  favorite,  and  which  contains  certainly  more  of  those  points 
of  character  that  constituted  the  weakness  as  well  as  the  strength  of 
his  own,  than  any  other  in  the  entire  series.  When  Epicurus  de- 
scribes as  dearest  to  him  "  those  whose  hearts  possess  the  rarest  and 
divinest  faculty  of  retaining  or  forgetting  at  option  what  ought  to  be 
forgotten  or  retained,"  it  cannot  but  occur  to  us,  after  experience  thus 
far  of  the  life  set  down  in  these  pages,  that  the  faculty  has  in  it  also 
something  not  divine,  and  that  to  forget  at  option  what  ought  (per- 
haps) to  be  remembered  is  at  the  least  a  doubtful  Epicurean  virtue. 
The  entire  subject  of  the  dialogue  is  the  platonic  intercourse  of  the 
philosojmer  with  two  handsome  young  girls  of  twenty  and  sixteen,  to 
wrhom  he  shows  his  newly  planted  garden  two  or  three  miles  from 
Athens,  and  explains  while  he  practises  the  precepts  of  his  philosophy. 
Of  the  safe  applicability  of  the  precepts  at  every  season,  my  earlier 
narrative  would  hardly  be  a  happy  illustration ;  and  of  the  trouble 


430  THE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  'rito^aef" 

not  inseparable  from  such  charming  friends,  its  closing  page  will  have 
something  to  Bay  ;  lmt  in  this  place  mention  has  only  to  be  made  of 
the  poetical  wealth  of  the  dialogue  throughout,  of  the  freshness  of  its 
pictures  of  external  nature,  of  the  delicacy  of  its  criticism,  of  the 
wonderful  beauty  of  many  of  its  fancies  and  thoughts.  Here  is  the 
Baying  that  "  the  voice  comes  deepest  from  the  sepidchre,  and  a  great 
name  lias  its  root  in  the  dead  body."  Here  counsel  is  given  to  the 
young  to  pay  a  reverence  to  greatness  both  in  rulers  and  writers,  but 
to  adjust  it  always  by  the  consideration  that  the  benefits  of  the  one 
arc  local  and  transitory,  while  those  of  the  other  are  universal 
and  eternal.  And  here  the  philosopher  of  pleasure  vindicates  the 
ne  endurance  and  triumph  of  philosophy  over  any  weapons  that 
can  be  brought  against  her.  "  There  are  nations,  it  is  reported, 
which  aim  their  arrows  and  javelins  at  the  sun  and  moon  on  occasions 
of  eclipse  or  any  other  offence  ;  but  1  have  never  heard  that  the  sun 
and  moon  abated  their  course  through  the  heavens  for  it,  or  looked 
more  angrily  when  they  issued  forth  again  to  shed  light  on  their  an- 
tagonists.  They  went  onward  all  the  while  in  their  own  serenity  and 
clearness,  through  unobstructed  paths,  without  diminution  and  with- 
out delay  ;  it  was  only  the  little  world  below  that  was  in  dark- 
ness." 

The  five  Roman  conversations  were,  Marcellus  and  Hannibal,  Metel- 
lus  and  Marius,  Tiberius  and  Vipsania,  Epictetus  and  Seneca,  and 
Lucullus  and  Caesar  :  the  three  first  named  taking  high  rank  in  the 
class  which  I  have  set  apart  as  prose-poems.  In  the  first  the  con- 
queror of  Syracuse  lies  with  his  death-wound  before  Hannibal,  whose 
way  it  has  cleared  to  Rome  ;  in  the  second  the  tribune  Metellus  and 
the  centurion  Caius  Marius  meet  at  the  siege  of  Numantia  ;  and  the 
third  is  that  meeting  after  their  divorce  of  Tiberius  and  Vipsania 
which  can  hardly  fail  to  affect  the  most  careless  reader  with  some- 
thing of  the  emotion  its  writer  underwent  in  composing  it.*  The 
eternal  protest  of  every  age  against  the  sacrifice  of  human  hearts  to 
state  convenience  or  policy  seems  to  rise  with  the*  cry  of  anguish  of 
the  unhappy  prince,  as  he  thinks  of  the  contentment  and  quiet  that 
might  have  been  his  "though  the  palace  of  Caesars  cracked  and  split 
with  emperors,  while  I.  sitting  in  idleness  on  a  cliff'  of  Rhodes,  eyed 
the  Sun  as  lie  swang  his  golden  censer  athwart  the  heavens,  or  his 
image  as  it  overstrode  the  The  Epictetus  and  Seneca  is  one  of 

the  shorter  dial  but  very  striking  in  its  contrasts  as  well  of  the 

character  as  of  the  philosophy  of  the  high-bred  man  of  learning  and 
the  Low-born  slave,  and  enforcing  admirable  rules  of  simplicity  and 
naturalness  in  writing.  The  most  generally  interesting  of  all  these 
Latin  dialogues,  however,  and  most  deservedly  Southey's  favorite, 
was  the  Lucullus  and  Caesar.  The  period  chosen  is  when  estrange- 
ment has  begun  between  Caesar  and  Pompeius,  the  former  indeed  only 
veiling,  under  a  visit  to  his  friend  for  the  professed  object  of  seeing 

*  See  ante,  pp.  402,  403. 


^ET.  47-53-1  CONTEXTS    OF    THE   NEW   SERIES.  431 

his  new  villa  on  the  Apennines,  a  very  eager  purpose  of  reawakening 
the  old  dislike  of  Lncullus  to  Pompeins,  in  the  hope  of  thereby 
obtaining  sanction  to  his  own  designs.  In  this  he  is  baffled.  From 
the  conqueror  of  Mithridates,  an  old  adversary  of  the  extreme 
republicans,  he  receives  only  counsel  to  be  content  with  his  victories 
and  a  warning  to  make  no  attempt  on  the  republic  ;  experience  hav- 
ing taught  himself  the  hollowness  of  ambition,  and  luxury  extin- 
guished its  last  vestige  in  him.  Fain  would  he  persuade  Caesar  that 
enough  for  the  immortality  he  craved  was  already  achieved  by  him, 
and  that  they  who  now  refused  him  his  place  would  have  to  yield  it 
hereafter.  "  No  one  can  measure  a  great-  man  but  upon  his  bier." 
Caesar  silently  retains  his  own  resolve  ;  moved  greatly,  but  not 
diverted  from  it,  when  Lucullus  turns  to  the  infirmities  and  passions 
of  his  own  career,  and  enforces  not  without  self-reproach  the  lesson 
they  have  taught  him.  "  There  is  enough  in  us  to  be  divided  into 
two  portions  ;  let  us  keep  the  upper  undisturbed  and  pure.  A  part 
of  Olympus  itself  lies  in  dreariness  and  in  clouds,  variable  and 
stormy  ;  but  it  is  not  the  highest ;  there  the  Gods  govern."  In  the 
rest  of  the  conversation  the  friends  are  merely  host  and  guest ;  Lucul- 
lus enjoying  Caesar's  admiration  of  the  completeness  of  the  equipments 
of  his  villa,  as  he  is  led  through  its  various  offices  and  halls  to  where 
its  frescos  reproduce  his  victories,  and  to  the  chamber  where  their 
banquet  waits  them.  Everything  that  may  be  supposed  to  form 
part  of  the  daily  life  of  the  most  luxurious  of  Romans  in  the  last 
years  of  the  republic  is  reproduced  with  a  vivid  reality.  Even  the 
farm,  the  cows,  the  lake,  the  fish-ponds,  the  Adriatic  itself  visible 
from  that  height  of  the  Apennines,  all  of  them  as  much  adjuncts  to 
the  local  truth  of  the  scene  as  the  tapestries  and  pictures  in  the 
hall  or  the  marble  statues  in  the  library,  take  their  place  in  the 
little  drama  presented  to  us  in  this  delightful  conversation.  "  What 
a  library  is  here  !  "  exclaims  Caesar.  "  Ah,  Marcus  Tullius  !  I  salute 
thy  image.  Why  frownest  thou  upon  me  1  collecting  the  consular 
robe  and  uplifting  the  right  arm,  as  when  Rome  stood  firm  again  and 
Catiline  fled  before  thee." 

Such  was  the  new  series  of  Imaginary  Conversations,  of  which  it 
only  remains  that  I  should  indicate  the  dates  and  forms  of  publica- 
tion. Twenty  of  the  dialogues  were  issued  as  a  third  volume  of  the 
original  series,  one  of  them  (partly  in  verse)  on  Inez  de  Castro  being 
subsequently  withdrawn  to  form  portion  of  a  dramatic  poem  with 
that  title ;  and  this  volume,  with  a  dedication  to  Bolivar  of  the  date 
of  1825  and  a  postscript  supplied  in  1827,  was  published  by  Mr. 
Colburn  in  1828.  Fifteen  more  fomied  the  first  volume  of  a  new 
series,  which  a  second  volume  of  twelve  more  completed  ;  one  of  the 
latter  that  had  Peleus  and  Thetis  for  its  speakers,  in  violation  of  the 
rule  to  exclude  imaginary  people,  being  afterwards  transformed  into 
a  scene  which  is  acted  in  the  Epicurus  and  Leontion  ;  and  this  "  sec- 
ond series,"  its  first  volume  dedicated  in  May,  182G,  to  Sir  Robert 


132  rilE    IMAGINARY    CONVERSATIONS.  r§£?*a&' 

Wilson  and  its  second  in  August,  1826,  to  Lord  Guildford,  was  pub- 
lished by  .Mr.  Duncan  in  1829,  the  year  to  which  my  narrative  has 
arrived.  ^ 

I  have  stated  on  a  former  page  that  what  Julius  TTare  had  done  for  the 
first  and  second  it  devolved  on  me  to  do  for  the  thin!  series  of  the  Imu</i- 
nary  Conversations;  and  as,  out  of  these,  eighteen  had  I >een  completed,  and 
eight  more  were  partially  written,  before  Landor  left  Italy,  I  will  here  men- 
tion what  the  subjects  of  them  were. 

Five  were  classical.  In  two,  forming  a  bright  little  prose-poem,  shaded 
with  touches  of  character  pf  the  utmost  delicacy  and  pathos,  ^Esop  and 
Rhodope  an-  the  speakers.  In  a  third,  spoken  over  the  fall  of  Carthage, 
and  rising  to  even  a  grander  theme  in  the  immeasurable  services  of  Greece 
to  Rome,  the  speakers  are  Scipio  and  his  Greek  friends  Pansetius  and  Poly- 
bius.  In  the  fourth,  Pisistratus  receives  from  Solon  counsel  and  commis- 
eration. In  the  fifth,  where  Lucius  and  Timotheus  converse,  and  nearly 
every  sentence  is  radiant  with  wisdom  or  wit,  the  great  Greek  satirist  warns 
one  of  the  Leaders  of  the  new  Christian  sect  against  the  errors  under  which 
the  old  Gods  had  perished. 

Fourteen  had  for  their  speakers  people  famous  in  foreign  lands.  The 
East  supplied  one  in  Rhadamistus  and  Zenobia,  a  brief  dialogue  of  intense 
passion:  to  which  character  belonged  also  a  subject  from  Spain,  Philip  the 
Second  and  Donna  Juana  Coelho;  one  from  France,  Joan  of  Orleans  and 
Agnes  Sorel;  and  three  from  Italy,  Tancredi  and  Constantia,  Tasso  and 
Cornelia,  Dante  with  his  wife  Gemma  Donati,  and  Dante  with  his  angel 
Beatrice.  Galileo  visited  in  his  prison  by  Milton  is  the  subject  of  a 
seventh;  the  eighth,  tilled  also  with  pleasant  memories  of  Florence  and 
ole,  was  a  dialogue  between  the  painter  Fra  Filippo  Lippi  and  Pope 
Eugenius  the  Fourth ;  and  La  Rochefoucault  talking  to  La  Fontaine  sup- 
plied the  ninth,  both  speakers  talking  so  well  that  one  would  hardly  suspect 
the  writer  tu  have  hated  the  first  of  these  Frenchmen  almost  as  much  as  he 
loved  the  second.  The  German  subjects  were  three:  Melancthon  in  col- 
loquy  with  Calvin;  and  Sandt  conversing  with  Kotzebue  on  the  eve  of  the 
commission  of  his  crime,  and  with  Blucher  while  afterwards  in  prison 
waiting  his  punishment.  The  thirteenth  and  fourteenth,  Cardinal  Legate 
Albani  and  the  Picture-dealers,  and  the  Emperor  of  China  and  his  minister, 
formed  portions  respectively  of  two  sets  of  papers,  on  High  and  how  Life 
in  Italy,  ami  on  the  Adventures  of  a  Chinese  statesman  despatched  to 
pe  for  a  batch  of  first-rate  professors  of  Christianity,  with  whose  help 
bis  master,  profiting  by  experience  of  the  Jesuits,  hopes  to  sow  among  his 
enemies  the  Tartar-  divisions  and  animosities  that  will  destroy  them. 

The  last  -i\  were"  mi  English  themes,  all  of  them  dialogues  of  character, 
interfused  with  intense  passion  in  that  where  Mary  of  Scotland  surrenders 
herself  to  Bothwell:  ami,  in  the  rest,  where  the  English  Mary  ami  her  sis- 
ter Elizabeth  meet  after  their  brother's  death  and  the  proclamation  of  Lady 
Jane;  where  the  queen  Elizabeth  talks,  after  the  massacre  of  Bartholomew, 
with  Cecil  and  Anjou  and  the  French  Ambassador;  where  Bishop  Shipley 
says  adieu  to  Franklin  after  his  mission  of  peace  has  failed;  where  Addison 

meet-   Steele  after  the  bailiffs  have  1 n  with  him;  and  where  Andrew 

Marvell  alter  a  visit  to  Milton  meets  Bishop  Parker  in  Bunhill  Row. — 
showing  at  their  very  best  Landor's  humor  and  eloquence,  his  play  of  wit 
and  fancy.  The  last  has.  perhaps  more  than  any,  the  greatest  qualities  of 
1  k  writing  consistently  sustained,  at  their  highest  level  and  with  the  fewest 
drawbacks. 


BOOK   SIXTH. 

1829-1835.     ^T.  54-60. 

AT   FIESOLE. 

I.  Closing  Years  in  the  Palazzo  Medici.  — II.  Mother's  Death.  — III.  Ordered  to 
quit  Tuscany.  —  IV.  The  Villa  Gherardescha.  —  V.  England  revisited.  — 
VI.  Again  in  Italy  :  Old  Pictures  and  new  Friends.  —  VII.  Examination  of 
Shakespeare  for  Deer-stealing.  —  VIII.  Pericles  and  Aspasia.  —  IX.  Self-ban- 
ishment from  Fiesole. 

I.     CLOSING  YEARS   IN   THE  PALAZZO   MEDICI. 

"  From  France  to  Italy  my  steps  I  bent, 
And  pitcht  at  Arno's-'  side  my  household  tent. 
Six  years  the  Medica?an  palace  held 
My  wandering  Lares ;  then  they  went  afield, 
Where  the  hewn  rocks  of  Fiesole  impend 
O'er  Doccia's  dell,  and  fig  and  olive  blend. 
There  the  twin  streams  in  Affrico  unite, 
One  dimly  seen,  the  other  out  of  sight, 
But  ever  playing  in  his  smoothened  bed 
Of  polisht  stone,  and  willing  to  be  led 
Where  clustering  vines  protect  him  from  the  sun, 
Never  too  grave  to  smile,  too  tired  to  run. 
Here,  by  the  lake,  Boccacio's  fair  brigade 
Beguiled  the  hours,  and  tale  for  tale  repaid. 
How  happy !  0,  how  happy  had  I  been 
With  friends  and  children  in  this  quiet  scene! 
Its  quiet  was  not  destined  to  be  mine: 
'T  was  hard  to  keep,  't  was  harder  to  resign." 

So  wrote  Landor,  in  a  little  poem  on  his  homes ;  but  the  Medicsean 
palace  had  not  held  his  Lares  five  years  when  he  moved  into  the 
countrv  two  miles  from  the  Tuscan  capital,  and  interposed  the  villa 
Castiglione  between  his  homes  in  Florence  and  Fiesole.  Here  he 
lived,  with  a  short  interval  in  the  winter  of  '28  and  '29  at  the  casa 
Ghiffni,  until  he  found  his  Fiesolan  home.  A  characteristic  incident 
had  closed  his  intercourse  with  the  living  representative  of  the  Medi- 
ci. "  I  remember  one  day,"  writes  Mr.  Kirkup,  "  when  he  lived  in 
the  Medici  palace,  he  wrote  to  the  marquis,  and  accused  him  of  hav- 
ing seduced  away  his  coachman.  The  marquis,  I  should  tell  you, 
enjoyed  no  very  good  name,  and  this  had  exasperated  Landor  the 
more.  Mrs.  Landor  was  sitting  in  the  drawing-room  the  day  after, 
where  I  and  some  others  were,  when  the  marquis  came  strutting  in 
without  removing  his  hat.  But  he  had  scarcely  advanced  three  steps 
from  the  door  when  Landor  walked  up  to  him  quickly  and  knocked 
his  hat  off,  then  took  him  by  the  arm  and  tinned  him  out.     You 

28 


434  AT    FIESOLE.  trt5-»' 

should  have  heard  Landor's  shout  of  laughter  at  his  own  auger  when 
it  was  all  over,  inextinguishable  laughter  which  uoue  of  us  could  re- 
sist. Immediately  after  he  sent  the  marquis  warning  by  the  hands 
of  a  policeman,  which  is  reckoned  an  affront,  and  quitted  his  house  at 
the  end  of  the  year."  This  anecdote  is  also  told  me  in  the  letterof  a 
family  connection  who  passed  some  time  at  the  Italian  villa,*  and  who, 
after  remarking  that  the  frequent  outbreaks  in  Landorof  this  intensely 
sensitive  pride  astounded  the  Italians  more  than  anything,  says  truly 
enough  that  the  secret  of  it  was  not  the  vulgar  sense  of  importance 
attached  to  his  position  as  an  English  gentleman,  hut  the  vast  ever- 
present  conviction  of  the  infinity  of  his  mental  superiority.  "The 
smallest  unintentional  appearance  of  slight  from  a  superior  in  rank 
would  at  any  moment  rouse  him  into  a  fury  of  passion,  never  thor- 
oughly allayed  till  its  last  force  had  spent  itself  in  an  epigram." 
Such  incidents,  at  the  worst  never  fraught  with  much  gravity,  often 
took  even  a  highly  amusing  turn,  in  his  earlier  years  in  Italy,  from 
his  imperfect  acquaintance  with  the  language;  and  here  this  letter 
confirms  what  was  said  in  a  former  page.  "  Though  at  last  he  un- 
derstood it  thoroughly,  and  spoke  it  with  the  utmost  grammatical 
correctness  and  elegance,  he  acquired  it  with  less  facility  than  might 
have  been  expected.  Mrs.  Landor,  without  any  study,  could  converse 
in  it  with  ease  and  volubility  long  hefore  her  husband.  When 
Southey  visited  them  in  Italy,  although  well  acquainted  with  French 
and  Italian,  he  showed  himself  a  self-taught  linguist,  and  his  hearers 
were  not  a  little  amused  at  his  oddities  of  pronunciation  and  speech." 
It  was  in  the  palazzo  Medici  that  Hazlitt  visited  Landor  in  the 
Bpring  of  1825.  "  1  perfectly  remember  Hazlitt's  being  here,"  writes 
Mr.  Kirkup.  "He  wished  to  pay  Landor  a  visit,  hut  was  advised 
not,  unless  he  was  well  introduced.  Armitage  Urown,  who  was  Lan- 
dor's greatest  friend  here,  offered  him  a  letter  ;  but  Hazlitt  said  he 
would  beard  the  lion  in  his  den,  and  he  walked  up  to  his  house 
one  winter's  morning  in  nankeen  shorts  and  white  stockings;  was 
made  much  of  by  the  royal  animal;  and  often  returned  —  at  night; 
for  Landor  was  much  out  in  the  day,  in  all  weathers.*'  My  Austra- 
lian corresponded  confirms  this  story  on  the  relation  of  Mrs.  Landor, 
describing  the  greal  critic's  garb  as  "  a  dress-coat  and  nankeen  trou- 
sers half-way  up  his  legs,  leaving  his  stockings  well  visible  over  his 
sh  »'s  :  hut  his  host,"  Mr.  Wilson  Landor  adds,  "would  not  know 
whether  he  was  dressed  in  black  or  white.  He  wore  his  own  clothes, 
like  Dominie  Sampson,  until  they  would  hardly  hold  together;  and 
when  he  visited  his  sisters  at  Warwick  they  used  to  resort  to  the  ex- 
pedient practised  upon  the  dominie,  and  leave  new  garments  for  him 
at  his  bedside,  which  he  would  put  on  without  discovering  the 
change." 


- 


*  Mr.  Edward  Wilson  Landor,  a  cousin  of  the  Landora  of  RujHpv,  now  a  police- 
magistrate  in  Perth  i  Western  Australia),  from  whom,  in  September,  1m;;,  when  the 
whole  of  my  first  volume  had  been  printed  off  for  more  than  two  months,  I  received 
the  letter  above  referred  to. 


yET.  54-60.]  CLOSING    YEARS    IN    PALAZZO    MEDICL  435 

In  that  there  is  overcoloring,  but  the  frequent  absence  of  mind 
could  not  be  exaggerated  ;  and  I  remember  one  such  amusing  instance 
of  forgetfulness  which  perhaps  originated  the  story,  since  it  certainly 
led  to  the  necessity  at  Warwick  of  supplying  him  with  other  clothes 
than  his  own.  He  had  been  so  much  put  out  at  one  of  his  visits  by 
having  left  the  key  of  his  portmanteau  behind  him,  that  his  sister 
Avas  hardly  surprised  to  see  him,  when  next  he  appeared  at  her  house, 
eagerly  nourishing  in  his  hand  an  uplifted  key,  at  once  knowing  this 
to  be  his  comforting  assurance  to  her  that  any  possible  repetition  of  the 
former  trouble  had  been  guarded  against.  Storms  of  laughter  fol- 
lowed from  him  as  she  expressed  her  satisfaction  ;  and  the  last  of  his 
successive  peals  had  scarcely  subsided,  when,  inquiry  being  made  for 
his  portmanteau,  the  fatal  discovery  presented  itself  that  to  bring 
only  a  key  was  more  of  a  disaster  than  to  bring  only  a  portmanteau. 
On  this  occasion  the  portmanteau  had  been  left  at  Cheltenham.* 

"  He  was  so  frequently  absorbed  in  his  own  reflections,"  continues 
his  relative,  "  as  to  be  unconscious  of  external  objects,  which  indeed 
seldom  much  affected  him.  He  would  walk  about  Bath,  as  between 
Florence  and  Fiesole,  with  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  ground,  taking  no 
heed  of  the  world  around  him.  I  have  known  him  to  travel  from 
London  into  Denbighshire  and  be  quite  unable  to  say  by  which  route 
he  had  travelled,  what  towns  he  had  passed  by,  or  whether  or  not  he 
had  come  through  Birmingham."  My  own  experience  also  confirms 
this  ;  f  and  some  sentences  from  the  same  letter  may  illustrate  some 
former  pages  $  which  were  printed  off  some  months  before  it  reached  me. 
"  The  extravagant  opinion  of  his  own  mental  pre-eminence  was  formed 
early  in  life,  and  remained  with  him  in  old  age.  Often  as  he  changed 
his  estimates  of  contemporaries,  according  as  they  rose  or  fell  in  his 
personal  regard,  this  estimate  never  changed.  He  looked  upon  him- 
self as  superior  to  everybody  else,  and  was  angry  with  titles  because 
they  disputed  his  higher  title.  He  was  an  enthusiastic  friend  ;  and 
as  far  as  sound,  violence,  and  unmeasured  denunciation  went,  a  bitter 
hater  ;  but  beyond  unsparing  vituperation,  he  would  not  have  injured 
an  enemy.  He  would  certainly  not  have  lent  a  hand  to  crush 
him.  It  was  the  strong  whom  he  always  rushed  to  attack.  With 
all  the  violence  of  his  dislikes  and  likings,  he  had  also  the  soft- 
ness and  tenderness  of  the  poetic  temperament.     He  was  passionately 

*  It  was  in  1843.  He  wrote  to  me  at  the  time:  "  My  portmanteau  and  all  mv  clothes 
were  left  behind  at  Cheltenham,  against  all  my  precautions.  The  worst  is  the  loss  of 
much  poetry  and  prose  written  in  the  last  three  months.  I  am  not  such  a  fool  as  to 
trouble  my  head  about  the  clothes,  nor  wise  enough  not  to  trouble  it  about  the  pages. 
However,  I  never  look  after  a  loss  a  single  moment. 

'  Quod  vides  perisse,  perditum  ducas,' 
says  Catullus  and  say  I." 

t  And  worse.  He  would  find  himself  at  Birmingham  when  he  ought  to  have  been 
elsewhere.  "You  will  wonder  what  I  had  to  do  at  Birmingham !  "  he  wrote  to  me  in 
the  summer  of  1844,  explaining  a  hasty  letter  sent  me  the  previous  day  with  that  post- 
mark. "Why!  just  nothing  at  all.  I  should  have  changed  trains'at  Coventry  for 
Leamington,  but  the  fools  never  cried  out  a  word  about  that  station." 

|  Ante,  pp.  298-314. 


430  AT    FIESOLE.  ^a^ 

fond  of  young  children.  He  was  generous  to  profusion  whenever  he 
had  the  means.     He  had  a  warm  feeling  for  all  men  of  literature, 

and  would  have  nurtured  genius  in  whatever  obscure  nook  found 
lurking.  Self-satisfied  under  all  circumstances,  he  was  without  jjer- 
sonal  ambition  or  the  desire  of  aggrandizement.  His  own  concep- 
tion of  himself  was  too  elevated  to  permit  of  his  descending  to  ordi- 
nary meannesses.  He  neither  desired  money,  beyond  what  the 
necessities  of  the  hour  demanded,  nor  rank,  nor  influence.  The  men 
he  admired  were  men  of  genius  and  talent,  not  men  of  station.  He 
neither  observed  nor  cared  whether  they  came  in  carriages  or  afoot ; 
and  indeed  pushed  very  nearly  to  affectation  (a  weakness  he  would 
have  repelled  with  scorn)  this  indifference  to  factitious  distinctions. 
He  noticed  a  man's  appearance  as  little  as  he  studied  his  own.'' 

What  is  pleasantest  here,  as  well  as  most  material,  receives  further 
confirmation  in  the  letters  of  Mr.  Kirkup,  and  testimonies  thus  inde- 
pendent of  each  other  will  not  be  thought  unimportant.  "  I  first  knew 
him  in  1824  through  Mr.  Armitage  Brown,  the  great  friend  of  Keats, 
and  the  most  intimate  and  confidential  friend  of  Landor  for  many 
years.  Among  his  associates  then,  and  until  he  quitted  his  villa,  was 
an  elderly  gentleman  named  Leckie,  very  jocose  and  satirical,  whom 
Landor  liked  as  much  as  his  wife  disliked  him.  Another  friend  was 
Mr.  MacDonnell,  well  known  to  all  residents  here.  Another  was  an 
old  retired  painter  who  had  lived  in  Italy  through  the  war,  really  an 
Englishman  I  believe,  but  some  said  an  American,  and  like  Leckie  a 
great  Voltairian.*  Landor  said  he  was  above  a  hundred,  and  he 
must  have  lived  to  117  if  that  was  correct.  Two  other  painter- 
friends  of  his  were  the  Wallises,  father  and  son,  likewise  old  resi- 
dents ;  the  elder  of  whom  he  characterized  as  telling  white  lies 
better  as  well  as  oftener  than  any  man  living.  1  recollect  Landor 
having  a  dispute  with  Wallis  about  a  picture  he  had  bought  and  as 
usual  christened  a  Correggio,  which  ended  by  his  exclaiming,  '  The 
only  proof  /  want  that  it  is,  is  that  Wallis  should  say  it  is  not.'  Lan- 
dor lived  economically  and  dressed  very  shabbily.  He  only  indulged 
in  buying  a  number  of  very  ancient  pictures  which  were  not  esteemed 
at  that  time.  He  told  me  he  had  left  all  his  own  affairs  to  the  care 
(■I'  his  brother  (Henry)  and  his  agent,  on  their  promise  that  they 
should  never  send  him  any  account,  for  he  hated  the  Bight  of  figures. 
And  they  kept  their  word,  so  that  he  never  knew  what  he  was  to  have. 
Be  was  always  eccentric.     He   never  would  look  at  a  review,  and 

lived  without  I ks,  or  nearly  so.      His  memory  was  most  astonishing, 

and  he  used  to  boast  that  he  could  always  quote  securely  fromitj 
but  lie  trusted  too  much  to  it  sometimes,  and  made  mistakes.  His 
Btrength  was  language,  Latin  and  English \  and  his  passion  was  paint- 
ing,—another  language;  but  he  was  not  learned  in  that.  As  for 
sciences  he  knew  nothing  of  them,  and  made  no  pretence  of  caring 
for  them.     He  used  to  turn  my  experiments  in  spiritualism  to  a  joke, 

*  See  ante,  p.  7. 


JET.  54-60.]  CLOSING    YEARS    IN    PALAZZO    MEDICI.  437 

and  never  thought  it  woi-th  while  to  examine  it.  One  day,  talking 
against  the  church  establishment  in  Ireland,  Leckie  called  it  tyranny 
and  plunder,  and  said  that  every  man  should  pay  for  his  own  hum- 
bug. '  To  be  sure,'  put  in  Landor  ;  '  and  Roman  Catholic  priests 
might  then  be  able  to  take  to  wearing  stockings  like  Protestants,  and 
then  they  'd  all  start  fair.'  He  was  fond  of  his  children  to  excess  at  this 
time.  I  had  a  study  in  my  room,  which  I  made  at  Parma  from  Cor- 
reggio  :  it  was  the  profile  of  the  angel  in  the  famous  picture  of  St. 
Jerome  for  which  Louis  Dixhuit  vainly  tempted  Marie  Louise,  in  her 
sorest  poverty,  by  the  offer  of  a  million  francs  to  allow  it  to  remain 
in  the  Louvre ;  and  this  angel,  Landor  thought  so  like  his  Arnold  in 
those  days  of  his  boyhood,  that  I  made  a  drawing  of  the  little  fellow 
in  the  same  view,  and  gave  it  to  his  father.  He  was  delighted  ;  and 
with  his  usual  generosity  sent  me  a  little  noble  landscape  by  Salvator, 
which  I  shall  always  value,  and  which  now  hangs  in  my  studio  over 
Shelley's  bed.  As  I  have  said,  Landor  often  was  shabbily  dressed, 
and  I  have  known  servants  offend  him  by  taking  him  for  a  beggar  or 
poor  devil.  He  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  violent  man,  and  no 
doubt  was  so.  But  I  never  saw  anything  but  the  greatest  gentleness 
and  courtesy  in  him,  especially  to  women.  He  wTas  chivalresque  of 
the  old  school.  At  Lord  Dillon's  in  Florence  we  used  to  meet  often, 
and  there  we  together  made  the  acquaintance  of  Lamartine.  Landor 
was  much  attached  to  Lord  Dillon,  in  spite  of  his  being  a  poet ;  for 
he  was  always  reciting,  and  people  laughed  at  him.  Not  so  Landor. 
He  showed  the  most  courteous  attention ;  and  often  gave  him  a  word 
of  advice,  so  gently  as  never  to  offend  him.  He  used  to  say  that 
Lord  Dillon's  smiling  handsome  fair  face  was  like  a  ray  of  sunshine 
in  Florence." 

Writing  more  than  forty  years  ago  of  the  time  which  happily  is  thus 
with  Mr.  Kirkup  still  a  living  memory,  Leigh  Hunt  has  left  us  his  de- 
scription also  of  some  of  the  Landor  circle.  In  Mr.  Brown,  the  friend 
of  Keats,  whom  he  first  visited  while  he  occupied  a  little  convent  by 
Fiesole,  he  found  an  amount  of  joviality  that  might  have  represented 
the  entire  body  corporate  of  the  former  pious  possessors  of  his  abode  ; 
in  Mr.  Kirkup  he  discovered  a  man  unequalled  for  generosities,  and 
for  delicacy  in  showing  them  ;  and  in  Lord  Dillon  he  saw  the  ideal 
of  a  romantic  Irish  lord,  with  much  depth  of  understanding  as  well 
as  humanity  of  knowledge,  and  with  an  exuberance  of  temperament 
more  than  national.  Perhaps  it  was  this  latter  characteristic  that 
Hazlitt  more  bluntly  described  to  Captain  Medwin,  when  telling  him 
afterwards  of  the  civilities  of  Landor  and  his  friends  at  Florence, 
and  among  them  of  a  dinner  at  Lord  Dillon's.  "  It  was  the  first 
time  I  had  dined  with  a  lord ;  and  by  gad,  sir,  he  had  all  the  talk  to 
himself.  He  never  waited  for  an  answer.  He  talks  as  much  as 
Coleridge  ;  only  he  doesn't  pump  it  out." 

Something  of  Hazlitt's  own  talk  at  Landor's  table  is  among  the 
passages  of  Mr.  Kirkup's  letter  I  have  some  hesitation  in  using ;  but 


438  AT    FIESOLE.  lS^ 


"35- 


as  the  details  of  his  Scotch  divorce,  including  the  surprising  diaries 
of  the  first  Mrs.  Hazlitt,  have  lately  been  published  with  family 
authority,*  there  will  perhaps  be  no  harm  in  saying  that  as  Hazlitt's 
present  Continental  journey  was  in  the  nature  of  a  holiday  wed- 
ding-trip with  his  second  wife,  whose  small  independence  had  en- 
abled  him  to  give  himself  that  unusual  enjoyment,  he  appears  to 
have  had  no  scruple  in  dilating  to  his  friends  on  those  facilities  of 
Scottish  law  which  had  opened  to  him  such  advantages.  "  He  re- 
lated to  Landor,  Brown,  and  myself  one  day  the  history  of  his  own 
divorce.  He  told  us  that  he  and  his  wife,  having  always  some  quar- 
rel going  on,  determined  at  last,  from  incompatibility  of  temper,  to 
gel  separated.  So,  to  save  Mrs.  H.'s  honor,  and  have  all  their  pro- 
ceedings legal,  thev  went  to  work  in  this  way.  Thev  took  the  steam- 
boat  to  Leith,  provided  themselves  each  with  good  law  advice,  and 
continued  on  the  most  friendly  terms  in  Edinburgh  till  everything 
was  ready ;  when  Hazlitt  described  himself  calling  in  from  the  streets 
a  not  very  respectable  female  confederate,  and,  for  form's  sake,  put- 
ting her  in  his  bed,  and  lying  down  beside  her.  '  Well,  sir,'  said  Haz- 
litt, turning  more  particularly  to  Landor,  who  had  by  this  time 
thrown  out  signs  of  the  most  lively  interest,  '  down  1  lay,  and  the 
folding-doors  opened,  and  in  walked  Mrs.  H.  accompanied  by  two 
gentlemen.  She  turned  to  them,  and  said  :  Gentlemen,  do  yon 
know  who  that  person  is  in  that  bed  along  with  that  woman  ]  Yes, 
madam,  thev  politely  replied,  't  is  Mr.  William  Hazlitt.  On  which, 
sir,  she  made  a  courtesy,  and  they  went  out  of  the  room,  and  left  me 
and  my  companion  in  statu  quo.  She  and  her  witnesses  then  accused 
me  of  adultery,  sir,  and  obtained  a  divorce  against  me,  which,  by 
gad,  sir,  was  a  benefit  to  both.'"  Mr.  Kirkup  takes  occasion  to  add, 
that  as  he  and  Brown  were  never  married,  they  could  hardly  lie  ex- 
pected to  listen  during  the  progress  of  this  tale  of  wonder  with  the 
eager  anxiety,  or  to  hail  its  conclusion  with  the  irrepressible  delight. 
evinced  by  Landor  ;  but  they  were  all  not  a  little  surprised,  and  till 
then  quite  ignorant  that  such  beneficial  uses  were  to  be  made  of  the 
law. 

Landor  himself  too,  in  a  letter  to  me  nearly  fourteen  years  ago,t 
described  another  piece  of  talk  of  Hazlitt's  on  the  first  evening  of 
their  meeting  in  Italy,  by  which  he  was  startled  a  little.  They  fell 
firsl  upon  the  Bubject  of  poetry  ;  and  Landor,  expressing  much  admira- 
tion of  Wordsworth,  said  he  had  a  strong  desire  to  see  him.     "  Well, 

*  See  Memein  of  William  Ih>J'<tt.  by  W.  Carew  Hazlitt,  Vol.  IT.  pp.  21-65. 

t  He  was  reading  De  Quincey's  Recollections  &t the  time  (23(1  Oct.,  lsr,4 ) :  "DeQura- 
gives  a  description  "f  Wordsworth's  figure  and  physiognomy.  He  represents  him 
in  youth  a-  like  Milton  I  cannot  but  laugh  over  mv  paper  on  the  recollection  of  Haz- 
litt. tin-  first  evening  he  visited  me  at  Florence."     He  tells  the  Btorv  in  the  text,  ami 

adds:  "  And  certainly,  when  I  did  afterward ■  him,  I  found  the  physiognomy  to  be 

equine.  Hut  W.  had  a  very  fine  forehead:  very  broad,  though  somewhat  heavy. 
There  arc  feu-  indications  in  the  forehead,  however. '  I  would  not  say  nulla Jides ,•  but  one 
of  the  emptiest  head-  I  ever  met  with  was  a  man'-  so  exactly  Erskine,  that  you  might 
look  at  both  together,  ami  doubt  which  was  which;  and  1  oiice  saw  a  postiiiou  at  La 
Cava  as  exactly  like  Napoleon.'1 


MT.  54-  60  ]  CLOSING    YEARS    IN    PALAZZO    MEDICI.  439 

sir,"  said  Hazlitt,  "  you  never  saw  him,  then  1  But  you  have  seen  a 
horse,  I  suppose  ] "  Landor  smiled,  and  he  went  on.  "  Well,  sir,  if 
you  have  seen  a  horse,  I  mean  his  head,  sir,  you  may  say  you  have 
seeu  Wordsworth."  It  should  be  added,  however,  that  the  poet's 
face  had  been  a  sore  subject  with  Hazlitt  ever  since  his  luckless  at- 
tempt to  paint  it  twenty  years  before,  when  Southey  had  described 
the  result  as  presenting  Wordsworth  at  the  foot  of  the  gallows,  deep- 
ly affected  by  his  deserved  fate,  yet  determined  to  die  like  a  man. 
"  Hazlitt  in  those  days,"  Wordsworth  afterwards  wrote,  "  was  prac- 
tising portrait-painting  with  professional  views  "  ;  and  thus,  at  one 
of  his  first  ventures,  the  ambitious  young  limner  had  stumbled  on 
the  threshold.  The  face  had  something  in  it,  then,  above  and  beyond 
the  power  the  painter  possessed  of  dealing  with  it  :  a  severe  worn 
pressure  of  thought  about  the  temples,  a  fire  in  the  eye  as  if  more 
than  outward  appearances  were  seen  by  it,  the  forehead  intensely 
marked,  cheeks  furrowed  by  strong  feeling,  and  an  inclination  to 
laughter  about  the  mouth  strangely  at  variance  with  the  solemn 
look  of  the  rest  of  the  countenance.  Of  all  which  there  was  nothing 
the  critic  careji  to  remember  now  but  his  early  failure  to  do  justice  to 
any  of  it ;  nor  could  Landor  himself  have  disposed  with  greater  cool- 
ness or  cleverness  of  a  subject  become  displeasing  to  him.  There 
was  just  enough  truth  to  give  humor  to  his  whimsical  comparison. 

Many  were  the  points  of  agreement,  indeed,  between  Hazlitt  and 
his  host ;  and  so  heartily  did  each  enjoy  the  other's  wilfulness  and 
caprice,  that  a  strong  personal  liking  characterized  their  brief  ac- 
quaintance.* Landor  wrote  to  him  after  he  left  Florence,  and  Haz- 
litt replied  from  Rome  at  the  beginning  of  April.  He  described  him- 
self and  Mrs.  Hazlitt  crossing  the  mountains  pretty  well,  but  their 
journey  as  rather  tedious.  Rome  had  hardly  answered  his  expecta- 
tions. The  ruins  did  not  prevail  enough  over  the  modern  buildings, 
which  were  commonplace  things,  to  satisfy  him  :  but  one  or  two 
things  were  "  prodigious  fine."  He  had  got  a  pleasant  lodging,  but 
found  everything  very  bad  and  dear.  "  I  have  thoughts  of  going  to 
spend  a  month  at  Albano,  but  am  not  quite  sure.  If  I  do  not,  I 
shall  return  to  Florence  next  week,  and  proceed  to  Venice.  I  should 
be  glad,  if  I  settle  at  Albano,  if  you  could  manage  to  come  over  and 
stop  a  little.  I  have  done  what  I  was  obliged  to  write  for  the  papers, 
and  am  now  a  leisure  man,  I  hope,  for  the  rest  of  the  summer.t     I 

*  In  his  Recollections  of  HrtzlUi  Mr.  Patmore  tells  vis:  "  Of  Landor,  Hazlitt  entertained 
a  very  high  opinion,  even  before  the  production  of  his  noble  work,  the  Imaginary  Con- 
versations ;  .  .  .  but  his  intimate  connection  and  friendship  with  Southey  .  .  .  seemed 
to  throw  a  doubt  on  the  sincerity,  as  well  as  the  stability,  of  the  opinions  of  both.  .  .  . 
He  was  not  answerable,  he  told  me,  for  the  whole  of  the  article  on  Landor  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review,  alterations  and  additions  having  been  made  in  it  after  it  left  his  hands. 
.  .  .  The  book  was  one  after  his  own  heart;  and  some  parts  of  it  he  considered  finer 
than  anything  else  from  a  modern  pen.  .  .  .  Subsequently  Hazlitt  was  formally  intro- 
duced to  Landor  at  his  residence  at  Florence;  and  he  returned  to  England  with  an  im- 
proved and  heightened  opinion,"  &c,  &c. 

t  In  another  letter  (dating  from  33  Via  Gregoriana)  he  wrote:  "I  am  much  gratified 
that  you  are  pleased  with  the  Spirit  of  the  Age.     Somebody  ought  to  like  it,  for  I  am 


440  AT    FIESOLE.  ^-ss? 

bought  a  little  Florence  edition  of  Petrarch  and  Dante  the  other  day, 
and  have  made  out  one  page."  He  devotes  the  rest  of  his  letter  to 
a  Latin  inscription  copied  by  him  from  the  monument  to  the  Stuarts 
executed  as  a  commission  from  the  Prince  regent  by  Canova  ;*  re- 
quests that  Landor  will  "ask  Mr.  Southey  for  his  opinion  on  this 
Jacobite  effusion  "  ;  and,  sending  a  kind  remembrance  to  Lander's 
wife,  subscribes  himself  his  much-obliged  friend. 

Such  few  notices  as  thus  were  accessible  of  friends  and  life  in 
Florence  it  seemed  right  to  interpose  before  resumption  of  my  narra- 
tive, at  the  opening  of  the  year  of  the  removal  to  Fiesole  ;  and  I  will 
now  only  add  a  note  or  two  from  Leigh  Hunt's  recollection  of  Landor 
himself  at  the  time.  He  found  him  living  among  his  paintings  and 
hospitalities,  in  a  style  of  unostentatious  elegance  very  becoming  a 
scholar  that  could  afford  it,  but  with  a  library  the  smallness  of  which 
surprised  Hunt,  and  "  which  he  must  furnish  out,  when  he  writes  on 
English  subjects,  by  the  help  of  a  rich  memory."  He  had  some  tine 
children,  Leigh  goes  on  to  say,  with  whom  it  was  his  habit  to  play 
like  a  real  school-boy  ;  being  as  ready  to  complain  of  an  undue  knock  as 
he  was  to  laugh,  shout,  and  scramble  himself.  His  conversation  was 
lively  and  unaffected,  as  full  of  scholarship  or  otherwise  as  his  friends 
might  desire,  and  dashed  now  and  then  with  a  little  superfluous  will 
and  vehemence,  when  speaking  of  his  likings  and  dislikes.  "  His 
laugh  was  in  peals,  and  climbing  ;  he  seemed  to  fetch  every  fresh 
one  from  a  higher  story."  Both  his  genius  and  scholarship  greatly 
impressed  his  visitor.  He  could  really  fancy  and  feel  with,  as  well  as 
read,  Ovid  and  Catullus.  He  had  the  veneration  for  all  poetry, 
ancient  or  modern,  that  belonged  to  a  scholar  who  was  himself  a 
poet ;  and  showed  a  proper  knowledge  of  Chaucer  and  of  Spenser  as 
well  as  of  Homer.  He  seemed  to  Hunt,  by  his  book  of  Idyls,  to  have 
proved  himself  to  be  by  far  the  best  Latin  poet  of  our  country,  after 
Milton  ;  more  in  good  taste  than  the  incorrectness  and  diffuseness  of 
Cowley,  and  not  to  he  lowered  by  a  comparison  with  the  mimic  ele- 
gances  of  Addison.  "Speaking  of  the  Latin  poets  of  antiquity,  I 
was  struck  with  an  observation  of  his,  that  Ovid  was  the  best-natured 
of  them  all.  Horace's  perfection  that  way  he  doubted.  He  said  that 
Ovid  had  a  greater  range  of  pleasurable  ideas,  and  was  prepared  to  do 
justice  to  everything  that  came  in  his  way.  Ovid  was  fond  of  no- 
ticing his  rivals  in  wit  and  genius,  and  has  recorded  the  names  of  a 
great  number  of  his  friends;  whereas  Horace  seems  to  confine  his 
eulogies  to  such  as  were  rich  or  in  fashion  and  well  received  at  court." 
Upon  the  whole,  what  Leigh  Hunt  had  to  say  of  this  remarkable 
man,   with  whose  poetry  he  had  become  acquainted  but   the   year 

pnro  thorp  will  be  plenty  to  cry  nut  ncrnin't  if.  I  l,npo  you  did  not  find  any  sad  blun- 
der- in  the  second  volume;  but  you  can  hardly  suppose  the  depression  of  body  and 
mind  under  which  I  wrote  -miup  of  thu<c  articles." 

*  JACOBO  III.  JACOB1  II.  M.u.N ;.K  BRIT.  REGIS  FILIO,  KAROLO  EDVARDO,  KT  HENRICO 
DECAKO  PATRUM  '  A  i:i>1  S  AMI  M.  JACOB1  III.  PILIIS,  la.oi.K  BTIRPIS  STUARDL*  POS- 
TRfc.Mls,  A.N.so   M.\<  <  <  .MX.      BBATI   HORTUI   yH  IS   UU.MISO  MOBIUHTUR. 


^et.  54-60.]  mother's  death.  441 

before,  after  reading  the  book  that  had  made  him  suddenly  famous  as 
"  one  of  our  most  powerful  writers  of  prose,"  is  to  be  summed  up  in 
a  remark  already  referred  to.  He  had  never  known  any  one  of  such 
a  vehement  nature  with  so  great  delicacy  of  imagination  ;  "he  is 
like  a  stormy  mountain-pine  that  should  produce  lilies." 


II.    MOTHER'S   DEATH. 

At  the  opening  of  1829  there  seemed  to  be  less  cause  for  anxiety 
as  to  his  mother's  health  than  had  been  expressed  for  some  preceding 
years.  Her  letters  had  never  been  more  frequent,  and  seldom  more 
shrewdly  or  strikingly  expressed.  On  the  7th  of  January  she  thanks 
him  for  the  portrait  of  his  two  beautiful  children ;  says  how  proud 
she  is  of  what  Mr.  Southey  in  one  of  his  books  had  been  saying  of 
her  son ;  tells  him  of  a  living  she  had  purchased  for  his  brother 
Robert  near  Pershore,  "in  a  pleasant  country,  and  not  far  from 
Ipsley";  and  adds  that  her  daughters  have  been  reading  to  her 
what  had  pleased  her  very  much  out  of  Bishop  Heber's  Journal,* 
where  his  name  was  mentioned,  and  some  of  his  poetry  quoted.  On 
the  19th  of  March  there  is  a  letter  from  her  filled  with  county  news 
about  the  Lawleys,  and  with  what  was  going  on  at  Warwick  Castle 
and  at  Guy's  Cliff ;  telling  how  much  Sir  Robert  Lawley  had  lamented 
"  Walter's  unwillingness  "  to  see  more  of  him  in  Florence,  and  what 
handsome  things  Lord  Aston  had  said  of  the  author  of  the  Imaginary 
Conversations.  In  May  she  reports  of  her  grandson  Charles  that  he 
was  in  the  fifth  class  at  Rugby,  and  that  the  new  master  there  was 
said  to  have  wronderful  influence ;  that  the  boys  worked  very  hard  to 
gain  his  approbation ;  and  that  flogging  and  fagging  were  nearly 
abolished  altogether.  This  was  Arnold.  However,  the  old  lady  adds, 
"  I  hope  the  boys  won't  study  more  than  is  good  for  the  health  of 
them,  and  I  did  not  like  to  hear  that  the  play-ground  is  deserted." 
That  was  her  last  letter  to  her  son  in  Florence,  though  she  lived  until 
the  October  following.  She  had  an  illness  somewhat  suddenly  in  the 
spring,  from  which  she  never  quite  rallied  ;  and  through  the  inter- 
vening months  it  is  discoverable  that  she  was  becoming  gradually 
weaker,  though  no  immediate  danger  wras  thought  to  exist. 

Landor  continued  to  write  to  her  as  usual.  He  complained  to  her 
in  January  how  much  people  had  beset  him  with  introductions  since 
his  Conversations  appeared,  and  why  it  was  that  the  last  series  was 
still  delayed.  However,  it  would  really  be  out  at  the  end  of  March  ; 
and  she  would  find  that  he  had  mentioned  his  kind  old  friend  Dr. 
Parr  with  the  regard  and  gratitude  he  owed  him.  He  writes  to  her 
in  June  of  the  pleasantest  weather  he  can  remember  in  Italy,  and 
asks  her  to  tell  his  sister  to  send  him  various  fruit-seeds.  He  tells 
her  a  few  days  later  that  she  was  not  to  be  alarmed  by  anything  she 

*  Heber  says  that'the  vast  ruins  of  old  cities  in  Upper  India  had  brought  to  his  niind 
the  lines  of  Gtbir  on  Masar.    Ante,  p.  58. 


442  AT   FIESOLE.  [**%t& 

heard  of  his  having  been  expelled  from  Florence,  because  he  was  back 
again  ;  and  the  grand-duke  had  only  laughed  when  he  heard  that  the 

rial  offence  had  been  what  he  had  said  in  his  book  of  Florentine 
patriots  and  Florentine  justice,  and  of  one  of  the  Florentine  grandees 
Belling  his  wife's  old  clothes  before  she  had  been  dead  a  fortnight. 
And  at  the  end  of  July  he  informs  her  of  his  great  misfortune  in  the 
death  by  apoplexy  of  his  friend  Lord  Blessington  at  Paris,  from  his 
eulogy  of  whom  I  will  take  a  few  lines. 

"  When  he  was  Viscount  Mountjoy  he  was  very  much  noticed  by  the 
present  King,  who,  in  bringing  his  charges  against  the  Queen,  said,  '  I  hope 
I  shall  find  in  Blessingtoa  as  warm  a  friend  as  I  found  in  Mountjoy.'  He  re- 
plied thai  he  was  afraid  the  prosecution  would  make  the  Regent  unpopular, 
and  that  he  never  could  be  the  advocate  of  a  measure  that  might  lead  to 
recrimination.  We  thought  differently  on  many  points,  particularly  on  the 
political  abilities  and  integrity  of  Canning.     But  nothing  could  diminish  our 

mutual  esteem."  * 

This  must  have  been  the  last  letter  his  mother  received  from  him. 
He  sent  her  over  his  bust  by  Gibson  at  the  end  of  August  ;  but  the 
letter  accompanying  it  was  to  his  sisters.  In  this  he  told  them  to 
explain  to  her  that  it  was  the  gift  of  his  incomparable  friend  Ablett, 
whom  they  were  to  describe  to  her  as  a  most  religious  man,  who  gave 
away  many  thousands  a  }'ear  to  persons  who  had  no  suspicion  from 
whom  it  came  ;. and  this  was  replied  to  by  his  sister  Ellen,  who  said  the 
bust  had  arrived  without  the  slightest  injury,  that  it  was  beautiful 
and  much  admired,  and  that  Lord  Aston  in  particular  was  delighted 
with  it.  She  added  that  they  were  in  the  midst  of  gayeties  ;  that  the 
Studley  Castle  people  were  staying  with  them  ;  that  they  had  had  a 
succession  of  archery  meetings  ;  and  that  their  mother  had  just  re- 
turned from  Ipsley,  "  very  feeble,  but  insisting  on  the  gayeties  going 
on."  This  was  on  the  8th  of  September,  and  is  the  last  glimpse  of  her, 
brave  and  self-denying  to  the  close,  which  we  are  permitted  to  re- 
ceive.    She  died  in  October,   within  one  month  of  her  86th  year.f 

*  From  oiio  of  Lord  Blessington's  letters,  out  of  many  kept  by  Landor,  I  take  a  few 
lines  to  show  the  character  of  thdr  intercourse,  and  the* subjects  that  bad  interest  tor 
both.  "  You  will  be  surprised  to  hear  that  Benjamin  Constant  and  two  of  his  party  have 
been  at  a  card-party  of  his  most  Christian  inTafestv.  So  that  I  think  his  most  Catholic 
M  ijestv  will  be  left  in  the  lurch?  and  that  the  Cross  will  triumph  over  the  Crescent 
But  everything  else  political  now  gives  way  to  the  new  administrations  of  England  and 
France.  '  Lord  Lansdowne.  they  say,  will  be  foreign  secretary,  and  Lord  Holland  privy 
s.al.  The  bar  is  not  pleased  by  the  appointment  of  Plunket  to  the  Rolls  with  a  peer- 
ill  be  a  fine  make-weight  against  Eldon  m  the  next  debate  upon  our  Irish 
question.  They  talk  of  Lord  Mount  (diaries  coming  here.  I  think  he  will  be  vice- 
chamberlain.  Sir  John  Leach  will  not  go  to  Ireland.  He  is  wrong,  for  he  would  do 
well  there,  and  find  excellent  claret  as  well  as  pretty  women,  both  of  which,  on  dit,  his 
honor  has  no  objection  ante  On  Tuesday,  the  15th.  Lord  Normanby  plays  The  Iron 
Chest.  F  do  not  knowyet  whether  I  shall  come  over  for  it  or  not.  I  love  plays  so  much 
that  I  think  I  shall." 

t  From  a  marble  monument  in  Tachbrooke  church  I  take  the  subjoined,  written 
mainly  by  Landor  himself,  but  with  additional  touches  by  his  brother  Robert:  "GuaJ 
terns  Landor,  Roberto  peneroso,  pio,  integerrimo  Patre  natus:  duas  uxores  dnxit:  a 
prima  filiam  unicam,  ah  altera  filios  iv.  Alias  rri.  suscepit;  lepid»«.  doctus,  liberalis, 
probus,  amicis  jucundissimus;    anno  cetatis  lxxiii.  decessit. —  Juxta,  prout  vivens 


JET.  54-60.]  ORDERED    TO    QUIT    TUSCANY.  443 

"  My  mother's  great  kindness  to  me,"  Landor  wrote  on  the  12th  of 
November  to  his  sister  Elizabeth,  "  throughout  the  whole  course  of 
her  life,  made  me  perpetually  think  of  her  with  the  tenderest  love. 
I  thank  God  that  she  did  not  suffer  either  a  painful  or  a  long  illness, 
and  that  she  departed  from  life  quite  sensible  of  the  affectionate  care 
she  had  received  from  both  her  daughters.  I  am  not  sorry  that  she 
left  me  some  token  of  her  regard  ;  but  she  gave  me  too  many  in  her 
lifetime  for  me  to  think  of  taking  any  now.  You  and  Ellen  will  re- 
tain, for  my  sake,  the  urn  and  the  books.  I  wish  to  have  her  little 
silrer  seal,  in  exchange  for  an  Oriental  cornelian  which  you  and  my 
brothers  gave  me,  belonging  to  my  father.  I  have  his  arms,  which 
is  enough.  The  one  I  mean  is  pretty  in  its  setting,  and  contains  the 
word  '  Leitas  '  in  Persian  letters.  My  brother  Henry  was  so  kind  as 
to  purchase  two  Venetian  paintings,  once  mine,  and  to  place  them  at 
Ipsley.  I  thanked  him  at  the  time,  and  thank  him  again  ;  but  I  am 
resolved  to  accept  nothing  whatever  from  any  of  my  relatives.  If 
mother's  picture  was  purchased  at  Llanthony,  I  would  buy  it  gladly. 
Pray  let  me  hear  about  it.  I  remember  it  at  my  grandmother's 
fifty  years  ago.    Adieu.    I  am  ill  disposed  for  writing  more." 

III.  ORDERED  TO  QUIT  TUSCANY. 

The  incident  mentioned  in  one  of  Landor's  last  letters  to  his  moth- 
er might  have  seemed  a  little  startling  if  told  of  any  one  else,  but  in 
his  case  made  hardly  a  perceptible  difference  in  his  relations  to  the 
magistracy  and  police  of  Florence,  with  whom  he  had  generally  some 
quarrel  in  hand.  Three  years  earlier  he  had  written  to  Southey  that 
the  things  said  about  the  Tuscans  in  his  Conversations,  and  princi- 
pally those  in  power,  being  translated  with  bitter  comments  by  some 
literary  men  in  Florence  whom  he  could  not  admit  into  his  house, 
had  greatly  exasperated  against  him  the  ministers  of  the  grand-duke, 
whom  however  he  did  not  know  by  sight,  nor  they  him  ;  so  that  it 
was  a  matter  of  perfect  indifference  to  him.  The  ground  of  indiffer- 
ence lasted  exactly  two  more  years,  at  the  end  of  which  he  obtained 
perforce  a  personal  acquaintance  with  some  of  the  ministers,  having 
been  called  before  the  courts,  and  threatened  to  be  sent  out  of  Tus- 
cany. And  now,  another  year  having  intervened,  this  threat  was  to 
be  put  in  force. 

moriensque  voluit,  composita  est  uxor  ejus  Elizabetha,  filia  Caroli  Savagii.  conjux, 
mater,  fceraina  pia,  optima,  vix  annos  lxxxv.  menses  xi."  "Pardon  me,"  wrote  Lan- 
dor in  1856,  when  he  sent  me  a  copy  of  the  inscription  as  originally  drawn  up  by  him,  — 
"  pardon  me,  what  I  never  can  pardon  in  myself,  the  use  of  Latin  in  an  Englishman's 
epitaph,  which  ought  to  be  written  for  Englishmen  to  read.  It  was  urged  on  me."  An 
English  inscription  on  an  adjoining  tablet  in  the  same  church  may  also  here  be  given, 
though  it  anticipates  some  events  in  this  memoir.  "  To  the  memory  of  Mary  Anne 
Landor,  second  daughter  of  Walter  and  Elizabeth  Landor,  who  died  December  26, 1818, 
aged  40  years;  and  of  her  youngest  sister,  Ellen  Landor,  who  died  July  17,  1838,  aged 
55  years.  Lastlv.  of  Elizabeth  Savage  Landor,  their  eldest  sister,  who  died  Eebruary 
24,'l854,  aged  77  years." 


444  AT    FIESOLE.  V-3V' 

The  circumstances  will  be  best  explained  by  Lander  himself,  who 
will  not  only  relate  to  us  the  incident  but  all  that  came  of  it.  "You 
will  not  be  surprised  to  hear,"  he  writes  to  Southey  at  the  close  of 
July,  L829,  "that  I  was  ordered  to  leave  Florence,  nor  very  much 
more  that  I  disobeyed  the  order.  My  plate  was  stolen  by  a  servant 
whom  I  had  dismissed,  and  who  left  the  house  before  the  clue  time 
had  expired,  taking  with  him  the  key  of  the  outer  door.  I  applied 
to  the  police  the  next  morning,  telling  them  that  I  thought  it  my 
duty,  as  the  offence  had  been  committed  under  my  roof,  little  as  I 
hoped  for  restitution  or  redress.  The  chief  asked  me  in  a  most 
insolent  manner,  why  I  presumed  to  say  so.  '  The  reason,  my  friend, 
is  this.  Your  master,  the  president  of  the  buon  governo,  last  year, 
when  a  picture  of  much  greater  value  than  my  plate  was  purloined 
by  a  person  intrusted  with  it,  said  that  if  I  could  not  live  quietly 
with  my  neighbors,  he  would  send  me  out  of  Tuscany  :  not  knowing, 
or  not  caring,  that  my  application  was  made  to  the  criminal  court  by 
order  of  the  commissary  himself,  to  whom  I  had  referred  the  matter, 
and  who  thought  it  grave  enough  to  send  it,  without  my  request  or 
suggestion,  before  those  judges.  It  is  true,  they  did  not  tind  the 
man  guilty  ;  because  the  witness  who  consigned  the  picture  refused 
to  give  any  evidence.'  To  this  the  sbirro  answered,  '  The  president 
of  the  buon  governo  does  what  he  sees  good.'  '  Then,  sir,  tell  him 
from  me  that  if  he  does  me  another  such  act  of  injustice,  and  uses 
such  threats  in  future,  I  will  drag  him  by  the  throat  before  the  grand- 
duke.'  The  next  morning  I  had  an  order  from  the  commissary  to 
attend  him.  I  went ;  and  he  read  to  me  an  order  from  the  president 
to  be  out  of  Tuscany  in  three  days.  '  Tell  the  president  I  shall  nei- 
ther be  out  of  Tuscany  nor  out  of  Florence  in  three  days  ;  and  let 
him  use  force  if  he  dares  ;  1  will  repel  it.'  I  wrote  immediately  to 
the  grand-duke,  showing  him  the  passion  and  absurdity  of  this  or- 
der.* When  I  had  remained  four  days,  the  commissary  sent  to  me 
again,  and  told  me  that,  by  asking,  I  might  remain  ten,  fifteen,  twen- 
ty. I  told  him  I  would  ask  nothing,  and  would  go  at  my  leisure. 
He  then  said  in  confidence,  that  if  I  would  only  say  1  wished  to  stay, 
I  might  ;  that  it  was  a  storm  and  would  blow  over.  I  discovered 
that  all  the  ministers  were  outrageous  that  I  applied  to  the  grand- 
duke  and  not  to  them."  I  may  here  interpose  that  Landor's  state- 
ment on  this  point  is  borne  out  by  the  letters  kept  among  his  papers 
having  reference  to  the  incident ;    and  from  which   I  also  find  that 


* 

:\r\r 


A  translated  copy  of  this  letter,  dated  15th  April,  1^29,  will  ho  found  in  the  char- 
ristic  series  of  papers  on  High  and  Low  Lift  in  Italy  contributed  by  Landor  to  a 
periodical  edited  l>v  Leigh  Hunt ;  and  as  1  have  mentioned  these,  1  will  add  that  in  the 
course  of  them,  where  Mr.  Tallboys  cautions  his  son  as  to  marriage,  then'  i-  a  remark 
very  profoundly  impressive  in  its  meaning  and  its  moral:  "  Death  itself  to  the  reflecting 
mind  is  less  serious  than  marriage.  The  older  plant  is  cut  down  that  the  younger  may 
have  room  to  flourish:  a  lew  tears  drop  into  the  loosened  soil,  and  buds  and  blossoms 
spring  over  it.  Death  is  not  even  a  Mow,  is  not  even  a  pulsation:  it  is  a  pause.  Rut 
marriage  unroll-  the  awful  lot  of  numberless  generations.  Health,  Genius,  Honoryare 
the  words  inscribed  on  some:  on  others  are  Disease.  Fatuity,  ana  Infamy,  Edward, 
may  Providence  guide  yon  either  in  this  state  or  from  it!  " 


JET.  54-6o.]  ORDERED    TO    QUIT    TUSCANY.  445 

actual  personal  intercession  with  Corsini,  on  Landor's  behalf  bnt  with- 
out his  knowledge,  had  been  made  by  Lord  Normanby,  Sir  Robert 
JLawley,  and  Mr.  St.  John.  "  He  called  a  council,  and  was  himself 
the  only  one  in  my  favor.  He  told  his  secretary  I  might  return  when 
I  would,  since  it  appeared  I  had  gone  to  the  baths  of  Lucca,  and  that 
it  was  a  mesintelligeme  that  might  have  been  avoided.  This  order 
his  ministers  kept  back.  I  did  not  know  it  was  given,  and  returned 
without  it.  The  ministers  were  astonished  I  returned  so  soon,  and  the 
secretary  that  I  had  not  returned  much  sooner.  My  note  on  Corsini 
selling  his  wife's  old  clothes  before  she  had  been  dead  a  fortnight, 
that  on  Borghese,  that  on  our  patriots,  &c,  leave  me  none  but  ene- 
mies. Such  being  the  case,  I  resolved  to  pitch  my  tent  in  the  midst 
of  them  ;  and  have  now  bought  a  villa,  belonging  to  the  Count  Ghe- 
rardescha,  of  the  family  of  C.  Ugolino,  and  upon  the  spot  where 
Boccaccio  led  his  women  to  bathe  when  they  had  left  the  first  scene 
of  their  story-telling.  Here  I  shall  pass  my  life  ;  long,  or  short,  no 
matter  ;  but  God  grant  without  pain  and  sickness,  and  with  only 
snch  friends  and  such  enemies  as  I  enjoy  at  present.  Pray  come  and 
pass  the  vintage  and  winter  with  me,  —  this  year  if  possible  ;  if  not, 
the  next.  I  will  give  you  a  cool  and  beautiful  chapel  to  write  and 
read  in,  and  shall  then  be  sure  that  it  is  consecrated.  Bring  your 
son." 

This  invitation  was  renewed  three  months  later,  Landor  having 
heard  meanwhile  of  his  mother's  death.  South ey  had  asked  him 
(at  the  end  of  August)  to  discover  where  Madame  Christophe,  once 
queen  of  Hayti,  was  living  in  Florence,  in  order  that  Thomas  Clark- 
son,  who  was  then  on  a  visit  to  him,  might  remit  to  her  some  hun- 
dred aud  fifty  pounds,  which  he  much  wished  the  poor  queen  to 
have  ;  but  Landor,  replying  at  the  beginning  of  November,  told  him 
that  all  his  inquiries  to  find  out  her  present  residence  had  been  fruit- 
less, as  she  had  left  Florence  three  years  ago,  and  he  had  written  to 
Bologna  and  to  Naples,  but  could  hear  nothing.  Then  he  proceeds  : 
"  I  was  going  to  write  to  you  ten  days  ago,  when  I  received  the  very 
painful  intelligence  of  my  poor  mother's  death.  At  eighty-five  such 
a  loss  might  have  been  expected  ;  and,  after  not  seeing  her  for  fifteen 
years,  I  fancied  I  should  have  been  less  affected  by  it.  But  it  is  only 
by  the  blow  itself  that  early  remembrances  are  awakened  to  the 
uttermost.  She  had  always  been  kind  to  me.  —  You  do  not  give  me 
any  fresh  hopes  of  seeing  you  in  Italy.  I  am  making  a  garden,  and 
doing  other  more  foolish  things.  Such  is  building;  but  this  is  as 
much  fur  the  convenience  of  my  laborei's  as  for  mine.  I  am  remov- 
ing all  their  offices  from  my  own  residence.  The  Italian  gentlemen 
are  fond  of  pigging  with  them.  I  cannot  bear  any  one  near  me, 
particularly  those  who  leave  traces  of  their  proximity  unquestionable 
to  eyes  or  nose.  Whenever  you  come  I  can  give  you  two  bedrooms 
and  two  below ;  so  you  may  arrange  with  Mrs.  Southey,  and  bring 
such  of  your  family  as  are  most  inclined  for  Italy.     I  shall  consider 


440  AT    FIESOLE.  l^ 

this  the  most  delightful  event  that  has  occurred  since  my  residence 
abroad.  To-day  I  shall  have  (they  tell  me)  about  fifteen  barrels  of 
wine,  fifty-five  quarts  to  the  barrel.  They  rob  a  tenth  of  it  for  them- 
selves, ;ind  a  tenth  for  the  priest.  Since  Teter  Leopold  abolished  the 
tit  lies,  the  priests  tell  the  contadini  they  will  go  to  the  devil  if  they 
assist  in  such  impiety  ;  and,  from  the  robbery  of  the  master,  the 
tithes  are  as  regularly  paid  as  ever.  The  pious  rob  both  for  priest 
and  themselves,  being  absolved  in  the  default,  and  placing  the  theft 
on  the  opposite  page  to  the  duty.  This  fact  was  told  me  by  l'ia- 
monte,  formerly  presidente  del  buon  governo." 

Here  again  were  fruitful  sources  of  dispute  with  "  rascally  "  magis- 
trates, as  well  as  with  "  pious''  thieves;  but  on  the  whole,  excepting 
fbr  a  quarrel  with  a  neighbor  about  a  watercourse  to  be  presently 
related,  and  which  engaged  all  his  energies  for  a  time,  Landor  lived 
at  his  new  villa  quietly  enough  for  nearly  six  more  years,  lie  had 
been  impressed,  perhaps  more  than  was  usual  with  him,  by  Francis 
Hare's  warning,  sent  when  he  heard  of  the  recent  banishment  from 
Florence,  that  he  would  never  find  anywhere  on  the  Continent  so 
suitable  a  home.  Writing  in  August  from  Trinity  College,  where  he 
was  Btaying  with  his  brother  Julius,  after  eager  expression  of  his  de- 
light at  heaving  of  Landor  again  in  Florence,  he  gives  him  several 
reasons  for  declaring  it  to  be  the  best  and  fittest  abode  fbr  him  in 
Europe;  implores  him,  by  all  their  pleasant  memories  of  it,  to  con- 
trive not  to  get  into  any  fresh  scrapes  that  might  finally  drive  him 
out  of  it  ;  and  pronounces  it  to  be,  by  all  the  strictest  laws  of  social 
intercourse,  enough  for  one  gentleman  to  cane  oue  scoundrel  once  in 
one  life.  Telling  him,  then,  that  his  brother  Augustus  has  just  re- 
ceived from  New  College  the  Wiltshire  living  of  Alton  Barnes,  where 
Crewe  wrote  his  poem  of  Lewisdon  Hill,  he  closes  with  an  abrupt 
question,  Why  is  /  in  Italics  short,  which  Landor  has  answered  by 
scratching  across  the  page  the  line, 

"  Omnia  namque  Italua  promittere  grandia  gaudet." 

Soon  after  receiving  this  letter,  and  before  yet  he  knew  of  his 
mother's  death,  Landor  had  written  to  his  sister  Ellen  to  tell  her 
that  there  had  appeared  in  Florence  the  dearest  of  all  the  friends  he 
ever  bad  or  ever  should  have,  his  lanthe  of  former  years,  now  a 
widow  of  title  who  had  buried  two  husbands,  and  remained  never- 
theless no  handsome  that  an  English  card  and  a  French  duke  were 
offering  their  addresses  to  her,  in  which  the  Frenchman  was  persist- 
ing in  spite  of  all  discouragement.  Talk  of  time  not  going  back, 
why,  the  Budden  vision  of  this  one  face  had  rolled  back  from  him  in 
an  instant  more  than  twenty  years  !  With  which  thought,  put  into 
verse,  he  closes  his  letter  :  — 

'■  S  iv  ye  that  years  roll  on,  and  ne'er  return  ? 
Suv  ye  the  s'un,  who  leave-*  them  all  behind 
(Their  exeat  creator),  cannot  bring  one  !>ack 
With  all  his  force,  though  he  draw  worlds  around? 
Witness  me,  little  Btreams  that  meet  before 


JET.  54-6o.]  THE    VILLA    GHERARDESCHA.  447 

My  happy  dwelling,  witness  Aflrico, 
And  Mensola !  that  ye  have  seen  at  once 
Twenty  roll  back,  twenty  as  swift  and  bright 
As  are  vour  swiftest  and  your  brightest  waves, 
When  the  tall  cypress  o'er  the  Doccia 
Hurls  from  his  inmost  boughs  the  latent  snow." 

The  "  happy  dwelling  "  was  his  Fiesolan  villa  ;  his  present  great  en- 
joyment of  which,  how  he  came  into  possession  of  it,  and  his  way 
of  life  there,  will  be  best  understood  from  what  he  wrote  at  the 
time  to  his  sisters  in  Warwick. 


IV.     THE  VILLA  GHERARDESCHA. 

"When  Leigh  Hunt,  after  many  sad  disappointments  in  Pisa  and 
Genoa,  found  himself  in  Florence,  his  refuge  from  his  troubles  was 
to  wander  about  Maiano,  a  village  on  the  slope  of  one  of  the  Fieso- 
lan hills,  two  miles  from  the  city,  thinking  of  Boccaccio.  On  either 
side  of  Maiano  were  laid  the  two  scenes  of  his  Decameron ;  the  little 
streams  that  embrace  it,  the  Affrico  and  Mensola,  were  the  metamor- 
phosed lovers  in  his  Nimphale  Fiesolano  ;  within  view  was  his  villa 
Gherardi,  before  the  village  the  hills  of  Fiesole,  and  at  its  feet  the 
Valley  of  the  Ladies.  Every  spot  around  was  an  illustrious  memory. 
To  the  left,  the  house  of  Macchiavelli ;  still  farther  in  that  direction, 
nestling  amid  the  blue  hills,  the  white  village  of  Settignano,  where 
Michael  Angelo  was  born  ;  on  the  banks  of  the  neighboring  Mugnone, 
the  house  of  Dante  ;  and  in  the  background,  Galileo's  villa  of  Arcetri 
and  the  palaces  and  cathedrals  of  Florence.  In  the  thick  of  this 
noble  landscape,  forming  part  of  the  village  of  San  Domenica  di 
Fiesole,  stood  the  villa  which  had  now  become  Landor's.  The  Valley 
of  the  Ladies  was  in  his  grounds ;  the  Affrico  and  the  Mensola  ran 
through  them  ;  above  was  the  ivy-clad  convent  of  the  Doccia,  over- 
hung with  cypress ;  and  from  his  iron  entrance-gate  might  be  seen 
Valdarno  and  Vallombrosa.  Ten  years  after  Landor  had  lost  this 
home,  an  Englishman  travelling  in  Italy,  his  friend  and  mine,  visited 
the  neighborhood  for  his  sake,  drove  out  from  Florence  to  Fiesole, 
and  asked  his  coachman  which  was  the  villa  in  which  the  Landor 
family  lived.  "  He  was  a  dull  dog,  and  pointed  to  Boccaccio's.  I 
did  n't  believe  him.  He  was  so  deuced  ready  that  I  knew  he  lied. 
I  went  up  to  the  convent,  which  is  on  a  height,  and  was  leaning  over 
a  dwarf  wall  basking  in  the  noble  view  over  a  vast  range  of  hill  and 
valley,  when  a  little  peasant  girl  came  up  and  began  to  point  out  the 
localities.  Ecco  la  villa  Landora  !  was  one  of  the  first  half-dozen 
sentences  she  spoke.  My  heart  swelled  almost  as  Landor's  would 
have  done  when  I  looked  down  upon  it,  nestling  among  its  olive-trees 
and  vines,  and  with  its  upper  windows  (there  are  five  above  the  door) 
open  to  the  setting  sun.  Over  the  centre  of  these  there  is  another 
story,  set  upon  the  housetop  like  a  tower ;  and  all  Italy,  except  its 
sea,   is   melted  down  into  the  glowing  landscape  it  commands.     I 


448  AT    FIESOLE.  V2S££ 

plucked  a  leaf  of  ivy  from  the  convent  garden  as  I  looked  ;  and  here 
it  is.  For  Landor.  With  my  love."  So  wrote  Mr.  Dickens  to  me 
from  Florence  on  the  2d  of  April,  1845  ;  and  when  I  turned  over 
Landor's  papers  in  the  same  month  after  an  interval  of  exactly 
twenty  years,  the  ivy -leaf  was  found  carefully  enclosed,  with  the 
letter  in  which  I  had  sent  it. 

He  began  the  first  New  Year's  day  (1830)  passed  by  him  in  the 
villa  Gherardescha  by  writing  to  his  sisters.  It  had  opened  inauspi- 
ciously  as  far  as  weather  was  concerned.  He  had  to  tell  them  how 
terrible  the  season  was  out  there,  in  what  their  letters  were  never 
tired  of  calling  "sunny  Italy."  Owing  to  his  living  two  miles  from 
Florence,  it  was  eight  days  since  the  children  had  been  able  to  go  to 
school,  either  on  foot  or  in  a  carriage.  The  roads  were  covered  with 
ice,  and  appeared  liko  so  many  frozen  cataracts.  There  had  been  for 
several  days  two  woodcocks  within  a  few  yards  of  his  door,  where 
there  was  an  open  spring.  He  went  on  to  tell  them  also  that  his 
mothers  death  had  set  him  thinking  of  old  times,  and  for  several 
weeks  there  had  been  moving  visibly  before  his  eyes  processions  of 
the  old  Warwickshire  faces.  There  was  good  ancient  Mrs.  Cook  of 
Tachbrooke,  so  patient  of  him  in  his  boyhood  ;  how  did  she  carry  her 
many  years  ?  And  yet  they  could  not  be  so  many,  perhaps  not  sev- 
enty ;  though  hers  was  the  oldest  of  all  living  faces  he  remembered 
in  his  childhood.  Poor  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Farmer  too,  with  all  their 
Christmas  kindnesses  to  him ;  and  the  Parkhursts,  the  Venours,  the 
"Wades,  the  Welds,  the  Cliffords,  and  many  beside.  He  may  perhaps 
visit  England  another  year  :  he  has  had  so  many  invitations  ;  and  from 
Paris  even  more.  "  But  my  country  now  is  Italy,  where  I  have  a 
residence  for  life,  and  literally  may  sit  under  my  own  vine  and  my 
own  fig-tree.  I  have  some  thousands  of  the  one  and  some  scores  of 
the  other  ;  with  myrtles,  pomegranates,  oranges,  lemons,  gagias,  and 
mimosas  in  great  quantity.  I  intend  to  make  a  garden  not  very  un- 
like yours  at  Warwick  ;  but  alas,  time  is  wanting.  I  may  live  an- 
other ten  years,  but  do  not  expect  it.  In  a  few  days,  whenever  the 
weather  will  allow  it,  I  have  four  mimosas  ready  to  place  round  my 
intended  tomb,  and  a  friend  who  is  coming  to  plant  them."  He  had 
also  the  inscription  ready,  intimating  that  he  should  have  lived 
enough  when  the  tear  of  that  friend  had  been  dried  by  him;  and  of 
course  his  Ianthe  is  presumably  to  be  taken  as  the  lady  and  friend 
referred  to.  But  whether  the  tear  he  was  to  dry  was  for  her  hus- 
bands that  had  been  or  those  that  were  to  be,  does  not  appear;  and 
from  the  recollection  of  a  visit  I  once  made  to  her  with  Landor  some 
years  later  in  Bath,  I  should  have  said  that  few  tears  at  any  time  had 
troubled  that  still  bright,  easy,  good-humored  Irish  face. 

"  I.o,  whore  the  four  mimosas  hlend  their  shade 

In  calm  repose  at  last  is  Landor  laid  : 

For  ere  he  slept  he  saw  them  planted  hero 

By  her  his  soul  had  ever  held  most  dear, 
And  he  had  lived  enough  when  he  had  dried  her  tear." 


JET.  54-60.]  THE   VILLA    GHERARDESCHA.  449 

The  allusion  in  the  first  of  the  additional  notes  I  shall  now  give 
from  his  family  letters  is  to  some  business  arrangements  necessitated 
by  his  mother's  death  ;  and  the  Shakespeare  subscription  named  in 
it  was  one  that  Doctor  Conolly,  then  a  little-known  practitioner  in 
Warwick,  afterwards  famous  for  services  to  humanity,  had  written  to 
interest  him  in. 

FIESOLE  :    MARCH   22,  1830. 

"  No  other  means  occur  to  me  of  forwarding  to  Florence  the  papers  rel- 
ative to  the  houses  at  Tachbrooke  than  the  post.  The  expense  is  of  no 
consequence.  If  Henry  thinks  it  requisite  to  give  any  money  for  the  little 
interest  I  have  in  them  after  all  he  has  paid  for  me  on  various  occasions,  I 
would  rather  it  should  be  about  five  pounds  for  the  subscription  they  are 
raising  for  the  family  that  bears  the  name  of  Shakespeare,  and  in  which  it 
would  be  disgraceful  if  mine  did  not  appear.  He  is  the  great  glory  of  our 
country,  and  without  any  second  in  the  universe.  I  dined  on  Sunday  with 
Sir  Robert  Lawley,  who  gave  Julia  the  key  of  his  opera-box  for  Monday. 
We  were  going,  Ave  and  three  of  the  children,  when  the  horses  gibbed,  and 
we  were  obliged  to  give  up  the  scheme.  In  fact,  the  road  to  my  house  is 
extremely  steep.  We  have  had  races  here,  very  capital  ones,  they  say ;  but 
I  never  go  to  such  amusements.  ...  I  have  my  garden  very  much  en- 
riched by  raspberries  and  strawberries  from  France ;  I  have  also  some  black 
currants,  a  great  treasure  everywhere,  and  here  particularly,  though  they 
grow  wild  in  the  woods  of  the  Apennines.  Arnold  and  Julia  are  strong 
and  happy,  by  being  perpetually  in  the  air,  and  having  such  a  garden ;  so 
have  the  two  youngest,  who  are  fond  of  transplanting  flowers,  but  only 
when  they  are  in  full  bloom!  " 

APRIL,  1830. 

"  I  hear  that  Mr.  Arnold,  the  master  at  Rugby,  is  the  person  most  fit  of 
any  in  the  world  for  the  management  of  a  great  school.  He  is  the  intimate 
friend  of  Augustus  Hare.  ...  By  the  by,  my  old  acquaintance  •  Mr.  Weld, 
who  married  the  sister  of  Sir  Thomas  Clifford,  is  made  a  cardinal.  At  least 
I  believe  it  is  he ;  for  I  heard  that  on  the  death  of  his  wife  he  became  a 
monk,  and  retired  into  Italy.  .  .  .  The  weather  here  is  changed  much  for 
the  better.  Some  lilacs  that  I  planted  just  eighteen  days  ago  without  a 
bud  are  now  bursting  into  flower ;  and  my  gooseberries,  raspberries,  and 
black  currants  are  in  leaf.  I  expect  to  have  peas  by  this  day  month,  sowed 
on  the  twenty-fourth  of  last.  The  air  is  perfumed  up  to  my  bedroom  by 
the  mignonette  thirty  feet  under  it ;  indeed  more  before  it  reaches  my  nose, 
for  the  kitchen  is  ten  feet  and  a  half  high,  and  the  dining-room  over  is 
eighteen.  The  mezereon  grows  wild  in  all  the  Apennines,  yet  I  have  not 
been  able  to  procure  a  single  plant ;  nor  of  the  cy tisus,  though  it  covers  the 
banks  of  the  river  for  miles." 

JULY    1,  1830. 

"  Weld  is  not  made  a  bishop,  but  a  cardinal,  a  prince.  The  last  time  I 
saw  his  eminence  was  at  Clifton,  in  his  own  house,  where  I  dined  with  him. 
Sir  Thomas  Clifford,  with  whom  I  had  been  walking  on  the  clowns  the  day 
before,  told  me  to  eat  of  the  pastry  and  praise  it.  I  saw  him  smile,  and 
asked  him  why  he  gave  me  the  advice.  He  replied  that  Weld  always  made 
his  own  pastry,  and  that  nothing  pleased  him  so  much  as  to  have  it  praised. 
Indeed  it  was  excellent.     He   deserved  not  only  a  cardinal's  hat,  but  the 

21) 


450  AT    FIESOLE.  IB,^K,YI" 

1B29  -  3> 

fair  hand  of  our  pood  aunt  Eyres.  Nobody  else  ever  equalled  him  in  the 
sublimity  of  this  science.  I  have  lately  lost  at  Rome  one  of  the  most  in- 
telligent and  friendly  of  my  acquaintance,  Lady  Northampton.  She  had 
been  delivered  of  a  child  in  the  morning,  and  people  in  the  street  were 
complimenting  Lord  N.  at  the  moment  she  died.  On  his  return  to  the 
house  he  found  her  dead,  remarkably  well  and  in  good  spirits  as  he  had  left 
her  three  hours  before;  and  he  had  gone  out  only  to  execute  sonic  little 
commissions  she  had  given  him,  and  to  tell  her  friends  how  favorable  had 
been  her  accouchement.  She  was  an  excellent  Greek  scholar,  and  played 
and  sang  divinely.  My  children  are  all  well,  and  Julia  much  better  than 
ever  she  was  in  her  life.  She  is  fat  and  strong,  and  always  in  the  air. 
She  amuses  herself  with  her  fantail  pigeons,  her  blackbirds,  and  nightin- 
gales. I  could  not  prevent  the  nests  being  taken.  Three  were  taken  be- 
fore,—  of  nightingales,  —  which  grieved  me.  Upon  this  she  employed 
some  boys  to  take  the  fourth  nest  for  her.  I  never  took  one  in  my  life, 
though  I  have  found  many.  I  hear  a  cuckoo  at  this  moment;  hut  wood- 
pigeons  I  must  not  hope  for:  they  are  large  and  eatable,  and  an  Italian 
would  take  a  nest  of  them  if  it  were  in  the  clouds.  Happily,  within  half  a 
mile  of  my  house  there  are  two  woods  enclosed  with  stone  walls,  which 
^reserve  a  few  belonging  to  the  smaller  birds,  though  even  nightingales  are 
tilled  for  the  spit  in  every  part  of  Italy.  I  tremble  for  my  cuckoo,  though 
\e  keeps  within  the  stone  walls;  for  the  young  cuckoo  is  preferred  here  to 
young  pigeons." 

Replying  to  this  last  letter  his  sister  very  sensibly  remarked  that 
she  had  no  objection  whatever  to  cooks  becoming  cardinals,  if  they 
would  only  stick  to  their  own  frying-pans  and  not  meddle  with  other 
people's. 

JULY  23,  1830. 

"  My  most  important  news  is,  I  have  bought  a  shepherd-do?,  with  a  tail 
that  curls  over  the  back,  and  upright  ears.  These  ears  look  stiff,  but  they 
are  more  pliable  than  any  others.  The  back  is  yellowish,  the  rest  whitish, 
the  nose  very  pointed,  and  the  teeth  so  sharp,  that  these  dogs  arc  called  here 
wolf-dogs,  card  lupi.  He  came  very  young,  and  is  extremely  loud  of  me. 
Sir  William  Gell  had  two  of  them  at  Naples,  who  used  to  accompany  him 
on  the  double  flute,  and  one  (Tikkettee)  was  rarely  out  of  time:  hut  I  have 
heard  better  voices,  even  out  of  Italy.  The  children  are  just  now  very 
busy  in  catching  grasshoppers  for  three  young  nightingales.  Nevertheless 
the  three  young  nightingales  like  me  best,  and  fly  to  nie  over  the  back  of 
the  cane  lupe,  who  growls  and  takes  it  ill.  Me  wishes  to  expostulate,  and 
seems  to  insinuate  that  they  have  no  business  in  houses.  I  tell  him  that  he 
has  reason  on  his  side,  but  I  whisper  that  something  may  be  said  too  about 
cuni  lupi." 

CHRISTMAS    DAY,   1830. 

"  This  is  Christmas  day,  and  I  wish  it  may  be  a  pleasanter  one  to  you 
than  to  us.  We  have  rain  and  snow  coming  down  together.  I  had  several 
invitations  to  spend  the  day  in  Florence,  but  the  children  would  insist  on 
my  Staying  at  home  with  them.  The  English  here  are  all  very  busy  about 
the  political  doings  that  are  taking  place  in  every  part  of  Europe.  The 
Florentines  are  quiet  and  silent.  What  their  opinions  are  I  neither  know 
nor  heed,  nor  should  I  he  the  wiser  on  the  subject  if  they  ventured  to  speak 
aloud,  for  they  are  all  dissemblers  and  liars  from  first  to  last.  The  spirit,  of 
party  is  more  violent  among  the  French  abroad  than  at  home." 


JET.  54-60.]  THE    VILLA   GHERARDESCHA.  451 

In  a  letter  just  before,  his  sisters  had  mentioned  their  garden  as 
having  become  one  of  the  little  lions  at  Warwick  ;  and  he  is  a  con- 
stant petitioner  that  they  should  send  him  seeds  and  cuttings  for  his 
own.  Particularly  he  wants  red  filberts,  of  which  there  were  none 
now  in  Italy,  though  it  was  their  birthplace  ;  white  broom  and  holly- 
hock seed,  Ipsley  double  poppies,  and  some  strawberries  from  Tach- 
brooke,  which  he  wishes  to  add  to  the  sixteen  varieties  he  already 
possesses.  Harsh  as  the  weather  was  on  that  Christmas  day,  he  was 
yet  able  to  tell  them  that  all  the  December  month  he  had  cut  every 
week  at  least  sixty  well-blown  cabbage-roses ;  the  day  before  writing 
he  had  cut  twenty-four,  besides  as  many  buds  ;  and  as  he  wrote, 
there  was  growing  wild  before  his  window  "  a  most  beautiful  pointed 
tulip,  with  narcissuses  and  jonquils  innumerable  ;  and  the  blue  iris, 
the  root  of  which  is  called  orris-root,  and  used  to  be  mixed  in  hair- 
powder." 

Anticipating  then  the  desire  which  all  this  would  awaken  in  his 
sisters  to  know  more  about  the  new  abode  now  interesting  him  so 
much  and  affording  him  such  genial  occupation,  he  gave  them  a  de- 
scription in  his  next  letter  (2d  February,  1831)  which  may  be  read 
with  something  still  of  his  own  interest  and  pride  in  this  new  pos- 
session. I  shall  only  further  preface  it  by  the  remark  that  the  money 
so  generously  advanced  for  its  purchase  was  repaid  upon  his  son  Ar- 
nold's attaining  to  his  majority  in  1839,  and  that  Mr.  Ablett  declined 
to  the  last  to  accept  any  interest  on  the  loan  :  — 

DESCRIPTION    OF    HIS    VILLA. 

"  The  children  were  all  sitting  so  comfortably  round  the  fire  on  my  birth- 
day, that  they  spoilt  my  intention  of  writing  to  you  that  evening.  .  .  .  We 
have  had  six  cold  days,  with  snow  upon  the  Apennines,  and  a  little  of  it 
about  half  a  mile  from  my  villa.  You  will  doubtless  be  curious  to  hear 
something  of  this  villa  in  which  I  shall  pass  the  remainder  of  my  life. 

"  Two  years  ago,  in  the  beginning  of  the  spring,  I  took  a  walk  towards 
Fiesole  with  a  gentleman  settled  in  North  Wales,  Mr.  Ablett.  I  showed 
him  a  small  cottage  with  about  twelve  acres  of  land,  which  I  was  about  to 
take.  He  admired  the  situation,  but  preferred  another  house  very  near  it, 
with  a  much  greater  quantity  of  ground  annexed.  I  endeavored  to  per- 
suade him  to  become  my  neighbor.  He  said  little  at  the  time,  beyond  the 
pleasure  he  should  have  in  seeing  me  so  pleasantly  situated :  but  he  made 
inquiries  about  the  price  of  the  larger  house,  and  heard  that  it  was  not  to 
be  let,  but  that  it  might  be  bought  for  about  two  thousand  pounds.  He 
first  desired  me  to  buy  it  for  him  :  then  to  keep  it  for  myself:  then  to  re- 
pay him  the  money  whenever  I  was  rich  enough,  —  and  if  I  never  was,  to 
leave  it  for  my  heirs  to  settle.  In  fact,  he  refuses  even  a  farthing  of  inter- 
est. All  this  was  done  by  a  man  with  whom  I  had  not  been  more  than  a- 
few  months  acquainted.  It  is  true  his  fortune  is  very  large  ;  but  if  others 
equal  him  in  fortune,  no  human  being  ever  equalled  him  in  generosity. 

"  I  must  now  give  you  a  description  of  the  place :  the  front  of  the  house 
is  towards  the  north,  looking  at  the  ancient  town  of  Fiesole,  three  quarters 
of  a  mile  off.  The  hills  of  Fiesole  protect  it  from  the  north  and  northeast 
winds.     The  hall  is  31   ft.  by  22,  and  20  high.     On  the  right  is  a  draw- 


452  AT   FIESOLE.  *™- 

ing-mom  22  by  20  •  and  tli rough  it  you  come  to  another  20  by  20.  All 
are  20  ft.  high.  Opposite  the  door  is  another  leading  down  to  the  offices  oil 
right  and  left  ;  and  between  them  to  a  terrace-walk  about  a  hundred  yards 
long,  overlooking  Valdarno  and  Vallombrosa,  celebrated  by  Milton.  On 
the  right  of  the  downward  staircase  is  the  upward  staircase  to  the  bed- 
rooms; and  on  the  left  are  two  other  rooms  corresponding  with  the  two 
drawing-rooms.  Over  the  hall,  which  is  vaulted,  is  another  room  of  equal 
size,  delightfully  cool  in  summer.  I  have  four  good  bedrooms  up  stairs,  L3 
ft.  high.  One  smaller  and  two  servants'  bedrooms  over  these,  10£  ft.  high. 
In  the  centre  of  the  house  is  a  high  turret,  a  dovecote.  The  house  is  60  ft. 
high  on  the  terrace  side,  and  50  on  the  other;  the  turret  is  18  ft.  above  the 
60.  I  have  two  gardens:  one  with  a  fountain  and  fine  jet-d'eau.  In  the 
two  are  105  large  lemon-trees  and  20  orange-trees,  with  two  conservatories 
U  i  keep  them  in  winter.  The  whole  could  not  be  built  in  these  days  for 
£  10,000. 

"  I  am  putting  everything  into  good  order  by  degrees :  in  fact.  I  spend 
in  improvements  what  I  used  to  spend  m  house-rent:  that  is,  about  £  75  a 
year.  I  have  planted  200  cypresses,  600  vines,  400  roses,  200  arbutuses, 
and  70  bays,  besides  laurustinas,  &c.,  &c,  and  60  fruit  trees  of  the  best 
qualities  from  France.  I  have  not  had  a  moment's  illness  since  I  resided 
here,  nor  have  the  children.  My  wife  runs  after  colds;  it  would  be  strange 
if  she  did  not  take  them ;  but  she  has  taken  none  here;  hers  are  all  from 
Florence.  I  have  the  best'  water,  the  best  air,  and  the  best  oil  in  the  world. 
They  speak  highly  of  the  wine  too;  but  here  I  doubt.  In  fact,  I  hate 
wine,  unless  hock  or  claret." 

This  was  perhaps  his  happiest  time  in  Italy.  The  villa  gave  him 
employment  at  home,  for  which  irritating  subjects  were  forgotten  or 
put  aside  ;  the  Lawleys  and  other  Warwickshire  friends  pressed  upon 
him  hospitalities  which  he  did  not  so  often  decline  as  of  old  ;  with 
"  cordial  Hare  and  joyous  Gell  "  many  long-remembered  pleasures 
were  associated,  Hare  and  his  young  wife  having  come  to  Florence, 
and  visits  at  each  other's  houses  being  frequently  interchanged ; 
acquaintance  with  Mr.  Kenyon  too,  who  with  his  wife  made  some 
stay  at  Fiesole,  had  ripened  rapidly  into  a  friendship  which  continued 
through  all  his  later  years  ;  to  another  visitor  from  England,  Mr. 
Crabb  Robinson,  introduced  to  him  by  his  friend  Miss  .Mackenzie 
of  Seaforth,  and  full  of  cordial  talk  about  Southey,  "Wordsworth,  and 
Lamb,  he  had  taken  no  less  kindly;  other  visitors  than  his  country- 
men made  occasional  pilgrimages  from  afar  to  see  him;  and  even  his 
literary  exercises  were  unattended,  at  the  moment,  by  fevers  of  im- 
possible design,  or  self-invited  failures  and  despairs,  for  he  was  simply 
Collecting  and  revising  bis  poems,  and  had  put  away  for  the  present 
in  his  desk  those  dialogues  in  which,  as  he  told  Southey,  he  had 
introduced  Shakespeare  and  frightened  himself.  If  his  sisters  would 
but  visit  him  now,  he  had  never  been  so  able  to  bid  them  welcome. 
They  should  have  his  two  best  rooms,  two  more  beautiful  than  any 
in  Warwick  Castle,  perfumed  with  orange-flowers,  tuberoses,  violets, 
and  mignonette,  growing  profusely  under  the  windows.  In  that  Feb- 
ruary letter  they  are  strongly  pressed  to  come,  and  to  bring  with 
them  one  of  his  father's  breed  of  spaniels,  and  to  send  Mr.  Abl 


f 


JET.  54-60.]  THE   VILLA    GHERARDESCHA. 


453 


another.  A  message  to  his  brother  Robert  was  in  the  same  letter, 
telling  him  his  poem  was  too  good  for  success,  and  himself  too  good 
for  failure  by  any  such  mistake  as  marriage.  "  Henry  is  the  only 
one  of  us  exactly  cut  out  for  the  married  state.  But  my  extreme 
fondness  for  children  compensates  me  for  everything."  Which  he 
proceeds  to  show. 

L-  Arnold  is  not  ashamed,  though  almost  thirteen,  to  throw  his  arms  about 
my  neck  and  kiss  me  twenty  times  together ;  and  the  others  claim  the 
same  right,  '  and  have  their  claims  allowed.'  Yet  he  is  not  effeminate.  He 
is  very  much  admired  for  his  manliness  and  spirit.  He  fences,  speaks 
French,  and  reads  Greek  passably.  I  hope  he  wrill  dance,  as  I  have  told 
him  that  I  lost  more  pleasure  by  being  a  bad  dancer  than  by  anything  else ; 
and  since  that  he  begins  to  practise  more." 

Very  sensible  reply  to  all  this  was  made  by  his  sisters.  They 
could  understand  his  own  enjoyment  in  the  caresses  of  his  children, 
but  not,  in  the  absence  of  any  present  plan  of  life  and  study,  the 
advantage  the  children  were  to  derive  from  it  in  future  years.  They 
spoke  of  their  nephew  Charles,  now  a  lad  of  eighteen  (the  letter  is 
dated  in  March,  1831),  having  become  a  favorite  of  Dr.  Arnold's ;  so 
that  when  their  brother  Charles  had  thought  of  removing  him,  "  I 
hope  not ;  I  cannot  spare  him,"  said  Arnold.  Why  should  not  his 
cousin  come  to  England,  where  all  his  future  interests  wxmld  be  1 
Was  it  too  late  even  then  to  give  him  the  advantage  of  such  a  school, 
where  he  would  not  be  the  less  respected  for  his  father's  name  %  Lan- 
dor's  rejoinder  was  in  Dr.  Arnold's  words,  but,  alas,  with  far  other 
meaning :  "  I  cannot  spare  him."  He  was  pleased  to  hear  of 
Charles,  who  would  keep  up  the  name  in  England  ;  but  Arnold  would 
be  content  to  live  in  Italy.  And  as  for  the  two  younger  bqys,  though 
he  had  once  thought  of  the  army  and  the  law  for  them,  he  had  since 
been  thinking  they  were  less  likely  to  be  rogues  and  impostors  if  he 
kept  them  out  of  professions.  "  I  lived  nearly  all  the  best  days 
of  my  life  on  less  than  £150  a  year;  they  may  do  the  same.  A 
young  single  man  in  Italy  need  not  spend  more.  Music,  drawing, 
reading,  occupy  more  innocently  the  few  hours  of  life  that  are  worth 
living  than  worldly  and  lucrative  pursuits.  Happily  all  tln*ee  are  very 
fond  of  one  another,  and  will  never  scramble."  There  was  no  reason- 
ing with  such  nonsense  as  this.  Such  a  fool's-paradise  can  only  be 
shut  when  the  irreparable  mischief  has  been  done. 

The  further  letters  interchanged  in  February  and  March  of  this 
year  (1831)  concerned  chiefly  the  Ipsley  estate,  and  other  matters 
arising  out  of  their  mother's  death.  Landor  steadily  refuses  to  profit 
by  the  latter  incident  in  any  wav,  and  cannot  see  why  his  trustees 
should  even  think  of  letting  the  place.  His  mother  had  enjoyed  the 
change  of  air  every  summer,  and  why  should  not  his  sisters  1  In- 
deed, he  would  much  rather  never  let  it  than  deprive  them  of  any 
benefit  they  might  derive  from  such  a  change.  "  Certainly  our  dear 
mother  prolonged  her  life  by  the  quiet  of  the  place,  and  the  delight 


454  AT    FIESOLE.  I*5^?" 

she  took  in  its  beautiful  scenery."  The  furniture  he  would  most 
assuredly  not  receive  anything  from.  Let  it  be  given  to  some  honest 
family  in  low  circumstances,  whose  fathers  or  mothers  had  ever 
showed  any  kindness  to  any  of  the  Landors  :  some  old  servant  of 
their  grandmother,  or  their  aunt  Eyres.  "  Llanthony,  I  am  afraid, 
will  never  be  occupied  by  any  one.  I  proposed  to  take  down  the 
house,  and  sell  the  materials  ;  for  certainly  neither  I  nor  Arnold  will 
ever  live  there.  I  never  think  of  it  without  thinking  of  the  ruin  to 
which  it  has  brought  me  ;  leaving  me  one  of  the  poorest  Englishmen 
in  Florence,  instead  of  one  of  the  richest."  However,  they  might 
not  perhaps  think  him  so  badly  oft",  if  they  were  to  come  and  see  his 
beautiful  villa,  his  noble  hall  and  staircase.  Yet  he  would  rather 
have  had  it  near  Swansea,  the  part  of  the  world  he  liked  best  of  any. 
By  choice  he  would  always  be  within  easy  walk  of  the  sea.  His 
great  failure  at  Fiesole  had  been  the  attempts  to  raise  a  turf.  He 
finds  the  ground  will  produce  everything  but  grass ;  so  they  will 
know  what  to  send  him,  and  let  them  not  forget  his  favorite  mul- 
berry. The  close  of  his  letter  turns  to  the  younger  generation  of 
"Warwickshire  names.  "  Merely  names  to  me,  but  connected  with 
remembrances  that  reach  beyond  them."  But  he  supposes  the  fam- 
ilies go  on  much  the  same,  and  what  would  the  Lucys  think  if  he  were 
to  introduce  into  a  dialogue  Shakespeare's  old  Sir  Thomas  ?  His  sis- 
ters do  not  directly  answer  that ;  but  Elizabeth's  next  letter  has  a 
mention  of  the  Lucys,  doubtless  arising  out  of  it,  which  is  highly 
picturesque  and  suggestive.  Some  families,  she  says,  never  seem  to 
change  through  all  their  generations.  There  are  the  Lucys,  for  in- 
stance. Old  Lucy  was  at  that  time  sheriff,  and  she  only  hopes  his 
little  boy  of  six  years  old  will  appear  in  court  with  him.  "  He  is  a 
good  little  fellow,  but  neither  judge  nor  jury  could  look  grave  at  him. 
He  is  old  Lucy  precisely.  He  believes  the  whole  world  was  made  for 
him  and  in  honor  of  his  dignity.  He  opens  his  round  little  eyes, 
buttons  his  round  little  mouth,  inflates  his  round  little  face,  and  is 
graver  than  any  owl,  including  his  grandpapa." 

V.    ENGLAND   REVISITED. 

That  life  was  to  pass  without  trouble  even  in  the  villa  Gherar- 
descha,  the  reader  will  hardly  expect  from  what  he  knows  of  the 
character  of  its  new  lord.  At  the  opening  of  1831  I  find  him 
in  the  thick  of  a  terrible  dispute  with  one  M.  Antoir,  an  old  attache 
of  the  French  legation,  who,  having  a  cottage  near  the  villa,  had 
accused  Landor  of  stopping  an  underground  watercourse  supplying 
the  lands  of  both,  and  on  his  peremptory  denial  had  charged  him  with 
asserting  what  was  not  true.  Hereupon  Landor  challenged  the 
Frenchman,  and  asked  Mr.  Kirkup  to  be  his  second;  agreeing  to 
abide  implicitly  by  the  decision  of  his  friend,  who  consented  to  act 
on   that   condition   only.     The  matter  lives  vividly  in  Mr.  Kirkup's 


;et.  54-  60.] 


ENGLAND    REVISITED.  455 


memory  still,  and  from  his  letters  the  incident  is  here  related.  Antoir 
had  enough  of  the  merits  of  a  good  fellow  to  be  much  liked  by  his 
friends  ;  though  an  attache  of  the  old  legitimate  days,  he  had  been 
retained  by  Louis  Philippe's  new  government  for  his  services  and 
honesty  ;  and  his  superior,  the  new  minister,  took  the  affair  in  hand, 
apparently  with  the  express  purpose  of  seeing  him  through  it  safely. 
"  The  Count  de  G.,"  writes  Mr.  Kirkup,  "  was  a  fine,  noble-minded 
liberal,  and  a  capital  minister,  too  good  to  last  long  ;  and  he  was 
soon  after  succeeded  by  the  Baron  Talleyrand.  He  knew  me,  and 
came  to  consult  about  it.  I  had  lost  one  of  my  best  friends,  John 
Scott,  by  the  unfairness  of  a  second,  and  had  made  up  my  mind  not 
to  lose  another.  We  agreed  there  must  be  no  fighting.  There  were 
faults  on  both  sides  ;  and  if  Antoir's  was  the  gravest,  Landor's  was 
the  first,  and  they  must  make  and  accept  mutual  explanations.  The 
Count  would  answer  for  his  man  ;  and  I  must  convince  Landor,  which 
you  may  suppose  was  no  easy  task.  But  I  succeeded  that  evening 
up  at  the  villa,  and  pledged  my  responsibility  !  I  went  early  the  next 
morning  to  the  Count  at  the  Hotel  dell'  Arno.  He  was  in  bed,  but 
I  was  shown  in.  When  I  told  him  of  my  success,  he  jumped  out  of 
bed.  He  was  in  his  shirt,  and  he  ran  to  embrace  me.  I  remember  I 
was  half  afraid  of  him ;  he  was  like  a  bear.  I  never  saw  a  man  so 
entirely  covered  with  thick  bushy  hair.  I  introduced  Landor  to  him 
afterwards,  and  they  liked  each  other  much.  As  a  curious  proof  of 
our  friend's  docility  and  confidence  in  others  at  this  time,  the  anec- 
dote may  be  worth  telling."  It  is  also  worth  giving  as  a  proof  that 
when  not  left  wTholly  to  himself  he  was  never  quite  unmanageable. 

Mr.  Kirkup  dates  the  incident  at  the  close  of  1830  ;  and  from 
what  Landor  wrote  to  his  sister  in  the  first  week  of  the  February 
following,  it  would  seem  that  the  difference  had  not  pased  away  with 
the  duel. 

FIESOLE  :    FEBRUARY,  1831. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  hear  of  Henry's  chancery  suit.  I  too  am  tormented  by  a 
rascal  about  a  watercourse.  At  first  I  gave  up  to  him  everything  he  asked, 
although  my  predecessor  would  give  up  nothing ;  but  hearing  that  I  had 
declared  I  would  rather  lose  everything  than  have  a  lawsuit,  he  made  fresh 
pretensions,  which  I  must  resist,  as  without  the  water  I  lose  the  produce  of 
nearly  a  hundred  lemon-trees,  each  at  least  a  century  old.  They  have  en- 
joyed this  water  unrestricted  for  above  forty  years.  ...  I  hope  you  will 
have  received  a  copy  of  my  poems.*  Lady  Mulgrave  sent  me  the  Court 
Gazette,  in  which  a  flaming  panegyric  is  lavished  on  them,  preparatory,  I 
presume,  to  announcing  my  appointment  to  the  see  of  Canterbury.  My 
Latin  poetry  is  thought  better  than  my  English.  ...  At  this  season  I  am 
so  busy  grafting  my  trees  that  I  hardly  visit  my  excellent  friend  Hare  and 
his  most  accomplished  and  sweet-tempered  wife  once  a  week.  I  have 
grafted  forty  peaches,  twenty-six  apricots,  fourteen  greengages,  arid  as 
many  apples.     To-morrow  I  go  to  the  pears  and  cherries.     Of  the  morella 

*  They  were  published  on  commission  by  Mr.  Moxon  (Julius  Hare  guaranteeing  the 
expenses)  at  the  opening  of  1831. 


456  AT    FIESOLE.  °K_™ 

I  shall  have  twenty ;  they  do  not  require  a  wall  here,  and  are  the  best  fruit 
we  have.  But  my  peaches  come  from  Paris,  so  do  the  apples,  pears,  and 
several  plums.  There  is  no  garden  in  Italy  so  beautiful  as  yours  was  at 
Warwick  even  before  the  late  improvements.  .  .  .  My  "sweet  little  Julianas 
lately  been  unwell ;  but,  thank  God,  is  now  quite  recovered.  The  boys  are 
all  robust  as  young  eagles." 

His  letter  of  eight  days  later  was  filled  with  a  very  different  sub- 
ject. Florence  was  to  have  its  share  in  the  excitement  that  followed 
the  Three  Days  in  France ;  and  it  will  startle  many  of  Lander's  later 
readers  to  see  how  little  he  shared  in  it,  and  how  low  he  had  at  this 
time  pitched  his  hope  for  the  regeneration  of  Italy.  It  was  certainly 
to  be  said  of  the  Tuscan  government  at  the  time,  often  as  he  quar- 
relled with  it,  that  it  was  mild  and  equable ;  nor  had  the  particular 
insurrectionary  movements  of  which  he  speaks  anything  very  special 
to  recommend  them  in  the  way  of  patriotism  or  courage.  But  one 
cannot  quite  see  why  he  should  have  sneered  at  the  idea  of  regenera- 
tion, whatever  the  special  improbabilities  might  be  of  the  fact  being 
at  all  near.     He  lived  to  see  at  least  some  advances  made  to  it. 

ITALIAN    PATRIOTS    IN    1831. 

"  The  disturbances  that  have  broken  out  in  Italy  may  perhaps  make  our 
friends  in  England  a  little  curious  and  a  little  anxious.  At  Florence  there 
is  no  clanger  of  any  commotion.  The  people  are  well  contented  in  general 
with  the  government  of  the  grand-duke  ;  and  the  patriotic  parry,  as  some 
men  equally  cowardly  and  restless  call  themselves,  have  lately  nunc  than 
ever  excited  the  hatred  and  contempt  of  the  people.  On  the  grand-duke's 
return  from  Saxony  these  worthless  slaves  proposed  to  receive  him  with 
a  grand  illumination;  but  as  the  time  drew  nigh  their  hearts  misgave  them, 
and  they  attempted  to  throw  the  greater-  part  of  the  expenditure  on  the  in- 
ferior classes.  Many  of  these  holding  places  under  government  were  unable 
to  refuse  their  shilling.  However,  the  military  showed  no  small  reluc- 
tance; and  when  it  came  at  last  to  the  clergy,  the  church,  as  you  may  sup- 
pose, was  in  danger.  The  grand-duke,  hearing  of  the  preparations,  gave 
orders  that  there  should  be  no  such  equivocal  manifestation  of  the  people's 
joy,  and  that  all  the  money  should  be  returned.  The  patriots  were  indig- 
nant, and  surrendered  their  chamberlain's  keys;  for  patriots  here  accept 
any  gewgaw.  The  fools  expected,  from  the  easy  disposition  of  the  prince, 
thai  he  would  request  them  to  retain  their  offices,  but  were  disappointed. 
Be  assured  there  is  not  a  patriot  in  Florence  who  would  have  a  single  pane 
of  glass  broken  in  his  window  to  bring  about  any  change  whatever.  At 
my  time  of  life,  and  with  my  utter  indifference  what  befalls  so  rascally  a 
race,  you  need  not  apprehend  that,  in  case  of  a  bustle,  I  should  take  any 
pari  in  it.  ETo  little  pride  is  excited  in  me  at  the  recollection  that  I  voluntarily 
spent  more  in  the  Spanish  cause,  in  which  neither  I  nor  any  of  my  family 
had  any  personal  interest,  than  all  these  villanous  ennobled  shopkeepers 
would  voluntarily  contribute  for  the  cause  they  pretend  to  espouse.  Sir 
Robert  Lawley  is  in  high  spirits,  and  thinks  the  llame  will  blow  nearer. 
Why  be  should  think  it  is  strange  enough,  but  far  more  strange  why  he 
should  wish  it.  I  should  not  be  surprised  to  see  my  friend  Lord  Dillon 
here  again.  He  was  always  very  enthusiastic  for  the  regeneration  of  Italy. 
He  is  an  excellent  cavalry  officer,  and  has  great  coolness  in  battle,  though 


;ET.  54-60.]  ENGLAND   KEVISITED.  457 

nowhere  else.  I  hope,  however,  he  will  be  content  to  remain  quiet  at  Ditch- 
ley,  and  that  he  will  be  persuaded  that  although  in  Italy  there  may  be  many 
changes,  there  never  can  be  any  regeneration.  The  principle  of  honor  and 
virtue  was  extinct  in  Tuscany  long  before  the  Romans  appeared.  They 
once  had  an  idea  of  independence,  but  never  of  liberty ;  and  the  spirit  of 
petty  personal  revenge  is  the  only  spirit  they  show  now,  and  almost  the 
only  one  they  ever  showed.  Lombards  are  sprung  from  better  blood,  and 
possess  both  sounder  minds  and  stronger  bodies.  Nevertheless  there  is  one 
very  respectable  person  in  this  city,  and  attached  to  his  master  from  a  sense 
of  duty :  a  noble  dog  of  the  grand-duke's !  With  this  dog  and  twenty 
German  cooks  and  scullions  I  would  engage  to  drive  either  of  the  two 
parties  out  of  the  walls,  if  the  grand-duke  would  appoint  me  to  the  com- 
mand, and  let  the  dog  be  led  by  his  feeder.  I  myself  too  have  a  fine  and 
faithful  one  ;  the  only  creature  I  could  ever  place  the  smallest  confidence  in 
since  I  came  to  Florence.  I  never  let  any  of  the  natives  enter  my  doors 
except  Luca  Medici  and  Julia's  music-master,  a  quiet,  sober,  inoffensive 
man." 

The  present  troubles  of  his  sisters,  however,  were  not  about  Italy, 
but  England.  Reporting  to  their  brother  Walter  that  the  whole 
country  was  for  reform  and  destruction,  they  regretted  that  their 
brother  Charles  did  not  or  would  not  see  the  danger,  for  his  last 
letter  to  them  had  been  all  about  foxes  and  fish  ;  but  they  described 
their  brother  Robert  as  even  more  downcast  than  themselves,  and 
they  grieved  that  their  glorious  country  should  have  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  fools  and  rogues.  Landor  rallies  and  reassures 
them. 

NECESSITY   OF  REFORM   IN   ENGLAND.       (MAY   20,  1831.) 

"  You  are  a  little  too  melancholy  in  regard  to  the  times.  Whatever  is 
happening  and  about  to  happen  was  foreseen  by  me  in  the  period  of  Pitt's 
war  against  France.  He  squandered  the  nation's  wealth  with  more  impru- 
dence than  the  most  wanton  youth  ever  squandered  his  new  inheritance ; 
and  the  facility  he  found  in  raising  supplies  from  a  venal  Parliament  shows 
the  necessity  of  changing  the  system.  The  misfortune  is  that  the  change 
had  not  taken  place  fifty-five  years  earlier.  Then  we  should  not  have  lost 
America,  except  as  a  colony  and  a  dependent,  and  by  no  means  as  a  con- 
federate and  friend.  But  above  all  we  should  have  had  a  debt  of  about  40 
instead  of  800  millions." 

DECEMBER  29,   1831. 

"  Many  happy  new  years  to  you  !  for  the  new  year  will  have  begun  be- 
fore you  get  my  letter.  Do  not  torment  yourself  either  about  cholera  or 
about  reform.  We  know  that  the  one  is  requisite,  and  may  believe  the 
other  is.  When  the  good  people  of  England  helped  Pitt  to  gamble  in  war, 
and  to  run  the  nation  in  debt  beyond  the  value  of  all  the  money  in  Europe, 
we  might  easily  have  foreseen  the  result.  I  did  see  it,  and  tried  to  prevent 
it,  in  my  remonstrance  against  the  income  tax.  .  .  .  Poor  Lord  Wenlock  is 
nearly  blind,  but  in  good  spirits.  I  dined  with  him,  and  found  all  corps 
diplomatique  there,  so  that  politics  were  set  aside.  To-day  we  have  snow 
falling.  On  the  27th  of  November  the  hills  four  miles  off  were  covered 
with  it,  since  which  we  have  had  fine  weather  till  now.     Italy  is  a  fine 


458  AT   FIESOLE.  *%£££' 

climate,  but  Swansea  better.  That  however  is  the  only  spot  in  Great 
Britain  where  we  have  warmth  without  wet.  Still,  Italy  is  the  country  I 
would  live  in.     My  house  wants  new  doors  and  windows:  these  I  shall  be- 

fin  next  year,  and  at  the  end  of  three  shall  have  completed  them.  In  two 
hope  to  have  a  hundred  good  peaches  every  day  at  table  during  two 
months:  at  present  I  have  had  as  many  bad  ones.  My  land  is  said  to  pro- 
duce tiic  best  figs  in  Tuscany;  I  have  usually  six  or  seven  bushels  of  them. 
The  best  kinds  are  peeled  before  they  are  dried  ;  those  are  of  a  good  color. 
The  green  and  purple  are  less  esteemed,  but  bear  better.  Nectarines, 
gooseberries,  raspberries,  and  currants  are  better  in  England  than  any- 
where; in  other  fruits  I  hope  soon  to  excel  you,  even  in  apricots.  ...  I 
should  like  one  chestnut  from  the  tree  on  the  left  of  the  summer-house." 

His  next  letter  was  dated  on  the  7th  of  February  in  the  following 
year,  and  announced  a  sudden  intention  formed  by  him  to  visit  Eng- 
land in  May.  Ablett  had  pressed  him  so  much,  and  his  obligations 
to  that  friend  were  so  great,  that  he  had  not  felt  justified  in  continu- 
ing to  refuse. 

In  May,  1832,  in  midst  of  the  excitement  that  still  was  attending 
the  great  Reform  Bill,  he  arrived  accordingly  ;  and  on  the  14th  of 
that  month  wrote  from  London  to  tell  his  sisters  that  he  had  trav- 
ersed France  safely  in  the  thick  of  cholera,  but  that  missing  the 
boat  at  Dieppe,  he  was  kept  there  a  week  with  nothing  to  see  or  read, 
and  nobody  to  talk  to.  He  had  afterwards  stayed  two  days  at  Brigh- 
ton with  the  Countess  de  Molande  and  her  family,  "  in  the  midst  of 
music,  dancing,  and  fashionable  people  turned  radicals.  This  amused 
me  highly.  Lady  Bolingbroke  told  me  that  her  husband  would  never 
enter  the  House  of  Lords  again.  Yesterday  I  dined  with  our  good 
old  friend  Lord  Wenlock.  This  morning  the  people  are  half  mad  about 
the  king  and  the  Tories."  He  reached  London  at  last,  and  the  very 
first  visit  he  made  was  to  the  address  that  had  been  given  him  as 
that  of  his  old  friend  Dr.  Lambe,*  in  the  King's  Road  ;  but  he  failed 
to  find  the  house.  During  the  three  days  he  now  staved  in  London, 
he  attended  a  reception  at  the  Duke  of  Sussex's,  visited  Charles  Lamb 
at  Enfield,  and  went  up  to  see  Coleridge  at  Highgate. 

In  the  last  two  visits  his  companion  was  Mr.  Crabb  Robinson,  who 
had  been  very  anxious  that  he  should  see  those  worthies,  and  be 
seen  of  them.  He  did  not  make  much  of  his  interview  with  Coleridge, 
who,  though  he  put  on  "  a  bran-new  suit  of  black  "  in  honor  of  the 
visit,  and  made  Landor  as  many  Hue  speeches  as  if  he  had  been  a  lit- 
tle girl,  yet  managed  to  keep  all  the  talk  to  himself,  and  took  no 

*  Remembering  what  has  been  Baid  by  Rough  and  others  of  this  early  friend  of  Lan- 
dor'a  (ante,  pp.  B8,  121),  the  reader  may  perhaps  lie  amused  by  an  extract  from  a  letter 
of  Mr.  Jefferson  Hogg  to  Landor  at  the  close  of  1880.  "  I  sometimes  see  our  estimable 
friend  Dr.  Lambe;  it  is  almost  Impious  to  say  that  he  is  well,  wise,  and  happy,  tor  the 
affirmation  seems  to  imply  a  doubt  of  the  efficacy  of  vegetable  matter  diluted  with 
distilled  water.  The  last  time  I  met  him  lie  told  me  he  had  breakfasted  on  one  raw 
cauliflower,  and  was  just  going  to  dine  on  another,  and  in  the  evening  he  was  to  meet 
the  whole  college  of  physicians  about  some  professional  matters,  it  is  plain  that  if  :i 
man  of  his  year-  can  feed  thus,  and  then  go  boldly  and  look  death  in  the  face,  hi-  best 
friends  have  nothing  else  to  wish  fur  him,  save  that  God  may  give  him  grace  to  like  his 
diet." 


JET.  54-60.]  ENGLAND    REVISITED.  459 

notice  of  an  enthusiastic  mention  of  Southey  ;  but  the  hour  he  passed 
with  Lamb  was  one  of  unalloyed  enjoyment.  A  letter  from  Crabb 
Robinson  before  he  came  over  had  filled  him  with  affection  for  that 
most  lovable  of  men,  who  had  not  an  infirmity  that  his  sweetness  of 
nature  did  not  make  one  think  must  be  akin  to  a  virtue.  "  I  have 
just  seen  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb,"  Crabb  had  written  (20th  October, 
1831),  "living  in  absolute  solitude  at  Enfield.  I  found  your  poems 
lying  open  before  Lamb.  Both  tipsy  and  sober  he  is  ever  muttering 
Rose  Aylmer.  But  it  is  not  those  lines  only  that  have  a  curious  fas- 
cination .  for  him.  He  is  always  turning  to  Gebir  for  things  that 
haunt  him  in  the  same  way."*  Their  first  and  last  hour  was  now 
passed  together,  and  before  they  parted  they  were  old  friends.  I 
visited  Lamb  myself  (with  Barry  Cornwall)  the  following  month,  and 
remember  the  boyish  delight  with  which  he  read  to  us  the  verses 
which  Landor  had  written  in  the  album  of  Emma  Isola.  He  had  just 
received  them  through  Robinson,  and  had  lost  little  time  in  making 
rich  return  by  sending  Landor  his  Last  Essays  of  Elia.  "  Pray  ac- 
cept," he  wrote,  "a  little  volume.  'T  is  a  legacy  from  Elia,  you  '11  see. 
Silver  and  gold  had  he  none  ;  but  such  as  he  had  left  he  you.  I  do 
not  know  how  to  thank  you  for  attending  to  my  recpiest  about  the 
album.  I  thought  you  would  never  remember  it.  Are  not  you 
proud  and  thankful,  Emma  1  Yes,  very  both.'"  And  then  underneath 
the  words  is  the  feminine  signature  of  his  young  friend.  "  If  you 
can  spare  a  moment,"  Lamb  adds,  "  I  should  be  happy  to  hear  from 
you.  That  rogue  Robinson  detained  your  verses  till  I  called  for 
them.  Don't  intrust  a  bit  of  prose  to  the  rogue,  but  believe  me  your 
obliged  C.  L.     My  sister  sends  her  kind  regards." 

Landor's  next  visit  was  to  Julius  Hare  at  Cambridge.  He  saw  now 
for  the  first  time  the  friend  to  whose  judgment  and  active  kindness 
he  owed  so  much,  and  passed  three  delightful  days  with  him.  Then 
he  went  to  exchange  greetings  with  his  sisters  at  Warwick  ;  and  after 
a  week  with  them,  made  more  joyous  by  the  frequent  presence  of  Mr. 
Kenyon,  who  with  his  wife  was  then  staying  at  Leamington,  he 
pushed  on  to  join  Mr.  Ablett  in  North  Wales. 

From  Llanbedr  he  wrote  to  his  sisters  in  July.  He  and  Ablett 
were  to  leave  in  another  wreek  for  Lancashire  and  Cumberland,  where 
he  proposed  to  spend  a  day  or  two  with  Southey,  and  about  as  much 
time  with  Wordsworth.  He  described  his  friend's  Welsh  home  as 
abounding  in  magnificent  trees,  with  the  richest  valley  in  the  world, 
as  well  as  the  most  varied  hills ;  and  with  lofty  mountains  not  too 
near,  nor  too  distant,  but  just  as  great  folks  should  be.  He  declared 
that  every  cottage  on  the  estate  was  more .  habitable  than  the  best 
house  on  the  Continent,  for  that  every  one  had  a  patent  oven  and  a 
clock,  and  was  surrounded  by  a  garden. 

*  He  has  quoted  in  his  "Margate  Hoy"   (Essays  of  Ella)  one  that  he  was  much 
given,  at  all  odd  out-of-the-way  times,  to  repeat  to  himself:  — 

"  Is  this  the  mighty  Ocean?  is  this  all?  " 


4 GO  AT    FIESOLE.  tn™K  ,Y r- 

Our  next  glimpse  of  him  is  at  the  Lakes  with  Southey  and  Words- 
worth, to  whom  he  introduces  Ablett,  but  with  whom  his  stay  is  more 
brief  than  was  at  first  intended,  because  of  other  unlooked-for  claims 
upon  him.  But  an  evening  was  spent  in  company  with  both,  recollect- 
ed afterwards  for  its  talk  of  poets  and  poetry,  wherein  I  remember  his 
telling  me  he  thought  scant  justice  was  done  to  Byron  by  his  friends, 
and  insufficient  appreciation  given  to  Scott  ;  for  that,  when  he  had 
himself  quoted  from  the  latter  a  line  about  the  dog  of  a  traveller  li  ist 
in  the  mountain  snows,  the  comment  it  drew  forth  was  a  remark 
upon  it  by  Wordsworth  as  the  only  good  line  in  the  piece,  with  addition 
that  the  very  same  subject  had  been  treated  in  one  of  his  own  poems, 
which  he  thereupon  recited  from  beginning  to  end.  I  have  heard 
him  say  also,  that,  objection  having  been  taken  to  an  overabundance 
of  imagery  in  the  prose  of  the  Conversation*,  Wordsworth  unluckily 
took  to  himself  a  remark  made  in  reply,  that  prose  will  bear  a  great 
deal  more  of  poetry  than  poetry  will  bear  of  prose.  The  other  trace 
that  remains  of  the  visit  was  left  in  the  album  of  Wordsworth's 
daughter,  whose  earnest  intercession  for  Landor's  autograph  was  sec- 
onded with  such  gracious  approval  from  Wordsworth  himself,  that 
Landor  could  not  but  sit  down  and  write 

"at  wordsworth's  desire. 

"  Glorious  the  names  that  cluster  here, 

The  loftiest  of  our  lofty  isle  — 
Who  can  approach  them  voirl  of  fear. 

Though  Genius  urge  and  Friendship  smile? 
To  lay  one  stone  upon  the  hill, 

Anil  show  that  I  have  climbed  so  high, 
Is  what  they  bid  me.     Wordsworth's  will 

Is  law,  arid  Landor  must  comply." 

Once  again,  before  leaving  Cumberland,  the  friends  met  at  the  seat 
of  a  common  friend  of  both  Ablett  and  Wordsworth,  Mr.  Rawson  of 
Wastwater;  and  here,  not  from  Landor  only,  but  from  Wordsworth 
himself,  a  further  tax-  of  album  verses,  made  popular  for  the  time 
among  the  friends  by  Charles  Lamb's  pleasant  little  volume  published 
a  short  while  before,  was  exacted.  Landor  celebrated  the  Bcenery 
around,  and  praised  its  master's  modest  wisdom,  content  to  hear 
nature's  voice,  to  shun  loud  acclaim,  "  and  in  his  heart  find  all  he 
wants  of  fame."  Wordsworth,  in  the  same  spirit,  describing  time  as 
in  its  blindness  reproducing  ever  the  troubles  it  destroys,  and  bring- 
ing happiness  only  to  bear  it  away,  praises  his  friend  for  having  dis- 
cerned and  set  above  all  time's  illusive  hopes  the  will  of  its  eternal 
master. 

I  heard  myself  from  Mr.  Ablett  two  or  three  years  later  of  the 
happy  day  thus  passed  at  Wastwater;  and  the  account  which  I  well 
remember  he  gave  me  of  the  laughable  vehemence  with  which  Landor 
had  then  denounced  the  word  impugn,  employed  by  Southey  in  the 
course  of  their  talk,  and  given  up  by  him,  after  unavailing  defence, 


MT.  54-60.]  ENGLAND    REVISITED.  4G1 

to  liis  friend's  immitigable  wrath,  receives  amusing  confirmation  from 
a  reply  which  I  find  he  made  to  a  letter  written  immediately  after  re- 
turning to  Keswick  by  South ey,  who,  finding  the  word  in  Spenser  and 
Shakespeare  as  well  as  in  Cranmer  and  South,  felt  he  must  retract  his 
too  hasty  surrender,  and  had  taken  heart  to  say  so  to  his  friend. 
"  Spenser  and  Shakespeare,"  retorts  Landor,  "  have  employed  words 
ugly  enough,  but  this  is  the  most  odious.  South  himself,  highly  as  I 
estimate  him,  and  even  you,  whose  language  is  still  better,  will  never 
push  me  across  the  road  to  shake  hands  with  this  uncouth  ruffian. 
You  tell  me  that  we  have  the  word,  not  from  the  French,  but  the  Nor- 
mans. I  do  not  remember  any  such  word  in  our  very  oldest  writers, 
though  Cranmer  is  pretty  old  ;  and  had  1  found  it  in  Chaucer  himself, 
whom  I  admire  and  venerate,  I  should  pity  the  duress  in  which  so  cruel 
a  bolt  was  manacled  upon  him.  I  do  not  like  the  metaphor  :  we  have 
in  our  language  too  many  such,  arising  for  the  most  part  from  the  re- 
formers and  sectarians.  However,  if  you  ivill  put  your  stamp  iipon  the 
word,  it  must  pass  on." 

The  friends  separated  here,  and  after  a  couple  of  days  Southey 
wrote  to  say  that  Landor's  recent  apparition  had  been  to  them  as  a 
dream,  but  as  the  pleasantest  of  dreams,  and  one  that  was  never  to 
be  indistinctly  remembered.  This  Landor  answered  from  Warwick, 
which,  he  tells  his  friend,  after  what  appeai*ed  to  him  almost  an  age 
of  wandering,  he  had  reached  the  preceding  week  ;  which  formerly  of 
all  places  in  the  world  was  the  most  quiet  and  idle,  but  now  was  join- 
ing its  own  noises  to  those  of  Leamington.  "  I  remember  the  time, 
not  forty  years  ago,  when  Leamington  had  only  two  tenements  that 
joined  each  other,  and  in  the  whole  village  only  six  or  seven  of  any 
sort,  besides  the  squire's,  one  Prew,  who  was  the  uncle  of  my  grand- 
mother. If  her  brother  had  lived,  he  would  have  had  this  vast  prop- 
erty, at  that  time  a  small  one.  I  cannot  help  smiling  at  the  narrow 
escape  I  have  had  of  three  such  encumbrances." 

From  Julius  Hare  he  heard  in  the  same  week  that  his  visit  had  left 
with  Wordsworth  also  the  pleasantest  impression.  Julius  had  seen 
much  of  the  great  poet  in  that  and  the  preceding  year,  having  passed 
some  time  with  him  at  Rydal ;  "  and  rarely  indeed  in  the  course  of 
life,"  he  wrote  to  Landor,  "  is  one  allowed  to  take  such  a  survey  of  all 
that  is  lofty  and  all  that  is  profound  in  our  nature,  as  one  obtains  from 
living  with  him  in  his  home.  The  moral  atmosphere  he  breathes 
around  him  is  so  pure  that  all  looks  fairer  and  brighter  than  else- 
where. He  has  frequently  desired  me  to  give  you  his  kindest  remem- 
brances and  the  assurances  of  his  highest  regard.  Your  politics  did 
not  alarm  him.  He  was  in  excellent  health  and  spirits,  and  talked 
with  all  the  alacrity  of  youth  of  the  day  you  passed  with  him."  To 
this  I  will  add  the  comment  afforded  by  some  sentences  from  a  letter 
sent  by  Hare  to  Landor  in  the  midsummer  of  the  previous  year  (1831), 
which  future  biographers  of  the  poet  may  thank  me  for  preserving. 
"  When  Wordsworth  was  last  with  us  at  the  end  of  April,  I  was  very 


4G2  AT   FIESOLE.  ^ooir  VT. 

1819-35. 

much  grieved  to  find  how  much  the  state  of  the  country  and  the 
ministerial  reform  lull  had  preyed  upon  his  health.  Everybody  said 
he  seemed  to  have  grown  ten  years  older  in  the  last  three  months.  If 
the  bill  dot's  all  the  good  which  its  most  infatuated  advocates  antici- 
pate, it  will  hardly  make  amends  for  this  evil."  The  anticipation  of 
both  evil  and  good  is  almost  always  in  excess  ;  and  brief  as  were  the 
months  that  had  brought  the  poet  back  to  his  alacrity  of  youth,  they 
had  doubtless  satisfied  him  also  that  the  country  was  getting  on  its 
legs  again. 

We  hear  of  Landor  next  in  Richmond  and  in  London,  from  which 
he  wrote  to  his  sisters  on  the  24th  of  September  to  say  that  his  Eng- 
lish visit  was  coming  to  its  close.  His  wife's  family,  with  whom  he 
had  been  staying  at  Richmond,  had  been  most  kind  to  him,  but  he  was 
very  impatient  to  be  again  among  his  own  creatures.  Cholera  had 
been  with  him  on  every  side  as  he  travelled,  but  he  had  tried  to  be  a 
match  for  it,  and  it  would  be  very  spiteful  of  it  to  do  for  him  anywhere 
but  at  his  own  villa,  where  he  had  a  place  prepared,  and  where  his  two 
laborers  were  to  have  a  crown  each  for  planting  him.  Their  brother 
Robert  would  tell  them  of  the  fortunate  meeting  "before  the  inn  at 
Evesham,  where  his  carriage  and  my  coach  had  stopped  "  ;  and  they 
would  have  heard  of  his  visit  to  Charles  at  Colton.  On  the  following 
Saturday  he  meant  to  leave  England,  and  they  would  probably  receive 
meanwhile  some  pictures  he  had  intrusted  to  Mr.  Ablett  for  them. 

Julius  Hare  and  one  of  his  Cambridge  friends  (since  master  of  Down- 
ing) accompanied  Landor  on  his  return.  They  travelled  through  Bel- 
gium, up  the  Rhine  to  Frankfort,  and  through  Munich  and  the  Tyrol 
into  Italy.  He  reached  Florence  on  the  last  day  of  November,  and  on 
the  25th  of  the  following  month  wrote  to  his  sisters  one  remembrance 
of  his  journey  :  — 

FIESOLE  :     CHRISTMAS    DAY,   1832. 

"We  are  enjoying  the  most  serene  and  brilliant  sky,  with  our  windows 
open.  Tn  going  through  the  Tyrol,  the  snow  fell  upon  us  furiously,  and 
we  were  in  danger  of  passing  the  winter  at  Inspruch.  I  conversed  with 
several  of  the  companions  of  Andrew  Hofer,  and  received  from  one  of  them 
a  narrative  of  his  death  Nothing  was  ever  more  heroic,  —  not  even  his  life. 
He  said  :  '  I  pray  Gk>d  to  protect  my  children  and  their  mother,  and  to 
pardon  her  brother,  and  to  let  his  fault 'be  forgotten.'  Now  whal  do  you 
think  liis  fault  was?  Betraying  to  the  French  this  brave  and  righteous 
man.  Hofer  and  Lord  Collingwood  are  in  my  opinion  the  two  noblest 
characters  of  the  present  age." 

After  he  quitted  Hofer's  country,  and  while  staying  with  his 
friends  in  Venice,  a  city  that  he  held  always  to  be  incomparable  among 
cities  as  Shakespeare  among  men,  he  had  put  into  his  own  language 
what  he  thus  heard  from  the  Tyrolese  peasants,  and  sent  it  over  to 
England  for  publication.  At  the  same  time  he  sent  also  to  Kenyon  an 
ode  to  Southey  and  an  ode  tti  Wordsworth,  written  while  yet  he  had 
lingered  amid  the  passes  of  the  Tyrol.     Much  pleasant  verse  was  in 


j£T.  54-60.]  ENGLAND   REVISITED.  4G3 

the  latter,  on  the  company  of  immortals  with  whom  he  ranked  his 
friend  ;  and  very  pleasantly  it  closed  by  wishing  them    - 

"  Every  joy  above 
That  highly  blessed  spirits  prove, 
Save  one:  and  that  too  shall  be  theirs, 
But  after  many  rolling  years, 
When  'mid  their  light  Thy  light  appears." 

Nor  will  the  reader  object  that  I  should  add  the  closing  verse  of 
the  yet  nobler  ode  to  Sonthey,  in  which,  referring  to  the  old  dedica- 
tion of  the  Curse  of  Kehama,  there  is  the  grand  exaggeration  of 
thanks  and  praise  which,  from  Raleigh  and  Spenser  downward,  poets 
have  exercised  the  right  to  give  to  brother  poets,  without  exception  or 
challenge  :  — 

"  Not,  were  that  submarine 
Gem-lighted  city  mine, 

Wherein  my  name,  engraven  by  thy  hand, 

Above  the  royal  gleam  of  blazonry  shall  stand; 
Not,  were  all  Syracuse 
Poured  forth  before  my  Muse, 
With  Hiero's  cars  and  "steeds,  and  Pindar's  lyre 
Brightening  the  path  with  more  than  solar  fire, 
Could  I  as  would  beseem  requite  the  praise 

Showered  upon  my  low  head  from  thy  most  lofty  lays." 

"  As  soon  as  I  read  your  ode  to  Southey,"  wrote  Kenyon  to  Lan- 
dor  (lGth  January,  1833),  "  I  resolved  to  print  it.  I  sounded  S.  on 
on  the  subject,  and  then  sent  it  to  the  Athenaeum,  the  Editor  of 
which  deferred  it  for  a  week,  that  it  might  give  eclat  to  the  first 
paper  of  the  year.  Southey  said  something  about  omitting  the  last 
stanza,  as  beyond  the  occasion ;  but  this  I  did  not  attend  to."  Crabb 
Robinson  wrote  to  him  a  few  months  later  that  Wordsworth  was  ex- 
tremely grateful,  though  he  thought  Southey's  ode  the  best,  and 
wished  that,  in  his  own,  Dryden  had  been  praised  less  and  Spenser 
more. 

Other  notices  of  the  year  that  followed  his  return  to  Italy  are 
taken  from  his  letters  to  his  sisters. 

SERVANTS    IN    ITALY  :     JANUARY    19,    1833. 

"  We  have  a  cook,  to  whom  we  pay  six  crowns  and  a  half  a  month,  who 
sends  up  more  coals  than  meat,  and  consumes  a  hundred  weight  of  charcoal 
in  a  day ;  that  is,  to  the  value  of  two  shillings.  I  wish  it  were  possible  to 
get  servants  from  England  :  I  would  not  have  one  Italian.  I  am  well  con- 
vinced that  in  eighteen  months  I  should  save  greatly  more  than  the  ex- 
pense of  bringing  them  over.  No  woman  will  cook  here,  nor  open  a  door. 
As  for  marketing,  I  have  a  laborer  (the  only  honest  man  within  many  miles) 
who  serves.  If  you  know  of  any  woman  for  my  wife  who  can  work  and 
iron,  &c,  any  cook,  and  a  man,  I  will  pay  their  expenses  and  give  each  a 
bottle  of  good  wine  daily.  This  is  a  great  bribe  to  an  Englishman.  The 
Italians  drink  two  or  three.  I  will  give  the  wages  usual  in  England. 
Every  Italian  is  a  thief  by  nature,  and  no  foreigner  can  gain  the  slightest 
redress." 


4G1  AT    FIESOLE.  IK2l 


1829-35. 


JANUARY    30,     1833. 


"  The  people  are  in  a  state  of  desperation  because  no  snow  has  fallen.  In 
consequence  of  this  real  calamity  we  shall  have  no  water  in  the  wells  all 
next  summer.  Last  summer  it  was  sold  at  fourpence  for  three  gallons;  and 
many  thousand  lemon-trees  died  because  the  proprietors  did  not  choose  to 
buy  it  at  such  an  exorbitant  price.  Lemon-trees  must  be  watered  every 
other  day,  and  most  abundantly,  even  till  the  water  runs  through.  I  have 
200,  all  in  wretched  condition.  I  am  now  putting  my  house  in  good  order. 
I  wish  you  and  Elizabeth  would  come  and  see  it:  To  me  it  appears  a  per- 
fect Paradise,  but  unluckily  more  than  one  devil  has  got  into  it,  and  of  that 
race  of  devils  that  do  anything  rather  than  tempt." 

■ 

SEPTEMBER    9,     1833. 

"  I  have  lately  planted  1,300  vines,  100  olives,  and  40  fruit-trees.  I  shall 
probably  make  about  five  pipes  of  wine  this  year;  half  is  the  contadino's, 
half  of  every  thing.  My  two  pipes  and  a  half  will  not  be  worth  above  £  12, 
such  is  the  abundance  of  grapes.  If  the  land  were  in  the  plain,  the  value 
would  be  about  £4.  But  I  hope  to  receive  for  my  oil  about  £20,  if  indeed 
I  sell  it.  All  other  crops  were  carried  away  by  the  heavy  rains,  and  the 
fruit-trees  were  ruined  last  summer,  oranges  and  lemons  included.  It 
rained  but  twice  in  six  months,  and  those  were  violent  and  transitory  thun- 
der-storms. The  annual  fete  at  Siena  is  going  on,  and  the  grand-duke  and 
his  spouse  are  made  much  of.  They  say  she  is  pretty.  I  never  saw  her, 
and  probably  never  shall,  for  I  wish  to  keep  away  from  princes  and  all 
belonging  to  them.  I  am  quite  content  with  my  dogs  and  rats,  which  are 
much  better  people,  though  (between  ourselves)  Sir  "William  Gell's  tickettee 
has  learnt  to  swear,  —  the  first  dog  that  ever  condescended  to  this  cattish 
vice;  and  my  favorite  cat,  Chinchenillo,  who  always  follows  me  about  the 
fields,  killed  thirteen  half-grown  chickens  in  a  single  night.  Not  long 
before  he  had  extirpated  two  entire  generations  of  rabbits.  I  am  afraid  he 
will  be  found  to  be  in  correspondence  with  Captain  Rock,  though  I  never 
heard  of  his  subscribing  to  the  Catholic  rent,  or  to  the  maintenance  of 
O'Connell.  His  language,  when  he  is  accused,  is  as  innocent  and  naive  as 
any  Paddy's  in  the  Avorld.  He  confesses  everything.  He  always  says, 
'Ay,  ay!'" 

NOVEMBER   25,    1833. 

"  Among  the  visitors  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  receiving  lately  are  Mr. 
Lytton  Bulwer,  author  of  Eugene  Aram,  and  Captain  Basil  Hall.  I  am 
expecting  every  day  my  friend  Augustus  Hare,  and  his  brother  Marcus,  who 
has  just  now  married  a  daughter  of  Sir  John  Stanley.  The  Hares  are  be- 
yond all  comparison  the  most  pleasant  family  of  men  I  ever  was  acquainted 
with.  Francis  wants  me  to  dine  with  him  at  Rome  on  Christmas  day.  Sir 
John  Paul's  birthday,  when  a  dozen  or  two  of  both  families  will  meet  at  his 
house.  Uut  I  have  old  recollections  and  old  feelings  about  Christmas,  and 
never  will  dine  from  home  again  on  that  day.  The  only  time  I  ever  did 
was  at  Rome  with  poor  Lady  Paul.  Florence  is  fuller  of  English  than  it 
has  been  for  several  years.  Lord  Pembroke  is  here  among  the  rest;  and 
Lord  and  Lady  Castlehaven,  Lord  Conyngham's  pretty  daughter,  are  com- 
ing. People  talk  of  war.  Certainly  some  movements  are  being  made 
among  the  diplomates.  We  have  happily  a  very  firm  and  sensible  man  in 
that  capacity,  Mr.  George  Hamilton  Seymour,  son  of  Lord  G-eorge  Sey- 
mour,    I  am  afraid,  however,  that  the  ill  health  of  his  father  will  remove 


iET.  54-6o.]  AGAIN    IN    ITALY.  4G5 

him  from  us  shortly,  though  he  will  return.  His  wife,  a  daughter  of  Gen- 
eral Trevor,  is  quite  delightful.  My  children  are  studying  German,  but 
Italian  mouths  (as  theirs  are)  seem  to  taste  German  after  Italian  as  you 
would  taste  sloes  after  raspberries  and  cream.  Carlino  quizzes,  and  learns 
by  quizzing ;  as  I  learnt  to  dance  a  minuet  (the  only  dance  I  ever  did  learn) 
by  mocking  poor  old  Helme." 

Here  again  was  the  old  careless  way  of  adverting  to  the  studies  of 
his  children.  But  it  was  now  becoming  pressingly  urgent  that  he 
should  arrive  at  some  decision  respecting  the  education  of  Arnold. 
Julius  Hare  during  the  last  two  years  had  made  unavailing  inquiries 
in  England  for  a  suitable  person  to  undertake  it,  and  at  last  had  suc- 
ceeded in  finding  one  whilst  travelling  in  Germany.  Landor  is  ex- 
pecting the  new  tutor  from  Bonn  (26th  March,  1833),  M.  Schiemers, 
immediately  ;  and  fears  he  will  find  his  pupil  indolent.  "  But  let 
him  be  healthy,  honorable,  and  well-bred,  and  I  care  little  about  his 
learning:." 


'O' 


VI.    AGAIN  IN  ITALY:    OLD  PICTURES  AND  NEW  FRIENDS. 

Landor  had  by  this  time  become  known,  not  wisely  but  too  well, 
among  the  Italian  picture-dealers,  who  passed  through  his  hands  as 
many  rare  old  masters  as  would  have  set  up  the  fortunes  of  half  the 
galleries  in  Europe.  In  this  as  in  too  many  other  things  he  had  no 
other  judgment  than  his  will ;  and  a  cheerful  self-imposture  enabled 
him  in  perfect  good  faith  to  carry  on  the  imposture  honestly  with  all, 
even  the  rascals  who  made  it  their  commodity.  He  would  so  prepare 
you  by  a  letter  for  his  Rubens  or  his  Raffaelle,  or  in  its  presence 
would  do  it  homage  with  such  perfect  good  faith,  that  your  own  eyes 
were  as  ready  as  his  to  be  made  fools  to  the  other  senses.  "  Your 
picture  found  its  way  to  Alton,"  wrote  Augustus  Hare  to  him  in  the 
summer  of  ,1833,  "and  we  thought  it  almost  worthy  of  the  letter 
which  announced  its  coming.  More  perfect  than  that  letter  it  could 
not  have  been,  if  Raffaelle  had  painted  the  whole  of  it."  Often  have 
enjoyments  in  this  way  been  mine  which  the  presence  of  the  real 
masters  could  not  have  made  addition  to ;  and  never  had  I  reason  to 
question  his  own  belief  that  the  canvas  did  actually  contain  the 
glories  that  were  but  reflected  on  it  from  imagination  and  desire.  It 
was  incident  to  such  treasures  of  course  that  they  should  rapidly  ac- 
cumulate ;  here  and  there  even  a  real  master  crept  in  ;  and  what 
with  the  splendor  of  the  frames,  the  show  upon  his  walls  became 
magnificent.  But  the  principle  of  the  collection  admitted  hardly  of 
a  limit,  and  the  treasures  overflowed.  He  had  taken  several  with 
him  to  England.  Ablett  had  a  Carlo  Dolce  ;  his  sisters  some  Claudes 
and  Canalettis  ;  and  his  brother  Henry,  with  special  injunction  that 
he  should  place  them  at  Tachbrooke,  which  in  part  he  had  lately  re- 
purchased, some  masters  as  old  as  Perugino.  He  now  tells  his  sisters 
(8th  January,  1834)  that  he  has  a  great  many  more  pictures  going  to 

30 


4G6  AT   FIESOLE.  ^SS^Y1, 

them,  only  delayea  by  the  rogues  in  the  custom-house  wanting  more 
money.  As  to  his  brother's  or  their  offering  to  pay  for  them,  that 
was  quite  out  of  the  question.  He  had  more  than  he  has  room  for, 
as  his  windows  arc  low,  not  reaching  to  the  middle  height  of  the 
apartments  :  and  they  were  to  tell  Henry  that  his  batch  would  fol- 
low. They  would  be  very  old  ones,  Cimabues  and  Giottos,  and  were 
getting  ready  from  suppressed  convents  and  monasteries  at  Pratoand 
Pistoia.  In  later  years  1  partook  myself  of  this  munificence  ;  and  I 
well  remember,  when  I  then  met  Julius  Hare  with  Landor  at  Ken- 
yon's  dinner-table,  with  what  a  grave  smile,  lighting  up  the  deep- 
marked  lines  of  his  thoughtful  face,  he  spoke  of  his  drawing-room  at 
Hurstmonceaux  as  perhaps  the  only  one  in  England  that  had  seven 
virgins  in  it  almost  all  of  them  three  hundred  years  old. 

The  notices  that  follow  are  from  Landor's  letters  to  his  sisters  in 
1834,  the  last  that  were  to  be  written  to  them  from  his  home  in 
Italy. 

JANUARY    8,    1834. 

"We  have  had  no  winter  yet.  A  friend  dined  with  me  on  Christmas 
day.  and  we  should  have  dined  out  of  doors  if  dinner  had  not  been  ordered 
as  late  as  five.  The  flies  have  never  been  so  troublesome  or  so  numerous 
all  the  summer  as  they  are  now.  I  have  jonquils  in  full  flower,  two  or 
three  roses  nearly  open,  and  five  or  six  hundred  in  bud;  not  the  Chinese 
rose,  which  with  us  is  an  evergreen.  I  am  busy  in  planting  1,200  vines 
ami  240  olives.  My  trees  are  old.  and  require  renewing;  some  of  the 
olives  are  four  or  five  hundred  years  old  and  literally  have  nothing  but  bark 
ami  branches.  In  cutting  down  one,  we  found  a  boundary-stone  perfectly 
enclosed  in  it  and  overgrown  by  the  bark.  ...  I  wish  the  children  were 
more  contented  with  their  governess:  never  was  there  upon  earth  a  less 
agreeable  person.  Arnold's  tutor  is  a  very  good  creature;  he  understands 
Latin  and  Greek,  but  is  quite  a  German.  The  music-master  is  my  ruin. 
He  costs  me  £50  a  year.  He  is,  however,  the  best  perhaps  in  Italy,  and 
has  seven  miles  to  come  and  go  three  times  a  week,  as  he  lives  at  the  other 
extremity  of  Florence,  and  we  are  two  miles  and  a  third  from  the  nearest 
gate." 

AUGUST   27,    1834. 

"  We  have  heard  that  Coleridge  is  dead.  He  had  recovered  his  health 
when  I  saw  liini,  and  told  me  that  he  had  not  been  better  for  many  years. 
Poor  man  !  lie  put  on  a  bran-new  suit  of  black  to  come  down  and  see  me, 
and  made  me  as  many  fine  speeches  as  he  ever  could  have  done  to  a  pretty 
girl.  My  heart  aches  at  the  thought  that  almost  the  greatest  genius  in  the 
world,  and  one  so  friendly  to  me,  is  gone  from  it.  Southey  too  is  likely  to 
sull'er  the  mosl  severe  affliction,  no1  merely  in  the  death  of  his  old  friend, 
but  his  wife  (he  says)  has  been  long  declining  in  health,  and  he  fears  to  lose 
her.  She  too,  when  I  saw  her,  was  florid  and  strong,  and  had  not  begun  to 
bear  the  appearance  of  age  in  any  respect  whatever.  I  hear  wonderful 
tilings  of  a  new  poem  by  Mr.  Taylor,  Philip  Van  Artevelde." 

SAME    DATE  :     A    NEW    BOOK. 

"Before  a  mouth  is  over,  you  or  Harry  (it  comes  to  the  same  thing)  will 
receive  a  very  curious  book,   'The  Examination  of  William  Shakespeare 


.ST.  54-60.]  AGAIN    IN    ITALY.  467 

before  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  touching  Deer- Stealing.''  Of  course  it  will  interest 
Henry  more  than  you,  being  law.  It  is  not  impossible  that  I  may  be  very 
soon  in  England,  for  I  have  told  Lord  Mulgrave  that  I  would  accept  the 
Archbishopric  of  Canterbury,  if  he  would  obtain  a  commendam  from  the 
king  for  me  to  hold  the  Popedom  at  the  same  time.  But  perhaps  the  popu- 
lar outcry  against  pluralities  may  raise  some  difficulty.  I  begin  to  sicken  of 
Italy  ;  for  five  entire  months  we  have  not  had  rain  enough  to  wash  a 
pocket-handkerchief,  and  no  dew.  Even  the  big  leaves  are  falling  off:  my 
pear-trees  and  peaches  are  withered.  I  shall  lose  nearly  sixty.  The  apri- 
cots stand  it  for  the  present." 

In  the  same  letter  he  sends  word  of  another  consignment  of  pic- 
tures on  their  way  to  his  sisters  and  to  Henry.  The  last  had  been 
most  successful.  Their  thanks  were  profuse  ;  and  his  sister  Elizabeth 
had  described  amusingly  Henry's  enthusiasm,  as  he  knelt  before  the 
virgins  and  children,  no  less  a  picture  than  they.  His  next  letter 
replies  to  questions  they  had  put  to  him  about  the  subjects  and  mas- 
ters that  formed  this  new  present,  which  in  the  interval  had  also 
reached  them. 

NOVEMBER    17,    1834. 

"  You  ask  me  who  Filicaia  is.  Alas,  of  how  little  value  is  Fame !  Words- 
worth says  he  has  written  the  best  ode  in  existence.  A  noble  ode  indeed  it 
is,  on  the  raising  the  siege  of  Vienna  by  John  Sobieski.  It  is  not,  however, 
the  best  in  existence  by  many.  Some  of  Milton's  sonnets,  and  his  Allegro 
and  Penseroso,  are  infinitely  more  vigorous  in  thought  and  fancy.  The 
lady,  half-length,  with  pearls,  &c,  is  Marie  de'  Medici,  and  belonged  to  the 
Medici  family,  with  whom  I  made  the  exchange.  It  is  painted  by  Souter- 
mans,  who  was  considered  in  his  time  as  the  rival  of  Vandyke.  By  the 
by,  the  Lelys  at  Warwick  Castle,  which  are  called  Vandykes,  remind  me 
that  I  saw  Lord  Warwick  in  Florence  a  few  days  ago.  Was  there  ever  so 
great  a  change  in  the  human  countenance  ?  Again  to  the  pictures.  The 
Esther  is  by  the  son  of  Paul  Veronese,  not  by  Paul  himself.  Joseph  hold- 
ing the  infant  Jesus  is  by  Ludovico  Carracci,  the  rarest  of  the  Carracci,  and 
by  much  the  best.  All  these  are  for  you.  The  rest  for  Henry  ;  excepting 
the  two  landscapes  (called  early  ones  by  Rubens),  and  the  Salvator,  the 
fellow  of  which  was  sold  for  sixty  louis,  which  three  are  for  my  cousin  Wal- 
ter. The  two  other  landscapes,  called  by  Rubens,  I  doubt  of;  though  they 
are  very  clear  and  clever  pictures.  The  scene  before  the  door  of  an  inn, 
which  Henry  likes,  is  by  Teniers.  I  requested  him  to  let  me  know  how 
much  room  he  has  left  for  old  pictures ;  I  mean  for  those  painted  before  the 
year  1500.  I  have  many  left ;  and  some  are  much  better  than  those  I  sent 
him,  although  less  curious.  I  have  also  five  more  for  you :  but  they  must  be 
lined  and  cleaned  and  varnished.  The  sun  and  flies  ruin  the  pictures  here, 
and  they  must  all  be  lined  and  cleaned  sooner  or  later." 

This  last  batch  of  pictures,  his  sister  Elizabeth  tells  him  in  reply, 
had  become  quite  "  the  rage  "  at  Warwick,  all  sorts  of  people  flocking 
to  see  them  ;  but  they  and  their  brother  had  not  yet  divided  the 
spoil.  Her  previous  letter  (22d  October),  urgently  pressing  him  to 
pay  them  another  visit  in  the  ensuing  yeai*,  had  given  him  the  melan- 
choly news  that  Southey's  wife  had  become  quite  deranged,  and  was 
placed  in  an  asylum  at  York  ;  but  if  the  details  had  not  appeared  in 
Southe„y's  life,  the  fact  would  not  have  been  mentioned  here. 


4G8  AT    FIESOLE.  '"S^-™ 

NOVEMBER   20,    1834. 

"  I  had  heard  from  Mrs.  Hodgson,  whom  you  remember  as  Margaret 
Ilolt'ord,  the  deplorable  account  of  Mrs.  Southey,  and  it  totally  deprived  mo 
of  rest.  Poor  good  Southey,  what  must  be  his  sufferings!  The  Countess 
von  Schaffgotsche  has  left  us,  and  Julia  has  now  the  governess  of  Mr. 
Collingwood's  daughters,  Miss  D'Arville  ;  she  has  been  with  us  five  months, 
and  we  are  much  pleased  with  her.  Arnold's  German  tutor  has  obtained  a 
good  situation  at  Rome,  and  we  have  engaged  Mr.  M'Carthy,  who  was 
secretary  to  Lord  Wenlock.  Arnold  and  Julia  come  on  prodigiously  in 
German,  and  Arnold  has  the  finest  voice  I  ever  heard.  He  is  more  shy 
than  he  was,  and  has  less  manner;  but  never  was  there  a  more  perfect 
being  in  temper  and  principle.  He  takes  too  little  pains  to  be  pleasing, 
and  yet  he  pleases  everybody.  ...  I  thank  you  for  your  Russian  receipt 
It  appears  the  Russians  make  their  steaks  and  their  wives  tender  by  the  same 
process  (heating  with  a  stick).  I  received  a  letter  last  week  from  my  friend 
Ablett.  He  reminds  me  of  the  promise  I  made  him  to  renew  my  visit  in 
three  years.  Certainly  I  shall  see  you  next  April  or  May.  Julia  will  go 
to  her  mother,  and  take  the  two  youngest.  I  will  make  my  first  visit  to 
you  with  Arnold  and  Julia,  and  after  a  week  or  fortnight  proceed  to  Den- 
bighshire.    I  send  these  verses  for  my  answer." 

The  "  verses  "  were  that  fine  ode  to  Joseph  Ablett  to  be  found  in  the 
collected  works,  which  will  preserve  his  friend's  name  as  long  as  his 
own  survives.  I  give  a  great  part  of  it  here  as  written  in  this  letter, 
because  of  the  many  changes  made  in  it  as  printed,  where  the  open- 
ing stanza  is  enlarged  into  two,  and  the  couplet  on  Coleridge's  death 
is  omitted  altogether.  The  allusion  to  Leigh  Hunt  was  an  after- 
thought, but  sent  in  a  letter  of  only  a  week's  later  date.  A  line 
m'ore  perfect  than  that  upon  Wordsworth  and  Southey, 
"  Serene  creators  of  immortal  things," 

in  which  more  is  said  or  set  to  a  lovelier  music,  hardly  exists  in 
poetry.  It  is  what  Marlowe  called  the  gem  of  peerless  price,  in- 
finite riches  in  a  little  room. 

"  Lord  of  the  lovelv  plain, 
Where  Celtic  Clwyd  runs  to  greet  the  Main, 

How  happy  were  the  hours  that  held 
Thy  friend  (long  absent  from  his  native  home) 
Amid  those  scenes  with  thee!  how  far  afield 

From  all  past  cares  and  all  to  come! 

"  Together  we  hnve  visited  the  men 

Whose  song  Scotch  outcries  vainly  would  have  drowned; 
Ah,  shall  we  ever  grasp  the  hand  again 

That  gave  the  British  harp  its  truest  sound? 
Coleridge  hath  heard  the  call,  and  bathes  in  bliss 
Among  the  spirits  that  have  power  like  his. 
Live,  Derwent's  guest!  and  thou  by  Grasmere  springs! 
Serene  creators  of  immortal  things. 

"  And  live  too  thou  for  happier  days 

Whom  Dryden's  force  and  Spenser's  fays 
Have  heart  and  soul  possest: 

Grow]  in  prim  I don  he  who  will, 

Revisit  thou  Maiano's  hill, 

And  swell  with  pride  his  sunburnt  breast. 


JET.  54-60.]  AGAIN    IN    ITALY.  4G9 

▲     '  Old  Redi  in  his  easy-chair 

With  varied  chant  awaits  thee  there, 

And  here  are  voices  in  the  grove 
Aside  my  house,  that  make  me  think 
Bacchus  is  coming  down  to  drink 

To  Ariadne's  love. 

I  never  courted  friends  or  Fame ; 
She  pouted  at  me  long,  at  last  she  came, 
And  threw  her  arms  around  my  neck  and  said, 
1  Take  what  hath  been  for  years  delayed, 
And  fear  not  that  the  leaves  will  fall 
One  hour  the  earlier  from  thy  coronal.' 

"  Ablett !  thou  knowest  with  what  even  hand 
I  waved  away  the  offered  seat 
Among  the  clambering,  clattering,  stilted  great, 
The  rulers  of  our  land; 
Nor  crowds  nor  kings  can  lift  me  up, 
Nor  sweeten  Pleasure's  purer  cup. 

"  Thou  knowest  how,  and  why,  are  dear  to  me 
My  citron  groves  of  Fiesole. 

Here  can  I  sit  or  roam  at  will; 

Few  trouble  me,  few  wish  me  ill, 
Few  come  across  me,  few  too  near; 

Here  all  my  wishes  make  their  stand; 

Here  ask  I  no  one's  voice  or  hand; 
Scornful  of  favor,  ignorant  of  fear. 

Behold  our  Earth,  most  nigh  the  sun 
Her  zone  least  opens  to  the  genial  heat, 

But  farther  off  her  veins  more  freely  run: 
'T  is  thus  with  those  who  whirl  about  the  great; 

The  nearest  shrink  and  shiver;  we  remote 

May  open-breasted  blow  the  pastoral  oat." 

On  the  26th  of  January,  1835,  he  wrote  again  to  his  sisters,  very 
anxious  about  Ellen's  health,  as  to  which  ill  report  had  reached  him, 
and  promising  Henry  at  least  twenty  more  pictures,  most  of  them 
greatly  better  than  the  first,  and  quite  as  curious,  "  excepting  the 
Cimabues,  which  nobody  else  possesses,  I  mean  no  private  man." 
Its  opening  allusion  is  to  some  Warwick  friends  he  had  called  upon. 

January  26,   1835. 

"  The  next  morning  our  minister,  George  Seymour,  came  to  see  me,  and 
I  desired  him  to  present  them  at  Court,  when  she  finds  herself  strong 
enough  for  giving  parties.  He  will  show  them  every  possible  attention.  I 
never  knew  a  man  I  liked  better  than  Seymour,  and  his  friendship  for  me 
is  equal  to  my  regard  for  him.  And  now  I  must  tell  you  that  that  wicked 
book  about  Shakespeare  has  called  forth  the  most  eloquent  piece  of  criticism 
in  our  lan^rua^e.  You  will  find  it  in  the  Examiner.  Let  me  recommend  to 
you  Leigh  Hunt's  London  Journal,  three  halfpence  a  week.  It  contains 
neither  politics  nor  scandal,  but  very  delightful  things  in  every  department 
of  graceful  literature.  It  has  copied,  I  hear,  word  for  word,  the  splendid 
eulogy  of  the  Examiner,  in  its  38th  number  of  December  17.  I  intend  to 
send  for  this  paper  from  its  commencement.  I  am  sorry  to  hear  of  Charles 
LamVs  death.     If  you  have  not  read  the  Essays  of  Elia,  pray  send  for 


470  AT    FIESOLE.  *%%!£' 

them.  I  did  hope  to  see  once  more  both  him  ami  poor  Coler^ge.  I  have 
addressed  some  lines  to  his  sister,  whose  affecting  history  I  will  tell  you 
some  day. 

Comfort  thee,  0  thou  mourner,  yet  awhile ! 

Again  shall  Elia's  -mile 
Refresh  thy  heart,  where  heart  can  ache  no  more. 
What  is  it  we  deplore  ? 

He  leaves  behind  him,  freed  from  griefs  and  years, 

Far  worthier  things  than  tear-: 
The  love  of  friends  without  a  single  foe; 

Unequalled  lot  below !  .  .  . 

Are  not  his  footsteps  followed  by  the  eyes 

Of  all  the  good  and  wise? 
Though  the  warm  day  is  over,  yet  they  seek 

Upon  the  lofty  peak 

Of  his  pure  mind  the  roseate  light  that  glows 

O'er  death's  perennial  snows. 
Behold  him!  from  the  region  of  the  blest 

He  speaks :  he  bids  thee  rest. 

And  now  I  must  transcribe  for  you  some  verses  written  on  my  Carlino  by 
Mr.  Milnes." 

Being  already  in  type,  they  may  be  omitted  here.  Addressed  "to 
a  child  with  black  eyes  and  golden  hair,"  they  stand  first  in  Mr. 
Milnes's  Poems  of  many  Years  ;  and,  with  others  to  Landor's  second 
son  in  the  Memorials  of  a  Residence  on  the  Continent,  under  the  date 
of  "  Fiesole,  1833,"  they  commemorate  the  introduction  to  Landor 
in  that  year  of  one  who  held  always  afterwards  a  high  place  among 
his  friends.  The  very  last  of  Landor's  letters  from  Italy  to  Southey 
was  brought  over  in  1835  by  Mr.  Milnes,  whom  it  introduced  to  the 
laureate  ;  and  one  of  the  last  received  in  Italy  by  Landor,  also  a 
letter  of  introduction  for  a  young  poet,  was  taken  over  to  him  by 
Mr.  Swinburne  from  Lord  Houghton  after  nearly  thirty  years.  Their 
friendship  during  the  interval  had  been  uninterrupted. 

To  this  date  belongs  also  the  personal  knowledge  of  Emerson, 
which  Landor  valued  as  a  compliment  worthy  to  have  received. 
"  You  will  hardly  remember  my  name,"  wrote  Emerson  to  him  three 
years  later,  "  and  I  will  therefore  remind  you  that  in  the  spring  of 
1833  I  was  indebted  to  your  hospitality  and  courtesy  at  Florence,  as 
I  had  already  been,  and  shall  always  be,  to  your  wisdom."  This  let- 
ter accompanied  some  books  which  Mr.  Charles  Sumner  had  brought 
with  him  to  England  in  1837,  as  an  acknowledgment  of  the  "  de- 
light  and  instruction  "  derived  from  the  Imaginary  Conversations. 

From  the  American  sculptor  Greenough,  himself  a  man  of  genius, 
Emerson  had  received,  through  a  common  friend,  Landor's  invitation 
to  San  Domenica  <li  Fiesole  ;  and  on  the  15th  of  May  he  went  up  to 
dine  with  him.  "  1  found  him  noble  and  courteous,  living  in  a  cloud 
of  pictures  at  his  villa  Gherardescha,  a  fine  house  commanding  a 
beautiful  landscape.  I  had  inferred  from  his  books,  or  magnified 
from  some  anecdotes,  an  impression   of  Achillean  wrath,  —  an    un- 


JET.  54-60.]  AGAIN    IN    ITALY.  471 

tamable  petulance.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  imputation  were 
just  or  not,  but  certainly  on  this  May  day  his  courtesy  veiled  that 
haughty  mind,  and  he  was  the  most  patient  and  gentle  of  hosts." 
Emerson  proceeds  to  hint  at  some  of  their  talk,  from  which  one  is 
prepared  to  find  that  Landor  produced  on  his  American  admirer  the 
effect  of  a  man  decided  in  his  opinions,  rather  liking  to  surprise,  and 
well  content  to  impress,  if  possible,  his  English  whim  upon  even  the 
immutable  past.  "  No  great  man  ever  had  a  great  son,  if  Philip  and 
Alexander  be  not  an  exception  ;  and  Philip  he  calls  the  greater  man. 
In  art  he  loves  the  Greeks,  and  in  sculpture  them  only.  He  prefers 
the  Venus  to  everything  else,  and,  after  that,  the  head  of  Alexander  in 
the  gallery  here.  He  prefers  John  of  Bologna  to  Michael  Angelo  ;  in 
painting,  Raffaelle  ;  and  shares  the  growing  taste  for  Perugino  and 
the  early  masters.  The  Greek  histories  he  thought  the  only  good, 
and  after  them  Voltaire's.  I  could  not  make  him  praise  Mackintosh, 
nor  my  more  recent  friends  ;  but  Montaigne  very  cordially,  and  Char- 
ron  also,  which  seemed  indiscriminating."  He  appears  to  have  talked, 
too,  of  Wordsworth,  Byron,  Massinger,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher ;  to 
have  lauded  Southey,  somewhat  to  the  impatience  of  his  visitor ;  to 
have  expressed  great  admiration  for  Washington  ;  and  to  have  praised 
the  beautiful  cyclamen  which  grows  all  about  Florence. 

A  second  time  Emerson  shared  the  hospitality  of  the  villa,  and 
this  time  Greenough  accompanied  him,  when  Landor  entertained 
them  by  reciting  at  once  half  a  dozen  hexameter  lines  of  Julius 
Caesar's  !  from  Donatus,  he  said.  "  He  glorified  Lord  Chesterfield 
more  than  was  necessary,  and  undervalued  Burke,  and  undervalued 
Socrates ;  designated  as  three  of  the  greatest  of  men,  Washington, 
Phocion,  and  Timoleon ;  and  did  not  even  forget  to  remark  the 
similar  termination  of  their  names.  A  great  man,  he  said,  should 
make  great  sacrifices,  and  kill  his  hundred  oxen  without  knowing 
whether  they  would  be  consumed  by  gods  and  heroes,  or  whether 
the  flies  would  eat  them."  Emerson  had  seen  some  wonderful  micro- 
scopes in  Florence,  and  spoke  of  the  uses  to  which  they  were  ap- 
plied ;  but  he  found  that  "  Landor  despised  entomology,  yet  in  the 
same  breath  said  the  sublime  ivas  in  a  grain  of  dust "  :  which  antici- 
pated the  fine  saying  by  Herschel  about  the  microscope  and  telescope 
being  explorers  of  the  infinite  "  in  both  directions."  Emerson  adds 
to  these  notices  of  Landor's  talk,  after  mentioning  one  of  his  rooms 
filled  with  pictures,  that  he  had  been  more  curious  to  see  his  library ; 
but  that  one  of  the  guests  at  the  dinner  told  him  Landor  gave  away 
all  his  books,  and  had  never  more  than  a  dozen  at  a  time  in  his  house. 
Which  indeed  was  perfectly  true. 

The  sum  of  Mr.  Emerson's  impressions  of  the  famous  Englishman, 
one  of  the  three  or  four  he  had  come  so  far  to  see,  written  thirteen 
years  after  they  thus  had  met,  shall  be  given  in'his  own  words.  "  Mr. 
Landor  carries  to  its  height  the  love  of  freak  which  the  English  de- 
light to  indulge,  as  if  to  signalize  their  commanding  freedom.     He 


472  AT   FIESOLE.  ^^ 

has  a  wonderful  brain,  despotic,  violent,  and  inexhaustible,  meant  for 
a  soldier,  by  some  chance  converted  to  letters,  in  which  there  is  not 
a  style  nor  a  tint  not  known  to  him,  yet  with  an  English  appetite  for 
action  and  heroes.  The  thing  done  avails,  and  not  what  is  said  about 
it.  An  original  sentence,  a  step  forward,  is  worth  more  than  all  the 
censures.  Landor  is  strangely  undervalued  in  England ;  usually 
ignored ;  and  sometimes  savagely  attacked  in  the  reviews.  The 
criticism  may  be  right  or  wrong,  and  is  quickly  forgotten ;  but  year 
after  year  the  scholar  must  still  go  back  to  Landor  for  multitudes  of 
elegant  sentences,  for  wisdom,  wit,  and  indignation  that  are  unfor- 
getable. " 

A  sudden  departure  of  some  friends  whom  he  wished  to  accompany 
to  Venice  took  Emerson  away  from  Florence  at  the  close  of  May,  and 
compelled  him  to  say  adieu  to  Landor  by  letter  instead  of  in  person. 
The  letter  thanked  him  earnestly  for  his  ready  hospitality  to  a  stran- 
ger, and  took  occasion  "  at  the  same  time  again  to  acknowledge  a  very 
deep  debt  of  pleasure  and  instruction  to  the  author  of  the  Imaginary 
Conversations." 

Nearly  twenty  years  later,  when  Landor  had  his  home  in  Bath, 
and  while  the  Exhibition  of  '51  was  bringing  all  the  world  to  London, 
he  was  reminded  by  the  American  sculptor  who  thus  visited  him  with 
Emerson  of  one  subject  that  had  arisen  in  their  conversation  under 
his  "  fig-trees  on  the  southern  slope  of  the  Fiesolan  hills,"  not  in- 
cluded in  his  countryman's  recollections.  Looking  down  on  the  little 
village  where  Michael  Angelo  was  born,  they  had  spoken  of  the  kind 
of  art  that  the  Tuscan  princes  had  chosen  chiefly  to  encourage  in 
Florence,  since  the  date  when  the  founder  of  the  monarchy  entered 
as  prince,  and  Michael  Angelo  went  out  as  exile.  This  was  the  art 
of  mosaic  :  the  school  for  fashioning  "  piebald  mineralogical  specimens 
into  a  greater  or  less  resemblance  of  fruits,  flowers,  and  landscapes  "  ; 
which  had  flourished  while  Giotto  was  overlaid  with  whitewash  and 
Leonardo  and  Raffaelle  were  carried  off  by  strangers  from  their  native 
cities  ;  and  which  had  dared  at  last  to  rear,  by  the  very  side  of  the  tombs 
of  Giuliano  and  Lorenzo,  the  so-named  (and  well-named)  Chapel  of  the 
Princes,  all  whose  ornaments  were  the  products  of  its  Chinese  indus- 
try and  Turkish  taste.  Mr.  Greenough  reminded  Landor  of  a  re- 
mark he  had  made  upon  their  having  with  such  gewgaws  brushed  the 
very  beard  of  the  sculptor  of  Moses,  that  it  was  "  as  if  a  fellow  in  a 
laced  coat  should  start  up  to  claim  attention  where  Csesar  was  and 
was  speaking"  ;  and  what  now  would  he  say  to  the  production  that 
had  been  sent  over  from  Florence  to  represent  the  birthplace  of 
Buonarotti  at  the  world's  fair,  which  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  a 
table  in  pietra  dura  that  had  cost  a  hundred  thousand  francesconi,  or, 
in  other  words,  a  day's  work  of  four  hundred  thousand  Tuscans  !  "  I 
cannot  but  think,"  was  Greenough's  appeal  to  Landor,  "that  such 
stolid  impertinence  as  this  calls  for  justice  at  your  hand.  I  know  no 
one  else  who   unites  the  knowledge  and  feeling  necessary  to  judge 


JET.  54-60.]  AGAIN    IN    ITALY.  473 

them,  with  the  vigor  and  mastery  required  for  their  execution.  I 
pray  you,  sir,  as  you  look  upon  that  table,  to  reflect  upon  the  size  of 
the  Grand  Duchy,  the  aptitude  of  its  children  for  the  nobler  develop- 
ment of  art,  the  numbers  devoted  to  its  cultivation  here,  their  pitia- 
ble poverty ;  and  I  am  sure  that  you  will  deal  with  the  wrong  accord- 
ing to  its  deserts.  The  classic  scourge  of  your  Latin  hexameters,  or 
the  English  whip  bequeathed  you  by  the  Dean,  either  of  these,  or 
both,  may  do  somewhat,  as  well  in  your  country  as  in  mine,  to  check 
ostentatious  barbarism  ;  may  show  that  genius  and  sentiment  can  con- 
vert all  stone  to  precious  stone ;  while  the  obscure  diligence  of  years, 
uninformed  by  art,  makes  but  a  monument  of  laborious  idleness."  * 

Landor  had  indorsed  this  passage  of  the  letter  with  a  character- 
istic approval  which  its  closing  sentence  not  less  deserved.  It  spoke 
of  the  fame  which  Emerson  had  justly  won  since  the  days  in  which 
they  had  met  at  Fiesole,  and  hinted  at  the  only  disadvantage  under 
which  the  wealth  of  his  genius  placed  him,  of  using  often  language 
so  weighted  with  meaning  as  necessarily  to  express  of  any  given  thing 
more  than  he  could  by  any  possibility  see  in  it.  "  Perhaps  Emerson 
is  greedy  in  this  way  sometimes,  but  still  '  they  be  prave  'ords.'  I 
am  sure  that  the  Greek  statues,  though  they  are  not  tormented  by 
an  ambition  to  say  all,  yet  include  all ;  and  I  remember  having  heard 
you  remark,  in  my  workroom,  that  their  writers,  too,  were  as  profound 
in  fixing  the  limits  of  their  art." 

Landor  had  also  objections  of  his  own  to  state  to  the  "  brave  words  " 
of  the  great  American,  when,  two  or  three  years  after  Greenough's 
letter  was  written,  Emerson  published  his  description  of  the  meeting  at 
Fiesole  ;  and  to  begin  with,  he  protested  that  the  short  conversations 
held  at  his  Tuscan  villa  were  insufficient  for  an  estimate  of  his  char- 
acter and  opinions.  But  one  does  not  assume  to  give  a  man's  char- 
acter in  putting  forth  a  few  of  his  sayings,  although  in  one  or  two 
recorded  by  Emerson,  such  as  the  preference  of  Giovanni  da  Bologna 
over  Michael  Angelo,  there  was  perhaps  more  character  than  either 
sayer  or  listener  knew  at  the  time.  To  an  outbreak  of  spleen  at  a 
neighbor  resident  in  Fiesole  whom  Landor  had  quarrelled  with,  and 
who  claimed  to  be  Michael  Angelo's  descendant,  the  sculptor  of  Bo- 
logna owed  that  momentary  elevation.  It  did  not  last  even  as  long 
as  the  trumpery  quarrel ;  for  Landor's  heaviest  blow  against  the 
offended  Italian  was  delivered  afterwards  under  cover  of  the  immeas- 
urable supremacy  of  his  ancestor.  "  Deplorable,"  he  then  exclaimed, 
"  that  the  inheritor  of  his  house  and  name  should  be  so  vile  a  syco- 
phant that  even  the  blast  of  Michael's  trumpet  could  not  rouse  his 
abject  soul !"  Assuredly  this  trumpet  was  not  one  that  to  Landor 
at  any  time  gave  an  uncertain  sound.  He  objected,  now  and  then  ; 
I  have  even  heard  him  so  irreverent  as  to  compare  a  famous  painting 
in  the  Sistine  Chapel  to  a  prodigous  giblet-pie  ;  but  he  never  really 
faltered  in  his  allegiance  to  the  greatest  master  of  Italian  art. 

*  Letter  dated,  "  Florence,  March  28th,  1851." 


471  '  AT   FIESOLE.  V-g 

Another  of  his  compluints  was  that  Emerson  should  have  ascribed 
to  him  the  Baying  that  the  Greek  historians  were  the  only  good  ones. 
He  did  not  think  so.  Davila,  Macchiavelli,  Voltaire,  Michelet,  had 
afforded  him  much  instruction  and  much  delight ;  Gibbon  he  held  to 
be  worthy  of  a  name  among  the  most  enlightened  and  eloquent  of 
the  ancients  ;  and  he  gloried  in  his  friend  and  countryman  William 
Napier,  who  had  balanced  with  an  equal  hand  Napoleon  and  Welling- 
ton. He  claimed  also  not  to  have  been  so  indiscriminating  as  Emer- 
son supposed  in  his  judgment  of  Charron.  He  had  not  compared 
him  with  Montaigne,  but  he  had  found  wisdom  in  him,  and,  what  was 
rare,  sincerity.  While  he  admitted  that  he  did  not  like  Mackintosh, 
he  yet  professed  (with  perfect  truth)  to  be  more  addicted  to  praise 
than  to  censure  ;  claiming  in  this  to  be  unlike  the  English  in  general, 
who  were  as  fierce  partisans  in  literary  as  in  parliamentary  elections, 
and  as  ready  to  cheer  as  to  jostle  a  candidate  of  whom  in  actual  truth 
they  knew  nothing.  Of  both  parties  in  politics  he  had  always  kept 
himself  clear,  possessing  votes  in  four  counties  without  ever  giving 
one  ;  and  in  the  turbulent  contest  for  literary  honors  he  had  not 
been  less  abstinent.  In  short  (as  he  almost  always  ended  such  per- 
sonal confessions),  he  had  never  envied  any  man  anything  but  waltz- 
ing, for  which  he  would  have  given  all  the  acquirements  he  had  ;  and 
he  had  not  failed  in  this  because  he  Mas  inactive,  or  not  accurate  of 
ear,  but  because  he  was  ashamed,  or  rather  shamefaced. 

Socrates  he  had  never  undervalued.  Incomparably  the  cleverest 
of  all  the  sophists,  he  had  turned  them  all  into  ridicule  ;  and  for  this 
he  honored  him,  though  as  a  philosopher  he  counted  him  inferior  to 
Epicurus  and  Epictetus.  He  did  not  despise  entomology,  but  was 
only  ignorant  of  it  ;  as  indeed  he  was  of  almost  all  science ;  loving 
also  flowers  and  plants,  but  knowing  less  about  them  than  is  known 
by  a  beetle  or  a  butterfly.  He  had  no  disposition  to  glorify  Chester- 
field, though  he  thought  him  one  of  the  best  of  our  writers  in  regard 
to  style  ;  but  only  to  put  in  a  word  in  defence  of  his  Letters,  as  to 
which  lie  alleged  the  authority  of  the  son  of  Beresford,  Archbishop 
of  Tuam,  for  the  statement  that  that  most  reverend  person  had 
placed  them  in  the  hands  of  his  daughter.  A  polished  courtier  and 
a  virtuous  prelate  knew  their  value  ;  and  for  his  own  part  he  thought 
that  perhaps  the  neglect  of  them  in  modern  days  was  one  reason 
why  a  gentleman  was  become  almost  as  rare  as  a  man  of  genius. 

What  most  had  nettled  him  in  Emerson's  book,  however,  was  not 
the  report  of  any  saying  of  his  own,  but  a  remark  upon  him  made 
by  Carl  vie.  "  Landor's  principle  is  mere  rebellion."  He  maintained 
that  quite  the  contrary  was  apparent  and  prominent  in  many  of  his 
writings.  He  had  always  been  conservative;  but  he  had  the  eager 
wish,  wherever  evil  of  any  kind  presented  itself,  political,  moral,  or 
religious,  to  eradicate  it  straightway,  without  reference  to  the  old 
blockhead  cry  of  what  was  to  be  substituted  in  its  place.  When 
docks  or  thistles  were  plucked  up,  was  any  such  question  asked1?     "I 


MT.  54-60.]  AGAIN    IN    ITALY.  .  475 

have  said  plainly,  more  than  once,  and  in  many  quarters,  that  I  would 
not  alter,  or  greatly  modify,  the  English  constitution."  He  had  no 
fondness  for  mere  innovation.  Whatever  is  changed  should  rest,  if 
possible,  on  what  has  been  tried.  A  foundation,  if  ever  solid,  was 
the  more  solid  the  longer  it  had  stood.  It  was  because  he  approved 
of  the  hereditary  character  of  the  bulk  of  the  House  of  Lords  that  he 
would  have  a  better  sort  of  life-peers  introduced  into  it  than  were 
there  at  present ;  for  he  thought  it  the  worst  place  in  the  world  to 
put  a  bishop  in,  and  would  send  a  beadle  after  every  overlooker  that 
left  his  diocese,  except  on  service  for  the  head  of  the  church,  his  sov- 
ereign. As  to  such  royal  service,  too,  when  rendered  by  the  higher 
nobility,  he  would  not  have  them  paid  for  it  as  menials  are  paid  :  he 
had  too  much  respect  for  the  order.  Not  that  he  included  in  this 
order  the  peerage  alone.  Among  the  country  gentlemen  of  England 
were  men  whose  ancestors  were  noble  when  the  ancestors  of  half  the 
peerage  were  nothing  better  than  serfs. 

Thus  he   came   by  degrees   to  the   avowal   of  a  republicanism  in 
which  he  recognized  authority,  as  opposed  to  that  mere  democracy 
which  he  admitted   to   be  "  the  principle  of  rebellion."     His  views 
were  not  such  as  to  propitiate  either  Carlyle  or  Emerson,  but  have 
an  interest  for  us  here.     He   did  not  believe  that  we  should  rest 
where  we   are  ;  and  was  equally  uncertain,  when  Enceladus  should 
have  shaken   his   shoulder  and  turned  his  side,  whether  we  should 
then  rest  long.     Democracy  as  it  existed  in  America  he  declared  to 
be  his  abhorrence.     Lax  and  disjointed,  it  always  wore  out  the  ma- 
chine.    Republicanism  was  quite  otherwise  ;  but,  alas,  where  did  it 
now  exist  1     Few  had  been  the  nations  capable  of  receiving,  fewer  of 
retaining,  that  pure  and   efficient  form.     The  nations  on  the  Ebro 
and  the  mountaineers  of  Biscay  had  enjoyed  it  substantially  for  cen- 
tury   after   century.     Holland,    Ragusa,    Genoa,   Venice,    had    been 
deprived  of  it  by  that  Holy  Alliance  whose  influence  had  withered  the 
Continent,  and  changed  even  the  features  of  England.     One  of  the 
worst  of  public  calamities,  in  Landor's  opinion,  was  the  overthrow  of 
the  Venetian  republic.     Then  was  swept  away  the  oldest  and  truest 
nobility  in  the  world.     "  How  happy  were  the  Venetian  states  gov- 
erned for  a  thousand  years  by  the  brave  and  intelligent  gentlemen 
of  the  island  city  !     All  who   did  not   conspire  against   its  security 
were  secure.     Look  at  the  palaces  they  erected.     Look  at  the  arts 
they  cultivated.     And  look  now  at  their  damp  and  decaying  walls." 
But  at  this  point  he  checked   himself.     The  disbelief  he  indulged, 
while  yet  resident    in  Italy,  in  all   hope   for   Italian   regeneration,* 
was  replaced  by  a  better  faith  but  a  few  years  after  his  return  to 
England  ;  and  it  had  become  his  conviction,  when  he  thus  remarked 
on  Emerson's  notices  of  Fiesole,  that  even  within  the  damp  and  de- 
caying walls   of  Venice  lay  the   pledge   of  her  ultimate   restoration. 
"  Enter  :  and  there  behold  such  countenances  as  you  will  never  see 

*  Ante,  p.  456. 


47G  AT   FIESOLE.  ;  VI" 

1629 -3j. 

elsewhere.  These  are  not  among  the  creatures  'whom  God  will  per- 
mit any  deluge  to  sweep  away.  Heretofore  a  better  race  of  beings 
has  uniformly  succeeded  to  a  viler,  though  a  vaster  ;  and  it  will  be 
so  again."  The  several  races  of  Italians  had  but  to  compose  their 
petty  differences,  quell  their  discordances,  stand  united,  and  strike 
high.  Miles,  faciem  feri,  he  reminded  them,  was  the  cry  of  the 
wisest  and  most  valiant  of  the  Roman  race. 

All  this  has  carried  us  somewhat  out  of  date  ;  but  the  final  refer- 
ence I  have  to  make  to  Emerson  will  bring  us  back  to  the  exact  time 
at  which  my  narrative  had  arrived  :  that  of  Landor's  closing  days  in 
Fiesole.  He  was  not  displeased  that  Emerson  should  have  noted  in 
him,  at  that  early  time,  a  taste  for  the  pre-Raffaellite  painters  of  Italy, 
and  he  described  the  ignorance  of  them  among  the  Italians  tbem- 
selves  to  be  such  that  he  was  reckoned  a  madman  for  indulging  his 
taste.  He  met  a  tailor  one  day  with  two  small  canvases  under  his 
arm,  and  two  others  in  his  hands  ;  he  had  given  a  few  paoli  for  them ; 
and,  when  offered  as  many  francesconi  for  his  bargain,  he  thought 
the  English  signor  must  be  fairly  out  of  his  wits.  "  I  was  thought  a 
madman,  too,"  continued  Landor,  "as  I  sat  under  the  shade  of  a 
vast  old  fig-tree,  while  about  twenty  laborers  were  extirpating  three 
or  four  acres  of  vines  and  olives  in  order  to  make  somewhat  like 
a  meadow  before  my  windows.  Matti  sono  tuiti  gli  Inglesi,  via  questo 
poi  .  .  followed  by  a  shrug  and  an  aposiopesis." 

He  might  so  have  been  engaged  when,  in  the  early  spring  of  1834, 
he  received  a  visit  from  another  American  as  little  famous  at  the 
time  as  his  former  American  visitor  had  been,  but  reserved  for  a 
future  fame  altogether  different  from  Emerson's.  This  was  Mr.  N.  P. 
"Willis,  whose  fuss  and  fury  of  boundless  hero-worship  found  in  Landor 
an  easy  victim.  I  shall  make  my  allusion  to  him  as  brief  as  possible. 
Upon  quitting  Florence,  after  receiving  much  hospitality  at  the  villa, 
he  took  with  him  the  manuscript  of  a  new  book  by  Landor,  which, 
with  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Lady  Blessington,  who  had  now  taken 
up  her  residence  in  London,  he  was  to  deliver  on  his  arrival  there ; 
and  lie  carried  off  with  him  at  the  same  time  not  only  the  author's 
copy,  interleaved  and  enlarged,  of  all  the  published  volumes  of  the 
Conversations,  but  also  the  manuscript  of  that  additional  unpublished 
volume  of  which  already  I  have  described  the  subjects  and  sneakers; 
both  being  designed  for  publication,  not  in  England  but  America. 
Landor's  own  account  may  be  quoted.  "At  this  time  an  American 
traveller  passed  through  Tuscany,  and  favored  me  with  a  visit  at  my 
country-seat.  He  expressed  a  wish  to  reprint  in  America  a  huge 
selection  of  my  Imaginary  Conversations,  omitting  the  political.  He 
assured  me  they  were  the  most  thumbed  hooks  on  his  table.  "W  ith  a 
smile  at  so  energetic  an  expression  of  perhaps  an  undesirable  dis- 
tinction, I  offered  him  unreservedly  and  unconditionally  my  only  copy 
of  the  five  printed  volumes,  interlined  and  interleaved  in  most  places, 
which  I  had   employed  several  years   in   improving  and    enlarging, 


MT.  54-60.]  EXAMINATION    OF    SHAKESPEARE.  477 

together  with  my  manuscript  of  the  sixth,  unpublished.  He  wrote 
to  me  on  his  arrival  in  England,  telling  me  that  they  were  already  on 
their  voyage  to  their  destination."  They  had  sailed  from  Leghorn, 
and  the  sequel  of  their  adventures  will  shortly  be  stated. 

A  few  lines  from  a  letter  (9th  June,  1834)  from  Lady  Blessington 
to  Landor  will  tell  us  meanwhile  of  the  other  packet  also  taken 
charge  of  by  the  traveller.  "  I  have  received  your  manuscript,  and 
am  delighted  with  it.  Mr.  Willis  delivered  it  to  me  with  your  letter, 
and  I  endeavored  to  show  him  all  the  civility  in  my  power,  in  honor 
of  his  recommendation."  The  manuscript  was  the  book  about  Shake- 
speare, of  which  we  have  seen  mention  in  the  family  letters  from  time 
to  time,  as  "  curious  "  and  even  "  wicked  "  ;  which  was  published  in 
London  in  the  autumn  of  1834  ;  and  of  which  some  account  is  now 
due  from  me. 


VII.     EXAMINATION  OF   SHAKESPEARE  FOR  DEER-STEALING. 

The  letter  in  the  foregoing  section  dated  at  the  close  of  January, 
1835,  is  the  last  which  Landor  wrote  to  his  sisters  from  Italy  ;  and  I 
have  retained  in  it  an  allusion  quite  undeserved  to  a  youthful  criti- 
cism of  mine  upon  the  Shakespeare  book,  because  it  led  to  our 
acquaintance  not  many  weeks  after  his  arrival  in  England.  The 
opinion  then  formed  of  that  book  I  retain  unaltered.  One  of  the 
last  things  said  to  me  by  Charles  Lamb,  a  week  or  two  before  his 
death,  was  that  only  two  men  could  have  written  the  Examination 
of  Shakespeare,  —  he  who  wrote  it,  and  the  man  it  was  written  on ; 
and  that  is  exactly  what  I  think. 

Landor's  first  notice  of  it  to  Lady  Blessington  had  been  in  a  letter 
of  the  previous  April,  in  which,  after  mentioning  that  he  had  for 
some  time  been  composing  The  Citation  and  Examination  of  William 
Shakespeare,  Euseby  Treen,  Joseph  Carnaby,  and  Silas  Gough,  Clerk, 
before  the  Worshipful  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  Knight,  touching  Deer-Stealing 
on  the  l^th  Day  of  September,  in  the  Year  of  Grace  1582,  noiv  first  pub- 
lished from  Original  Papers,  he  added,  "  This  is  full  of  fun  ;  I  know 
not  whether  of  wit.  It  is  the  only  thing  I  ever  wrote  that  is  likely 
to  sell."  This  was  a  hint  to  his  friend  that  she  was  to  get  him  some 
money  for  it,  which  indeed  he  had  already  promised,  with  unquenched 
ardor  of  hope  and  all  his  old  splendor  of  beneficence,  to  a  school- 
fellow in  distress.*  But  by  the  time  Lady  Blessington  wrote  back  to 
him  that  she  could  by  no  means  get  money  for  the  anonymous  venture 
(the  joke  of  the  "  original  papers  "  turning  of  course  on  the  reality 
of  Mr.  Ephraim  Barnett,  their  editor  and  reporter),  Landor  had  dis- 
covered gaming  to  be  the  cause  of  his  school-fellow's  distress,  and  no 
longer  cared  to  get  money  for  him.  "  Had  he  even  tried  but  a  trifle 
of  assassination,  I  should  have  felt  for  him ;  or,  in  fact,  had  he  done 
almost  anything  else.     But  to  rely  on  superior  skill  in  spoliation  is 

*  See  ante,  p.  302. 


478  AT   FIESOLE.  ^aS-i?' 

less  pardonable  than  to  rely  on  superior  courage,  or  than  to  avenge 
an  affront  in  a  sudden  and  summary  way."  Just  as  content,  there- 
fore, to  pay  for  printing  as  to  be  paid  for  printing,  his  book  crept  into 
the  world  unrecompensed  and  unannounced  in  the  autumn  of  1834. 

1  did  my  best  then  to  draw  attention  to  it ;  but  the  popularity  of 
the  subject  has  not  made  it  an  exception  to  Landor*s  works  in  gen- 
eral, and  what  has  been  done  for  them  remains  here  also  necessary. 
I  will  show  briefly  its  plan;  and  very  insufficiently,  by  such  passages 
as  can  be  taken  without  impairment  of  their  beauty,  something  of  its 
manner  also.  But  I  have  no  hope  of  conveying  an  approximate  im- 
pression of  what  the  book  really  is.  Even  if  its  richness  of  humor 
could  Vie  shown,  the  variety  of  its  wit,  and  wdiat  it  presents  of  a  very 
rare  union  of  the  higher  order  of  imagination  to  pathos  as  well  as 
character  of  the  simplest  kind,  there  would  be  something  beyond  all 
this,  untold  and  still  to  be  discovered.  As  Marlowe  defied  the  com- 
bined powers  of  the  poets  to  do  justice  to  the  face  of  his  mistress, 
for  that  the  highest  reaches  of  a  human  wit  might  be  attained  by 
them,  and 

"Yet  should  there  hover  in  their  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder  at  the  best 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest  "; 

so  one  finds  here.  There  is  a  subtlety  of  genius  as  of  beauty  that 
escapes  when  we  would  fix  the  expression  of  any  special  charm  :  but  at 
least  one  thing  can  be  truly  said  of  it,  that  with  it.s  very  grain  and 
tissue  there  is  interwoven  a  purpose  profoundly  human.  It  is  a  book 
steeped  in  the  deepest  waters  of  humanity.  It  would  have  been 
characterized  as  gentle  when  the  word  meant  all  that  is  noble  as  well 
as  mild  and  wise.  There  has  been  nothing  written  about  Shake- 
speare so  worthy  of  surviving  ;  and  whatever  becomes  of  it  now,  its 
final  place  will  probably  be  found  near  that  loved  and  everlasting 
name. 

Its  plan  is  the  simplest  possible.  Excepting  the  justice  and  the 
culprit,  the  only  persons  present  at  the  examination  arc  the  justice's 
chaplain  Sir  Silas  Gough,  his  clerk  Mr.  Ephraim  Harnett  who  reports 
it,  and  the  two  countrymen  who  watched  Shakespeare  and  his  fellows 
in  the  forest  and  give  evidence  of  the  offence,  Joseph  Carnaby  and 
Euseby  Treen.  It  is  an  hour  before  noontide  in  the  great  hall  at 
Charlecote,  and  the  case  is  proceeding  as  an  ordinary  sessions  matter, 
when  suddenly,  one  hardly  discovers  how,  the  offence  of  the  culprit 
has  become  nothing,  and  the  culprit  himself  everything  :  for  jusi 
chaplain,  witnesses,  reporter,  all  without  seeming  to  intend  it.  are 
adding  only  in  their  several  ways  to  the  interest  he  has  contrived  to 
awaken  ;  and  even  the  anger  of  the  worshipful  knight,  which  had 
fallen  heavily  on  him  at  first  for  his  girdings  at  the  chaplain,  only 
succeeds  in  so  finding  utterance  as  to  foreshadow  something  humor- 
ously different.  "  Young  man,  I  perceive  that  if  I  do  not  stop  thee 
in  thy  courses,  thy  name,  being  involved  in  thy  company's,  may  one 


JET.  54-60.]  EXAMINATION    OF    SHAKESPEARE.  479 

day  or  other  reach  across  the  county  ;  and  folks  may  handle  it  and 
turn  it  about,  as  it  deserveth,  from  Coleshill  to  Nuneaton,  from 
Bromwichain  to  Brownsover.  And  who  knoweth  but  that,  years  after 
thy  death,  the  very  house  wherein  thou  wert  born  may  be  pointed  at 
and  commented  on  by  knots  of  people,  gentle  and  simple  !  What  a 
shame  for  an  honest  man's  son  !  .  .  .  But  with  God's  blessing  the 
hundred  shall  be  rid  of  thee,  nay  the  whole  shire.  We  will  have 
none  such  in  our  county  :  we  justices  are  agreed  upon  it,  and  will 
keep  our  word  now  and  forevermore.  Woe  betide  any  that  resembles 
thee  in  any  part  of  him  !  " 

Then  comes  the  evidence  ;  but  the  witnesses  have  less  to  tell  of 
seeing  Willy  in  Charlecote  Park  helping  to  carry  off  the  deer,  than  of 
hearing  him  with  his  wonderful  talk  frighten  his  companions  in  its 
moonlit  glades.  A  few  touches  reproduce  the  scene  so  vividly  that 
we  seem  ourselves  to  have  part  in  his  strange  vagaries,  his  Windsor 
whimsies,  his  Italian  girl's  nursery  sighs,  his  Pucks  and  pinchings, 
his  sleep  under  the  oaks  in  the  ancient  forest  of  Arden,  and  his  wak- 
ing from  sleep  in  the  Tempest*  far  at  sea.  "  Willy,  Willy,  prithee 
stop  ;  enough  in  all  conscience  !  "  cries  the  voice  of  one  of  his  accom- 
plices. "  Now  art  thou  for  frightening  us  again  out  of  all  the  senses 
thou  hadst  given  us,  with  witches,  and  women  more  murderous  than 
they."  "  Stouter  men  and  more  resolute,"  cries  a  deeper  voice,  "  are 
few ;  but  thou,  my  lad,  hast  words  too  weighty  for  flesh  and  bones  to 
bear  up  against."  Even  Joseph  Carnaby,  awfully  testifying  in  the 
justice's  room  to  what  he  saw  and  heard  by  Mickle  meadow  as  the 
buck  was  killed  and  carried  off,  looks  the  most  guilty-like  of  the 
party.  "  Willy  stands  there,"  says  the  recording  Ephraim,  "  with  all 
the  courage  and  composure  of  an  innocent  man ;  and  indeed  with 
more  than  what  an  innocent  man  ought  to  possess  in  the  presence  of 
a  magistrate." 

Meanwhile  the  worshipful  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  himself  is  sorely  at  a 
loss  for  the  meaning  of  all  that  honest  Carnaby  swears  to,  and  still 
more  at  a  loss  to  find  a  reason  for  his  own  tolerance  of  the  slayer  of 
his  deer.  "  I  am  not  ashamed,"  he  says  aside  to  his  chaplain,  "  to 
avouch  that  it  goeth  against  me  to  hang  this  young  fellow,  richly  as 
the  offence  in  its  own  nature  doth  deserve  it ;  he  talketh  so  reason- 
ably ;  not  indeed  so  reasonably,  but  so  like  unto  what  a  reasonable 
man  may  listen  to  and  reflect  on.  There  is  so  much  too  of  compassion 
for  others  in  hard  cases,  and  something  so  very  near  in  semblance  to 
innocence  itself  in  that  airv  swing  of  light-heartedness  about  him.  I 
cannot  fix  my  eyes  (as  one  would  say)  on  the  shifting  and  sudden 
shade-and-shine,  which  cometh  back  to  me,  do  what  I  will,  and  mazes 
me  in  a  manner  and  blinks  me." 

There  are  two  accomplishments  on  which  the  knight  prides  himself 
above  all  others,  his  theology  and  his  poetry ;  and  when  half  induced 
by  the  "  young  fellow  "  to  think  it  possible  that  there  may  b€  theology 
without  curses  and  a  poem  without  flourishes,  the  entire  affair  be- 


480  AT   FIESOLE.  **!*£& 

comes  difficult  to  him.  Nor  does  the  submissive  reverence  to  him- 
self, which  the  lad  never  lays  aside,  make  the  mystery  more  soluble. 
"  Alas,  alas  !  "  cries  WiHy,  when  Sir  Thomas  has  rebuked  him  for 
calling  it  a  south  wind  that  blows  a  ship  northward,  "  we  possess  not 
the  mastery  over  our  own  weak  minds  when  a  higher  spirit  standeth 
nigh  and  draweth  us  within  his  influence."  "  Very  well,"  cries  Sir 
Thomas  with  delight,  "very  good,  wise,  discreet,  judicious  beyond 
thy  years." 

Here  is  a  scrap  of  writing  found  in  Willy's  pockets,  among  sundry 
others  of  not  inferior  merit,  and  read  out  in  the  justice-room. 

"the  maid's  lament. 

"I  loved  him  not;  and  yet  now  he  is  gone 

I  feel  I  urn  alone. 
I  checked  him  while  he  spoke;  yet  could  he  speak, 

Alas,  I  would  not  check. 
For  reasons  not  to  love  him  once  I  sought, 

And  wearied  all  my  thought 
To  vex  myself  and  him:  I  now  would  give 

My  love,  could  he  hut  live 
Who  lately  lived  for  me,  and  when  he  found 

'T  was  vain,  in  holy  ground 
He  hid  his  face  amid  the  shades  of  death. 

I  waste  for  him  ray  breath 
Who  wasted  his  for  me:  but  mine  returns, 

And  this  lorn  bosom  burns 
With  stifling  heat,  heaving  it  up  in  sleep, 

And  waking  me  to  weep 
Tears  that  had  melted  his  soft  heart:  for  years 

Wept  he  as  bitter  tears. 
1  Merciful  God!  '  such  was  his  latest  prayer, 

'  These  may  she  never  share ! ' 
Quieter  is  his'  breath,  his  breast  more  cold, 

Than  daisies  in  the  mould, 
Where  children  spell,  athwart  the  churchyard  gate, 

His  name  and  life's  brief  date. 
Pray  for  him,  gentle  souls,  whoe'er  you  be, 

And,  0,  pray  too  for  me." 

To  these  lines,  on  which  a  word  of  explanation  will  be  suggested 
hereafter,  Sir  Thomas  objects  not  unreasonably  that  the  wench  her- 
self might  well  and  truly  have  said  all  that  matter  without  the  poet, 
bating  the  rhymes  and  metre  ;  and  as  to  the  metre,  reproaching 
Willy  with  giving  short  measure  in  every  other  sack  of  his  load,  he 
declares  he  is  reminded  of  nothing  so  much  as  badgers,  a  long  leg  on 
one  quarter  and  a  short  leg  on  the  other.  But  when  his  chaplain 
si i ii  lis  popery  and  wax  candles,  and  says  that  if  praying  for  the  dead 
is  n't  popery  he  knows  not  what  the  devil  is,  his  worship,  who  had 
been  moved  in  spite  of  his  better  judgment,  even  comes  to  the 
rescue  ;  by  a  happy  emendation  of  the  last  line  but  one  into 

"  Pray  for  our  Virgin  Queen,  gentles,  whoe'er  you  be," 

delivers  Willy  out  of  his  popish  thraldom  ;  and  while  he  has  to  con- 
fess that  the  poem  has  not  a  posy  or  ornament  about  it,  not  even  a 
lump  of  sugar  at  the  bottom  of  the  glass,  half  excuses  the  disastrous 


yET.  54-60.]  EXAMINATION    OF    SHAKESPEARE.  481 

fact.  "  Of  all  the  youths  that  did  ever  write  in  verse,  this  one  verily 
is  he  who  hath  the  fewest  flowers  and  devices.  But  it  would  be  loss 
of  time  to  form  a  border  in  the  fashion  of  a  kingly  crown,  or  a  dra- 
gon or  a  Turk  on  horseback,  out  of  buttercups  and  dandelions." 

The  chaplain  now  despairs  of  getting  any  good  from  more  examina- 
tion, and  calls  for  the  lad's  commitment  without  further  ado  ;  suggest- 
ing that  the  sentence  of  death  can  come  afterwards,  and  be  commuted 
if  need  be.  But  his  worship  is  arrested  by  a  few  words  from  Willy 
thereon,  which  Ephraim  cannot  write  down  without  remarking  that, 
had  they  been  a  better  and  nobler  man's,  they  would  deserve  to  have 
been  written  in  letters  of  gold.  "  Worshipful  sir,  a  word  in  the  ear  is 
often  as  good  as  a  halter  under  it,  and  saves  the  groat."  So  the  war- 
rant of  commitment  is  again  put  aside,  and  the  lad  has  instead  a  lec- 
ture read  to  him  upon  his  ill  character  in  the  county ;  that  he  is 
dissolute  and  light,  much  given  to  mummeries  and  mysteries,  wakes 
and  carousals,  cudgel-fighters,  mountebanks,  and  wanton  women  ;  also 
that  it  was  said  of  him  (his  worship  hoped  this  might  be  without 
foundation)  that  he  enacted  parts,  and  not  simply  of  foresters  and 
furies,  girls  in  the  green-sickness  and  friars,  lawyers  and  outlaws,  but 
likewise,  having  small  reverence  for  station,  of  kings  and  queens,  knights 
and  privy  councillors,  in  all  their  glory.  "  Reason  and  ruminate  with 
thyself  now,"  he  adds,  as  the  chaplain  declares  folks  had  been  consumed 
at  the  stake  for  pettier  felonies,  and  Willy  holds  down  his  head;  "  canst 
thou  believe  it  to  be  innocent  to  counterfeit  kings  and  queens  1  Sup- 
posest  thou  that  if  the  impression  of  their  faces  on  a  farthing  be  feloni- 
ous and  ropeworthy,  the  imitation  of  head  and  body,  voice  and  bear- 
ing, plume  and  strut,  crown  and  mantle,  and  everything  else  that 
maketh  them  royal  and  glorious,  be  aught  less  1  Perpend,  young 
man,  perpend.  Consider  who  among  inferior  mortals  shall  imitate 
them  becomingly  1  Dreamest  thou  they  talk  and  act  like  checkmen 
at  Banbury  fair  ]  How  can  thy  shallow  brain  suffice  for  their  vast 
conceptions  ]  How  darest  thou  say,  as  they  do,  Hang  this  fellow, 
quarter  that,  flay,  mutilate,  stab,  shoot,  press,  hook,  torture,  burn 
alive  ]     These  are  royalties.     Who  appointed  thee  to  such  office  1 " 

AY  illy  has  never  "  a  word  on  the  nail "  for  all  this  ;  though  at  the 
reading  of  another  copy  of  verses  out  of  his  pocket,  in  praise  of  the 
knight  and  his  lady,  he  has  something  to  say  for  bringing  in  the  great 
without  leave,  on  Sir  Thomas  telling  him  he  had  never  himself  ob- 
tained his  honorable  dame's  permission  to  praise  her  in  guise  of 
poetry :  "  she  ought  first  to  have  been  sounded  ;  and  it  being  certified 
that  she  disapproved  not  her  glorification,  then  might  it  be  trumpeted 
forth  into  the  world  below."  To  which  the  youngster  replies  that  he 
doth  surely  imagine  any  honorable  man  (omitting  to  speak  of  ladies) 
would  reject  as  a  gross  offence  the  application  for  permission  openly  to 
praise  him,  since  "  even  to  praise  one's  self,  although  it  be  shameful,  is 
less  shameful  than  to  throw  a  burning  coal  into  the  incense-box  that 
another  doth  hold  to  waft  before  us,  and  then  to  snift  and  simper  over 

31 


482  AT    FIESOLE.  ^-3^ 

it,  with  maidenly  wishful  coyness,  as  if  forsooth  one  had  no  hand  in 
Betting  it  a-smoke."  Whereunto  Sir  Thomas,  out  of  his  zeal  to  in- 
struct the  ignorant,  makes  this  reply  :  — 

"Nay,  but  all  the  great  do  thus.  Thou  must  not  praise  them  without 
leave  and  license.  Praise  unpermitted  is  plebeian  praise.  It  is  presumption 
to  suppose  that  thou  knowest  enough  of  the  noble  and  the  greai  to  discover 
their  high  qualities.  They  alone  could  manifest  them  unto  dice.  It  re- 
quired* much  discernment  and  much  time  to  enucleate  and  bring  into  light 
their  abstruse  wisdom  and  gravely  featured  virtues.  Those  of  ordinary 
men  lie  before  thee  in  thy  daily  walks ;  thou  mayest  know  them  by  con- 
verse at  their  tables,  as  thou  knowest  the  little  tame  squirrel  that  chippeth 
his  nuts  in  the  open  sunshine  of  a  bowling-green.  But  beware  how  thou 
enterest  the  awful  arbors  of  the  great,  who  conceal  their  magnanimity  in 
the  depths  of  their  hearts,  as  lions  do." 

More  surprising  to  the  erudite  magistrate  however  than  even  the 
young  lad's  dabblings  in  poetry  are  the  scraps  he  repeats  of  sermons 
heard  by  him  at  St.  Mary's,  Oxford,  when  visiting  the  city  on  his  lather's 
business.  The  preacher  is  a  learned  Doctor  Glaston,  who  had  been 
attracted  to  the  stranger  youth  in  church  ;  and  had  carried  him  away 
from  the  temptation  of  the  Mitre  to  pass  the  day  in  his  rooms,  even 
before  he  inquired  his  name.  "  William  Shakespeare,  of  Stratford- 
upon-Avon,  at  your  service,  sir." 

"  '  And  welcome,'  said  he ;  '  thy  father  erenow  hath  bought  our  college 
wool.  A  truly  good  man  we  ever  found  him  ;  and  I  doubt  not  he  hath 
educated  his  son  to  follow  him  in  his  paths.  There  is  in  the  blood  of  man, 
as  in  the  blood  of  animals,  that  which  giveth  the  temper  ami  disposition. 
These  require  nurture  and  culture.  But  what  nurture  will  turn  flint-stones 
into  garden  mould?  or  what  culture  rear  cabbages  in  the  quarries  of  Hed- 
ington  Hill  ?  To  lie  well  born  is  the  greatest  of  all  God's  primary  blessings, 
young  man,  and  there  are  many  well  born  among  the  poor  and  needy. 
Thou  art  not  of  the  indigent  and  destitute,  who  have  great  temptations; 
thou  art  not  of  the  wealthy  and  affluent,  who  have  greater  still.  Grod  hath 
placed  thee,  William  Shakespeare,  in  that  pleasant  island,  on  one  side  where- 
of are  the  syrens,  on  the  other  the  harpies,  but  inhabiting  the  coasts  on  the 
wiiler  continent,  and  unable  to  make  their  talons  felt  or  their  voices  heard 
by  thee.  Unite  with  me  in  prayer  and  thanksgiving  for  the  blessings  thus 
vouchsafed.  We  must  not  close  the  heart  when  the  finger  of  God  would 
touch  it.     Enough  if  thou  sayest  only,  'My  soul,  praise  thou  the  Lord.' " 

On  which  Sir  Thomas,  his  chaplain  remaining  mute,  cries  Amen, 
much  to  the  discomfiture  of  the  holy  man,  who  remarks  that  be  can 
say  Amen  too  "  in  the  proper  place."  But  once  fairly  under  way 
with  what  lie  pretends  to  have  noted  down  from  the  discourses  of 
Doctor  Glaston,  and  Willy  has  his  own  way  with  Justice  Lucy.  The 
knight  misses  authority  now  and  then,  wants  something  doctrinal,  has 
a  longing  for  a  thread  or  two  from  coats  of  the  fathers,  hankers  after 
the  perfume  of  a  sprig  from  Basil,  or  is  thirsty  for  a  smack  of  Augustin, 
but  tor  the  most  part  is  lying  back  in  his  chair  in  his  easiest  attitude, 
opening  his  ears  to  their  widest  stretch,  and  telling  Willy  to  go  on  with 
his  sermons.     And  Willy  goes  on  so  eagerly,  pouring  out  under  Doctor 


yET.  54- 60.]  EXAMINATION    OF    SHAKESPEARE.  483 

Glaston's  name  such  a  rapture  of  religious  exhortation  in  language  so 
unknown  to  any  school  of  divinity,  that  Sir  Thomas,  finding  the  apostles 
as  well  as  the  fathers  home  away  from  him  on  that  stream  of  poetry 
and  eloquence,  of  imagination,  reason,  and  wit,  is  fain  at  last  to  save 
his  own  orthodoxy  by  putting  in  a  word  for  form's  sake.  "  Reasonable 
enough,"  he  murmurs,  "  nay,  almost  too  reasonable  ;  but  where  are  the 
apostles,  where  are  the  disciples,  where  are  the  saints,  where  is  hell- 
fire  ]  Well,  well,"  as  he  again  falls  back  with  unabated  enjoyment, 
"  patience,  we  may  come  to  it  yet.  Go  on,  Will."  Will  now,  in  short, 
has  entirely  the  upper  hand  of  Sir  Thomas  ;  the  young  poacher  leads 
the  justice  by  all  his  senses,  ears,  eyes,  and  nose  ;  and  "  honest"  Willy 
is  the  epithet  at  last  applied  to  him.  "  Such  was  the  very  word,"  says 
Mr.  Ephraim  Barnett,  who  for  the  moment  fancies  his  own  ears  are 
deceiving  him. 

A  sad  defalcation  all  this  of  the  allegiance  due  to  fathers  and  doctors 
from  a  justice  of  peace  and  quorum  ;  and  though  to  see  the  light  that 
led  astray  might  suggest  some  forgiveness,  it  is  difficult  to  show  it  by 
selections.  Profuse" as  are  the  striking  thoughts  and  images  in  the 
book,  and  wonderful  everywhere  the  fitness  and  felicity  of  its  style,  its 
higher  wealth  of  imagination  and  wit  is  inseparable  from  the  subtlety 
of  its  art  and  design.  The  book  fades  as  only  the  good  things  of  its 
author  appear  ;  but,  taken  each  at  its  own  worth,  how  masterly  they 
are  !  And  what  are  we  to  say  of  a  writer  from  whom  such  things  drop 
so  abundantly  on  any  subject  that  engages  him,  but  that,  however  dis- 
tant be  his  full  inheritance  of  fame,  he  can  afford  to  wait  the  time. 

THE   TWO    BESETTING    SINS. 

"  Lust  seizeth  us  in  youth,  ambition  in  mid-life,  avarice  in  old  age  ;  but 
vanity  and  pride  are  the  besetting  sins  that  drive  the  angels  from  our  cradle, 
pamper  us  with  luscious  and  most  unwholesome  food,  ride  our  first  stick 
with  us,  mount  our  first  horse  with  us,  wake  with  us  in  the  morning,  dream 
with  us  in  the  night,  and  never  at  any  time  abandon  us.  In  this  world, 
beginning  with  pride  and  vanity,  we  are  delivered  over  from  tormentor  to 
tormentor,  until  the  worst  tormentor  of  all  taketh  absolute  possession  of  us 
forever.  .  .  .  William,  William,  there  is  in  the  moral  straits  a  current  from 
right  to  wrong,  but  no  reflux  from  wrong  to  right ;  for  which  destination 
we  must  hoist  our  sails  aloft  and  ply  our  oars  incessantly,  or  night  and  the 
tempest  will  overtake  us,  and  we  shall  shriek  out  in  vain  from  the  billows,, 
and  irrecoverably  sink." 

TO    THE    YOUNG,    RICH    AND    POOR. 

"  Young  gentlemen,  let  not  the  highest  of  you  who  hear  me  this  evening 
be  led  into  the  delusion,  for  such  it  is,  that  the  founder  of  his  family  was 
originally  a  greater  or  a  better  man  than  the  lowest  here.  He  willed  it, 
and  became" it.  He  must  have  stood  low;  he  must  have  worked  hard; 
and  with  tools  moreover  of  his  own  invention  and  fashioning.  He  waved 
and  whistled  off  ten  thousand  strong  and  importunate  temptations ;  he 
clashed  the  dice-box  from  the  jewelled  hand  of  Chance,  the  cup  from 
Pleasure's,  and  trod  under  foot  the  sorceries  of  each ;  he  ascended  steadily 


48-t  AT    FIESOLE.  **£*£■ 

the  precipices  of  Danger,  and  looked  down  with  intrepidity  from  the  sum- 
mit;  lie  overawed  Arrogance  with  Sedateness  ;  lie  seized  by  the  horn  and 
overleaped  low  Violence;  and  he  fairly  swung  Fortune  round.  The  very 
high  cannot  rise  much  higher;  the  very  low  may  ;  the  truly  great  must 
have  dune  it.  This  is  not  the  doctrine,  my  friends,  of  the  silkenly  and 
lawnly  religious ;  it  wears  the  coarse  texture  of  the  fisherman,  and  walks 
uprightly  and  straightforward  under  it.  .  .  .  Hardly  any  man  is  ashamed 
of  being  inferior  to  his  ancestors,  although  it  is  the  very  thing  at  which 
the  great  should  blush,  if  indeed  the  great  in  general  descended  from  the 
worthy.  .  .  .  He  alone  who  maketh  you  wiser  maketh  you  greater;  and  it 
is  only  by  such  an  implement  that  Almighty  God  himself  effects  it  When 
he  taketh  away  a  man's  wisdom,  he  taketh  away  his  strength,  his  power 
over  others  and  over  himself.  What  help  for  him  then?  He  may  sit  idly 
and  swell  his  spleen,  saying,  'Who  is  this?  Who  is  that?'  and  at  the  ques- 
tion's end  the  spirit  of  inquiry  dies  away  in  him.  It  would  not  have  been 
so,  if,  in  happier  hour,  he  had  said  within  himself  '  Who  am  I  ?  What  am 
I  ? '  and  had  prosecuted  the  search  in  good  earnest." 

DOCTOR  GLASTON  ON  THE  GREEKS  AND  ROMANS. 

"  The  Greeks  conveyed  all  their  wisdom  into  their  theatre ;  their  stages 
were  churches  and  parliament  houses.  .  .  .  William,  I  need  not  expatiate  on 
Greek  with  thee,  since  thou  knowest  it  not,  but  some  crumbs  of  Latin  are 
picked  up  by  the  callowest  beaks.  The  Romans  had,  as  thou  findest,  and 
have  still,  more  taste  for  murder  than  morality,  and,  as  they  could  not  find 
heroes  among  them,  looked  for  gladiators.  Their  only  very  high  poet  em- 
ployed his  elevation  and  strength  to  dethrone  and  debase  the  Deity.  They 
hail  several  others,  who  polished  their  language  and  pitched  their  instru- 
ments with  admirable  skill :  several  who  glued  over  their  thin  and  flimsy 
gaberdines  many  1  night  feathers  from  the  wide-spread  downs  of  Ionia,  and 
the  richly  cultivated  rocks  of  Attica.  .  .  .  William,  that  which  moveth  the 
heart  most  is  the  best  poetry;  it  comes  nearest  unto  God,  the  source  of 
all  power." 

sir  thomas  lucy's  comment  thereon. 

"  Those  ancients  have  little  flesh  upon  the  body  poetical,  and  lack  the 
savor  thai  sufficeth.  The  Song  of  Solomon  drowns  all  their  voices :  they 
seem  but  whistlers  and  guitar-players  compared  to  a  full-cheeked  trumpeter; 
tiny  standing  under  the  eaves  in  some  dark  lane,  he  upon  a  well-caparisoned 
stallion,  tossing  his  mane  and  all  his  ribands  to  the  sun.  I  doubt  the  doctor 
spake  too  fondly  of  the  Greeks:  they  were  giddy  creatures.  William,  I 
am  loath  to  be  hard  on  them ;  but  they  please  me  not.  There  are  those 
now  living  who  could  make  them  bite  their  nails  to  the  quick,  and  turn 
green  as  grass  with  envy." 

DOING   GOOD   BY   SPEAKING    IT. 

"  Never  hold  me  unjust,  sir  knight,  to  Master  Silas.  Could  I  learn  other 
good  of  him,  I  would  freely  say  it;  for  we  do  good  by  speaking  it,  and 
none  is  easier.  Even  bad  men  are  not  bad  men  while  they  praise  the 
just." 

BEECH-WOOD    AND    GOOSE-FEATHERS. 

"  lie  had  ridden  hard  that  morning,  and  had  no  cushion  upon  his  seat  as 
Sir  Thomas  had ;  and  I  have  seen,  in  my  time,  that  he  who  is  seated  on 


MT.  54-60.]  EXAMINATION    OF    SHAKESPEARE.  485 

beech-wood  hath  very  different  thoughts  and  moralities  from  him  who  is 
seated  on  goose-feathers  under  doeskin." 

RICHES    OP    OUR   DAILY    SPEECH. 

"  How  many  of  our  words  have  more  in  them  than  we  think  of!  Give  a 
countryman  a  plough  of  silver,  and  he  will  plough  with  it  all  the  season, 
and  never  know  its  substance.  'T  is  thus  with  our  daily  speech.  What 
riches  lie  hidden  in  the  vulgar  tongue  of  the  poorest  and  most  ignorant  1 
What  flowers  of  Paradise  lie  under  our  feet,  with  their  beauties  and  parts 
undistinguished  and  undiscerned,  from  having  been  daily  trodden  on!  " 

THE    NECESSITY    OF    PRAISE    TO    THE   POET. 

"  Praise  giveth  weight  unto  the  wanting,  and  happiness  giveth  elasticity 
unto  the  heavy.  As  the  mightier  streams  of  the  unexplored  world,  America, 
run  languidly  in  the  night,  and  await  the  sun  on  high  to  contend  with  him 
in  strength  and  grandeur,  so  doth  genius  halt  and  pause  in  the  thraldom  of 
outspread  darkness,  and  move  onwards  with  all  his  vigor  then  only  when 
creative  light  and  jubilant  warmth  surround  him." 

That  last  is  from  the  episode  of  Ethelbert.  Among  Dr.  Glaston's 
students  Willy  Shakespeare  had  especially  noticed  one  whose  pale 
face,  abstinence  at  table,  cough,  taciturnity,  and  gentleness  seemed 
already  to  declare  him  more  than  half  a  poet ;  and  he  had  been 
struck  by  the  arguments  employed  by  the  doctor  to  dissuade  him 
from  the  poet's  vocation.  Such  is  their  lofty  tone  that  they  have  the 
effect  of  inviting  even  while  they  dissuade  ;  and  a  something  of  doubt 
seems  at  last  to  arise  also  in  the  doctor  himself,  as  he  glances  from 
Ethelbert  to  Shakespeare,  and  gets  a  hint  from  the  light-hearted  lad 
that  peradventure  poetry  may  be  safely  followed  after  all,  provided 
only  that  to  the  poet  himself  it  be  but  a  pastime  and  pleasure. 

"  The  things  whereon  thy  whole  soul  brooded  in  its  innermost  recesses, 
and  with  all  its  warmth  and  energy,  will  pass  unprized  and  unregarded,  not 
only  throughout  thy  lifetime,  but  long  after.  For  the  higher  beauties  of 
poetry  are  beyond  the  capacity,  beyond  the  vision,  of  almost  all.  Once  per- 
haps in  half  a  century  a  single  star  is  discovered,  then  named  and  registered, 
then  mentioned  by  five  studious  men  to  five  more  ;  at  last  some  twenty 
say,  or  repeat  in  writing,  what  they  have  heard  about  it.  Other  stars  await 
other  discoveries.  Few  and  solitary  and  wide  asunder  are  those  who  cal- 
culate their  relative  distances,  their  mysterious  influences,  their  glorious 
magnitude,  and  their  stupendous  height.  'T  is  so,  believe  me,  and  ever  was 
so,  with  the  truest  and  best  poetry.  Homer,  they  say,  was  blind  ;  he  might 
have  been  ere  he  died  ;  that  he  sat  among  the  blind,  we  are  sure.  Happy 
they  who,  like  this  young  lad  from  Stratford,  write  poetry  on  the  saddle- 
bow when  their  geldings  are  jaded,  and  keep  the  desk  for  better  purposes." 

On  this  everybody  present  turns  to  the  wool-stapler's  son,  and  there 
is  plenty  of  sneer  and  scoff  at  his  cost ;  but  Ethelbert,  sparing  him, 
only  smiles  and  says  :  — 

"  Be  patient :  from  the  higher  heavens  of  poetry  it  is  lon<j  before  the 
radiance  of  the  brightest  star  can  reach  the  world  below.     We  hear  that 


48G  AT    FIESOLE.  *£££■ 

one  man  finds  out  one  beauty,  another  man  finds  out  another,  placing  his 
observatory  and  instruments  on  the  poet's  grave.  The  worms  must  have 
eaten  us  before  it  is  rightly  known  what  we  are.  It  is  only  when  we  are 
skeletons  that  we  are  boxed  and  ticketed,  and  prized  and  shown.  Be  it  so. 
I  shall  not  be  tired  of  waiting." 

Connected  also  with  Ethelbert  is  a  little  story  told  him  by  Doctor 
Glaston  of  a  ripe  and  promising  scholar  at  St.  John's  before  whom  a 
great  career  lay  open,  but  who,  suffering  himself  to  be  broken  in  spirit 
by  an  unfortunate  passion,  had  fled  to  poetry  from  severer  toil,  and 
was  found  by  the  doctor  himself  one  clay  on  the  banks  of  the  Cher- 
well,  "  thought  to  have  died  broken-hearted."  What  follows  is  su- 
premely pathetic.  In  its  pure  and  simple  form  this  is  the  most 
arduous  achievement  of  writing  ;  and  though  in  pathos  no  'literature 
is  so  rich  as  the  English,  there  is  in  the  range  of  the  language  little 
that  goes  beyond  this. 

;'  Remembering  that  his  mother  did  abide  one  mile  farther  on,  I  walked 
forward  to  the  mansion  and  asked  her  what  tidings  she  lately  had  received 
of  her  son.  She  replied,  that  having  given  up  his  mind  to  light  studies,  the 
fellows  of  the  college  would  not  elect  him.  .  .  .  '  I  rated  him,  told  him  I  was 
poor,  and  he  knew  it.  lie  was  stung,  and  threw  himself  upon  my  neck 
and  wept.  Twelve  days  have  passed  since,  and  only  three  rainy  ones.  I 
hear  he  has  Keen  seen  upon  the  knoll  yonder,  but  hither  he  hath  not  come. 
I  trust  he  knows  at  last  the  value  of  time,  and  I  shall  be  heartily  glad  to 
see  him  alter  this  accession  of  knowledge.  Twelve  days,  it  is  true,  are 
rather  a  chink  than  a  gap  in  time;  yet,  O  gentle  sir,  they  are  that  chink 
which  makes  the  vase  quite  valueless.  There  are  light  words  which  may 
never  he  shaken  off  the  mind  they  fall  on.  My  child,  who  was  hurt  by  me, 
will  not  let  me  see  the  marks.'  '  Lady,'  said  I,  '  none  are  left  upon  him.  Be 
comforted.  Thou  shalt  see  him  this  hour.  All  that  thy  God  hath  not  taken 
is  yet  thine.'  She  looked  at  me  earnestly,  and  would  have  then  asked 
something,  but  her  voice  failed  her.  There  was  no  agony,  no  motion,  save 
in  the  lips  and  cheeks.  Being  the  widow  of  one  who  fought  under  Haw- 
kins, she  remembered  his  courage  and  sustained  the  shock, saying  calmly, 
'  God's  will  he  done.  I  pray  that  he  find  me  as  worthy  as  he  findeth  me 
willing  to  join  them.'  Now 'in  her  unearthly  thoughts  she  had  led  her  only 
son  to  the  bosom  of  her  husband  ;  and  in  her  spirit  (which  often  is  per- 
mitted to  pass  the  gates  of  death  with  holy  love)  she  left  them  both  with 
their  Creator.  The  curate  of  the  village  sent  those  who  should  bring  home 
the  body;  and  some  days  afterwards  he  came  unto  me,  beseeching  me  to 
write  i lie  epitaph.  Being  no  friend  to  stone-cutters'  charges,  I  entered  not 
into  biography,  hut  wrote  these  few  words:  — 

JOANNES    WELLERBT 

LITERAUfM    ylMlSIVIT    GLORIAM, 
VIDET    DEI." 

In  the  verse  before  quoted  as  the  Maid's  Lament,  from  the  scrap 
discovered  in  the  young  poacher's  pocket,  the  sequel  of  the  tale  is  told 
according  to  Willy's  sense  of  retributive  justice.  Such  connection  of 
it  with  the  story  is  not  named,  but  very  manifest. 

Here  we  may   shut  the  1 k.     What    turn  the  examination  took 

finally,  it  does  not  need  to  say.      Mr.   Barnett  can  only  explain  the 


MT.  54-60.]  EXAMINATION    OF    SHAKESPEARE.  487 

miracle  of  Master  Willy's  closing  familiarity  with  Sir  Thomas  by  re- 
marking that  great  poets  do  mightily  affect  to  have  little  poets  under 
them,  and  little  poets  do  forget  themselves  in  great  company.  Un- 
happily just  at  the  last  a  note  of  discord  is  struck  by  the  introduction 
of  the"  name  of  one  Hannah  Hathaway  ;  and  as  Sir  Thomas  sees  the 
lad  bound  out  of  his  hall  and  thread  the  trees  along  his  park  like  a 
greyhound-whelp  after  a  levei-et,  he  can  but  cry  alack  and  well-a-day, 
that  a  respectable  wool-stapler's  son  should  turn  gypsy  and  poet  for 
life! 

Another  glimpse  of  him  is  nevertheless  given  us  in  a  memorandum 
written  seventeen  years  later  by  the  reporter  of  the  examination,  who 
at  this  date  appends  to  it,  upon  the  relation  of  a  kinsman  who  is  one 
of  the  retainers  of  the  Earl  of  Essex,  not  only  a  conference  on  the 
condition  of  Ireland  between  the  earl  and  Master  Edmund  Spenser, 
which  by  the  earl's  order  he  had  taken  down,  but  also  an  account  of 
the  burial  of  Master  Edmund  shortly  afterwards  in  Westminster 
Abbey  when  Master  Shakespeare  himself  attended.  Ephraim's  kins- 
man thus  writes  to  him. 

"  Now  I  speak  of  poets,  you  will  be  in  a  maze  at  hearing  that  our  towns- 
man hath  written  a  power  of  matter  for  the  playhouse.  Neither  he  nor 
the  booksellers  think  it  quite  good  enough  to  print ;  but  I  do  assure  you, 
on  the  faith  of  a  Christian,  it  is  not  bad ;  and  there  is  rare  fun  in  the  last 
thing  of  his  about  Venus,  where  a  JeAV,  one  Shiloh,  is  choused  out  of  his 
money  and  his  revenge.  However,  the  best  critics  and  the  greatest  lords 
find  fault,  and  very  justly,  in  the  words  :  — 

"  '  Hath  not  a  Jew  eyes?  hath  not  a  Jew  hands,  organs,  dimensions,  senses,  affections, 
passions?  fed  with  the  same  food,  hurt  with  the  same  weapons,  subject  to  the  same 
diseases,  healed  by  the  same  means,  warmed  and  cooled  by  the  same  winter  and  sum- 
mer as  a  Christian  is  ?  ' 

Surely  this  is  very  unchristianlike.  Nay,  for  supposition  sake,  suppose  it  to 
be  true,  was  it  his  business  to  tell  the  people  so?  Was  it  liis  duty  to  ring 
the  crier's  bell  and  cry  to  them,  '  The  sorry  Jews  are  quite  as  much  men  as 
you  are  '  ?  The  church  luckily  has  let  him  alone  for  the  present ;  and  the 
queen  winks  upon  it.  The  best  defence  he  can  make  for  himself  is,  that  it 
comes  from  the  mouth  of  a  Jew,  who  says  many  other  things  as  abomi- 
nable. Master  Greene  may  overrate  him ;  but  Master  Greene  declares  that 
if  William  goes  on  improving  and  taking  his  advice,  it  will  be  desperate 
hard  work  in  another  seven  years  to  find  so  many  as  half  a  dozen  chaps 
equal  to  him  within  the  liberties." 

As  delightfully  sketched  is  the  scene  at  Spenser's  burial,  and  there 
is  nothing  in  the  Conversations  more  beautiful  than  the  Conference  of 
Essex  and  Spenser.  The  time  is  immediately  after  that  Irish  rebel- 
lion in  which  Spenser's  house,  his  infant  child  being  in  it,  had  been 
burnt  to  the  ground  ;  and  Essex,  believing  that  only  his  house  had 
perished,  and  questioning  him  as  of  an  ordinary  sorrow,  adds  to  even 
the  dreadfulness  of  what  waits  to  be  disclosed  by  previous  touches  of 
half-playful  raillery.  Was  his  house  indeed  so  dear  to  him  1  It  was 
indeed,  is  Spenser's  answer.     "  Innocent  hopes  were  my  gravest  cares, 


488  AT   FIESOLE.  ^JS-™" 

and  my  playfullest  fancy  was  with  kindly  wishes.  Ah,  surely  of  all 
cruelties  the  worst  is  to  extinguish  our  kindness.  Mine  is  gone  :  I 
love  the  people  and  the  land  no  longer.  My  lord,  ask  me  not  about 
them  ;  1  may  speak  injuriously."  Essex  still  cannot  guess  the  grief 
which  no  council,  no  queen,  no  Essex  can  repair ;  but  he  sees  that  it 
is  grave,  and  respects  it.  "  Nay,  kiss  not  my  hand  :  he  whom  God 
smiteth  hath  God  with  him.  In  his  presence  what  am  IV  That 
Spenser  s  grief  is  for  the  death  of  some  one  dear  to  him,  Essex  knows 
now,  yet  still  talks  to  him  cheerily  of  endurance  and  hopefulness,  for 
that  every  day,  every  hour  of  the  year,  there  arc  hundreds  mourning 
what  he  mourns.  "  0  no,  no,  no  !  "  cries  the  other.  "  Calamities 
there  are  around  us  ;  calamities  there  are  all  over  the  earth  ;  calami- 
ties there  are  in  all  seasons  ;  but  none  in  any  season,  none  in  any 
place  like  mine."  "  So,"  rejoins  Essex,  "  say  all  fathers,  so  say  all  hus- 
bands. Look  at  any  old  mansion-house,  and  let  the  sun  shine  as 
gloriously  as  it  may  on  the  golden  vanes,  or  the  arms  recently  quar- 
tered  over  the  gateway,  or  the  embayed  window,  and  on  the  happy 
pair  that  haply  is  toying  at  it ;  nevertheless  thou  mayest  say  that  of  a 
certainty  the  same  fabric  hath  seen  nmch  sorrow  within  its  chambers, 
and  heard  many  wailings  :  and  each  time  this  was  the  heaviest  stroke 
of  all.  Funerals  have  passed  along  through  the  stout-hearted 
knights  upon  the  wainscot,  and  amid  the  laughing  nymphs  upon  the 
arras.  Old  servants  have  shaken  their  heads,  as  if  somebodv  had  de- 
ceived  them,  when  they  found  that  beauty  and  nobility  could  perish. 
Edmund,  the  things  that  are  too  true  pass  by  us  as  if  they  were  not 
true  at  all  ;  and  when  they  have  singled  us  out,  then  only  do  they 
strike  us."  Supremely  beautiful,  surely  ;  yet  the  passion  that  bursts 
forth  when  all  the  truth  is  told  very  far  transcends  it.  But  this 
must  be  read  in  the  Conference  itself. 

Landor  justly  valued  it,  and  was  in  great  alarm  on  hearing  from 
England  that  the  friends  who  had  charge  of  the  printing  could  not 
understand  why  the  same  volume  should  contain  both  it  and  the 
Examination.  Expressly  for  this,  he  wrote  to  Lady  Blessington 
(11th  October,  1834)  :  "I  have  written  an  Introduction  which  quite 
satisfied  me  ;  which  hardly  anything  does  upon  the  whole,  though 
everything  in  part.  Pray  relieve  me,  then,  from  this  tearing  anxiety, 
for  the  Examination  and  the  Conference  if  disjoined  would  break  my 
heart."  He  had  his  wish;  yet  wellnigh  broke  his  heart  notwith- 
standing, on  seeing  the  printed  book.  "  1  hope,"  he  wrote  to  Southey, 
"  my  publisher  sent  you  the  Examination  of  Shakespeare,  —  alas  that 
1  should  say  it  !  the  very  worst  printed  book  that  ever  fell  into  my 
hands.  '  Volubly  discreet ' !  '  slipped  into  '  for  '  stripped  unto  ' !  '  Sit 
mute '  for  '  stand,'  with  many,  many  others !  And  then  there  arc- 
words  I  never  use,  such  as  'utmost';  I  always  write  'uttermost.' 
In  fact  the  misprints  amount  to  forty  of  the  grosser  kind,  and  I 
know  not  how  many  of  the  smaller!"  He  added  that  if  a  friendly 
report  of  the  thing  (my  notice  of  it)  had  not  put  him  in  good-humor 


JET.  54-60.]  PERICLES    AND    ASPASIA.  489 

before  it  reached  him,  he  would  have  flung  it  into  the  fire  then  and 
there,  and  dismissed  it  from  his  thoughts  forever. 

The  friendly  report  had  outstripped  the  volume  in  Florence  by- 
some  days,  and  when  the  single  copy  afterwards  arrived  he  had  to 
lend  it  round  to  all  his  circle.  He  carefully  kept  the  little  notes 
from  successive  applicants  for  the  loan,  among  them  Milnes,  Brown, 
Leckie,  Kirkup,  and  the  novelist  Mr.  James,  also  for  the  time  his 
neighbor ;  and  the  flutter  of  pleasure  and  praise  among  them  had 
been  not  without  pleasure  for  himself,  and  a  flutter  of  encourage- 
ment too.  "  I  did  not  believe  such  kind  things  would  be  said  of  me 
for  at  least  a  century  to  come."  The  effect  survived  even  the  less 
hopeful  side  of  the  picture ;  and  when  Crabb  Robinson  wrote  from 
London  (10th  February,  1835),  that  the  Shakespeare  book  would 
have  fidlen  dead-born  but  for  one  review,  that,  though  this  had  pro- 
claimed its  beauties,  others  had  found  it  unintelligible,  and  that  a 
paper  of  high  character  had  thrust  it  aside  as  "  a  mere  silly  imita- 
tion of  obsolete  law  proceedings  and  phrases,"  Landor  only  replied  to 
this  part  of  the  letter,  that  he  was  busy  with  something  else  which 
he  hoped  might  have  better  fortune. 

The  "  something  else  "  was  Pericles  and  Aspasia,  also  written  for 
the  most  part  in  this  last  year  of  residence  in  Italy,  which  it  helps  to 
make  memorable. 

VIII.    PERICLES  AND  ASPASIA. 

laxdor  to  southey  (early  in  1835). 

"  Since  we  met,  since  indeed  we  wrote,  many  things  have  occurred  in 
your  family  on  which  I  wish  it  were  my  good  fortune  to  offer  you  only  my 
congratulations.  But  grief  is  as  pure  an  offering,  and  far  more  costly.  I 
need  not  tell  you  that  I  have  grieved,  and  not  for  an  hour  or  two,  at  your 
afflictions.  Nor  did  it  satisfy  my  mind,  nor  can  it  yours,  that  you  still  have 
more  reason  for  contentment,  and  higher  sources  both  of  consolation  and 
delight,  than  any  man  upon  earth.  The  human  heart  was  never  made  for 
listening,  and  even  this  truth  will  find  but  tardy  admittance  into  yours.  I 
am  so  disgusted  with  politics  and  politicians  that  I  never  read  a  newspaper, 
but  I  hear  that  some  respect  has  been  shown  to  the  services  you  have  ren- 
dered the  country  by  your  writings.  Poor  Coleridge  has  not  lived  for  the 
restoration  of  what  was  taken  from  him.  I  wish  he  had  indulged  less  in 
metaphysics.  Had  I  seen  him  a  second  time,  I  would  have  asked  him 
whether  the  principal  merit  of  the  Germans  does  not  consist  in  nomen- 
clature and  arrangement.  Strongly  do  I  imagine  to  myself  that  I  have  seen 
all  their  new  truths,  as  they  call  them,  in  old  authors.  Of  the  moderns,  as 
far  as  I  can  judge  (for  such  reading  tires  me  like  walking  knee-deep  in  saw- 
dust), Hobbes  is  the  most  acute,  and  Locke  the  most  logical.  My  friend 
Mr.  Robinson  has  not  told  me  whether  Charles  Lamb  has  left  any  writings 
behind  him.  Nothing  can  be  more  delightful  than  the  Essays  of  Elia ; 
and  his  sister's  style  is  perfect.  I  have  read  Mrs.  Leicester's  School  four 
times,  and  each  time  with  equal  if  not  fresh  delight.  She  is  now  far 
advanced  in  years,  and  no  friend  can  be  in  the  place  of  a  brother  to  her. 
He  was  a  most  affectionate  creature,  pleasurable  and  even-tempered.     Him 


490  AT    FIESOLE.  ^-a^' 

too  I  saw  but  once,  and  yet  I  think  of  him  as  if  I  had  known  him  forty 

years. 

Once,  and  once  only,  have  I  seen  thy  face, 
Elial  once  only  lias  thy  tripping  tongue 
Run  o'er  my  breast,  yet  never  lias  been  left 
Impression  on  it  stronger  or  more  sweet. 
Cordial  old  man!  what  youth  was  in  thy  years, 
What  wisdom  in  thy  levity,  what  truth 
In  every  utterance  of  that  unrest  soul! 
Few  are  the  spirits  of  the  glorified 
I  'd  spring  to  earlier  at  the  gate  of  Heaven. 

Is  there  anything  yet  left  upon  the  earth  ?  or  is  there  only  a  void  space 
between  you  and  me?  ...  1  hear  you  are  writing  a  History  of  the  Moors. 
Surely  there  must  be  valuable  manuscripts  in  he/  and  Morocco,  perhaps  too 
in  Madrid.  Have  you  ever  heard  that  the  library  of  the  Greek  Emperors  is 
still  preserved  in  the  Seraglio?  I  do  not  trouble  my  head  about  Menander, 
poor  Parr's  regret;  for,  if  he  were  only  worth  two  Terences,  he  was  only 
worth  three  farthings  ;  but  I  would  gladly  see  a  volume  of  Simonides,  and 
anything  beyond  the  few  words  that  Thucvdides  has  given  us  of  Pericles. 
I  began  a  conversation  between  Pericles  and  Aspasia,  and  thought  I  could 
do  belter  by  a  scries  of  letters  between  them,  not  uninterrupted;  for  the 
letters  should  begin  with  their  first  friendship,  should  give  place  to  their 
conversations  afterwards,  and  recommence  on  their  supposed  separation 
during  the  plague  of  Athens.  Few  materials  are  extant:  Bayle,  Menage, 
Thucydides,  Plutarch,  and  hardly  anything  more.  So  much  the  better. 
The  coast  is  clear:  there  are  neither  rocks  nor  weeds  before  me.  But  I  am 
writ  in;/  as  it'  I  had  not  torn  to  pieces  all  their  love-letters  and  orations  I 
Few  were  completed." 

So  Landor  wrote  in  the  letter,  the  last  addressed  to  his  friend 
from  Italy,  which  Mr.  Milnes  brought  over  as  an  introduction  to 
the  poet  laureate.  But  even  while  he  wrote,  the  subject  of  Pericles 
had  recast  itself  in  his  mind  ;  in  the  few  more  months  that  remained 
to  him  at  the  villa  Gherardcscha,  it  was  brought  nearly  to  com- 
pletion; and  though,  having  carried  the  manuscript  to  England  in 
the  December  of  1835,  it  was  published  while  he  resided  there,  it 
is  to  Italy  the  book  belongs.  Here  therefore,  in  the  same  manner 
and  for  the  same  reason  as  in  his  former  books,  I  proceed  to  give 
account  of  it. 

The  first  notion  mentioned  to  Southey,  of  including  conversations 
in  his  plan,  was  thrown  over  afterwards;  and  he  restricted  himself 
to  a  series  of  imaginary  letters,  opening  at  the  arrival  of  Aspasia  in 
Athens  from  her  native  Miletus,  and  closing  at  the  death  of  Pericles 
in  the  third  year  of  the  Peloponnesian  war.  He  interspersed  occa- 
sional speeches;  and  relieved  his  theme,  which  he  alsp  adorns  ami 
illustrates,  by  a  variety  of  fragments  of  verse  the  most  thoroughly 
Greek  that  any  Englishman  has  written.  It  was  a  daring  choice  to 
select  a  time  which  within  the  compass  of  a  single  life  took  in  the 
lives  of  the  foremost  of  the  ancient  poets,  philosophers,  historians, 
and  men  of  action,  by  whom  humanity  and  the  human  race  have 
been  exalted;  and  it  was  trebly  daring  to  advance  to  such  a  task, 
trusting  solely  to  the  force  of  his  genius  and  unassisted  but  by  the 


JET.  54-60.]  PERICLES    AND    ASPASIA.  491 

treasures  of  his  memory.  "  In  writing  my  Pericles  and  Asjoasia,''''  he 
says,  in  a  letter  of  the  27th  April,  183G,  "  I  had  no  books  to  consult. 
The  characters,  thoughts,  and  actions  are  all  fictions.  Pericles  was 
somewhat  less  amiable,  Aspasia  somewhat  less  virtuous,  Alcibiades 
somewhat  bss  sensitive ;  but  here  I  could  represent  him  so,  being 
young,  and  before  his  character  was  displayed."  Besides  these,  his 
only  leading  persons  are  Aspasia's  friend  and  countrywoman  Cleone, 
and  the  philosopher  Anaxagoras ;  the  figures  in  his  foreground  being 
wrisely  few,  but  their  grouping  and  accessories  such  as  to  surround 
with  all  the  greatness  of  their  age  his  hero  and  heroine,  who  vie  with 
each  other  in  appreciation  of  the  genius  that  is  present  wuth  them, 
and  in  their  knowledge  of  the  glories  of  the  past.  There  are  several 
exquisite  episodes  ;  and  that  of  Xeniades  of  Miletus,  the  rejected 
lover  of  Aspasia,  himself  as  vainly  beloved  by  Cleone,  invests  the 
latter  with  a  softness  and  grace  hardly  second  to  Aspasia's  own. 
These  two  women  fill  the  book  to  overflowing  with  sensibility  and 
tenderness,  insomuch  that  one  of  Landor's  American  admirers  *  has 
singled  it  out  as  in  this  respect  pre-eminent  over  all  his  writings,  "  a 
book  that  we  are  frequently  forced  to  drop,  and  surrender  ourselves 
to  the  visions  and  memories,  soft  or  sad,  which  its  words  awaken, 
and  cause  to  pass  before  the  mind."  Yet  a  book  also  that  perfectly 
sustains  the  interest  which  it  vividly  awakens.  Not  mean  is  the 
exploit  when  a  writer  can  satisfy  the  most  exacting  scholarship  while 
he  revives  the  forms  or  imitates  the  language  of  antiquity.  But 
here  we  have  something  mare,  resembling  rather  antiquity  itself 
than  the  most  scholarly  and  successful  presentation  of  it.  We  are 
in  the  theatre  when  Prometheus  is  played ;  we  are  in  the  house  of 
Aspasia  when  Socrates  and  Aristophanes  are  there ;  Thucydides  is 
shown  to  us  in  the  promise  of  his  youth  ;  we  see  the  last  of  the 
triumphs  of  Sophochs  ;  and  in  speeches  and  letters  of  Pericles  upon 
the  great  affairs  he  is  conducting,  history  acts  herself  again.  The 
political  antagonism  of  Cimon,  and  the  War  with  its  sad  disasters, 
usher  in  the  mournful  close.  Amid  the  horrors  of  the  plague  the 
farewell  to  Athens  and  Aspasia  is  written  ;  and  over  a  sun  that  is 
grandly  setting  the  fiery  star  of  Alcibiades  is  seen  to  rise.  A  mag- 
nificent subject  very  nobly  handled.  Landor  had  chosen  for  trial  the 
bow  of  Ulysses,  and  it  obeyed  his  hand. 

Something  to  show  manner  and  treatment  must  be  added,  but  it 
will  not  express  the  charm  that  overspreads  the  book  as  with  a  wide 
and  sunny  atmosphere  of  clear  bright  air.  It  is  only  to  be  understood 
from  reading  it  how  intenselv  Greek  the  mind  of  Landor  wras.  Here 
his  faults  became  beauties.  What  one  inclines  to  object  to  very  often 
in  his  writing,  that  his  characters  make  too  little  allowance  for 
human  passions,  that  they  leave  too  little  room  for  what  in  mechanics 
is  called  friction,  that,  as  during  all  his  own  life  their  inventor  and 

*  My  old  friend  Mr.  Hillard  of  Boston,  who  published  in  that  city  a  dozen  years  ago 
a  volume  of  "Selections  from  Landor." 


492  AT   FIESOLE.  ^SS^» 

maker  was  apt  to  do,  they  too  much  believe  what  they  wish,  and  too 
readily  suppose  to  be  practicable  what  appears  to  be  desirable,  is  no 
objection  here.  What  we  forever  associate  with  the  Greeks,  of 
buoyant  grace,  elaborate  refinement,  precision  of  form,  and  imagi- 
nation more  sensuous  and  fanciful  than  sentimental  or  spiritual,  we 
shall  always  find  in  most  perfect  expression  where  the  impulsive  pre- 
dominates over  the  reflective  part  of  the  mind.  It  is  a  small  thing 
to  add  for  an  illustration,  but  there  are  two  or  three  lines  in  the  first 
letter  that  exhibit  what  I  say  of  the  Greek  spirit  showing  itself  in 
the  very  lightest  touch,  where  Aspasia,  after  reaching  Athens,  de- 
scribes to  Cleone  the  olive-tree  itself  as  looking  beautiful  "  when  the 
sea-breezes  blow.  It  looks,  in  its  pliable  and  undulating  branches, 
irresolute  as  Ariadne  when  she  was  urged  to  fly,  and  pale  as  Orythia 
when  she  was  borne  away." 

The  book  really  opens  at  a  performance  of  Prometheus  in  the 
Athenian  theatre,  to  which,  through  the  assembled  crowd  of  youths, 
philosophers,  magistrates,  and  generals,  Aspasia  in  the  dress  of  a  boy 
has  made  her  way  alone  ;  when  with  such  painful  force  are  her  sym- 
pathies affected  by  the  actors  in  the  scene,  by  the  champion  of  the 
human  race,  by  his  antagonist  Jove  and  his  creator  ^Eschylus,  that 
she  sinks  from  her  seat.  "  He  had  resisted  in  silence  and  disdain  the 
crudest  tortures  that  Almightiness  could  inflict ;  and  now  arose  the 
nymphs  of  Ocean,  which  heaved  its  vast  waves  before  us ;  and  now 
they  descended  with  open  arms  and  sweet  benign  countenances,  and 
spake  with  pity ;  and  the  insurgent  heart  was  mollified  and  quelled. 
I  sobbed  ;  I  dropt."  As  many  eyes  had  been  directed  to  her  mean- 
while as  to  the  competitor  of  the  gods,  and  the  purpose  for  which  she 
had  left  her  native  Miletus  was  already  wellnigh  accomplished.  She 
is  conducted  to  the  presence  of  Pericles. 

By  any  one  desirous  of  knowing  the  heights  to  which  criticism  might 
ascend,  if  with  elevated  purpose  practised  as  an  art  and  not  indiscrimi- 
nately used  as  a  dagger  or  daubing-brush,  that  description  of  the  per- 
formance  of  Prometheus  would  be  well  worth  study.  But  nothing  great  is 
criticised  in  this  book  without  receiving  from  what  is  said  of  it  new  ce- 
lebrity and  charm,  and  upon  nothing  little  is  anger  thrown  needlessly 
away.  In  the  passages  I  am  about  to  give  it  will  be  also  seen  that  the 
mind  of  Landor  was  not  more  Greek  than  his  style  was  English,  and  that 
this  here  is  at  its  very  best  ;  perfect  in  form,  solid  in  substance,  in  ex- 
press-ion always  concise  and  pure,  and  often  piercing  and  radiant  as 
light  itself.  It  was  said  of  the  book  by  one  who  was  herself  a  fine 
Greek  scholar  (Miss  Barrett  :  21  August,  1839),  that  if  he  had  writ- 
ten only  this,  it  would  have  shown  him  to  be  "of  all  living  writers 
the  most  unconventional  in  thought  and  word,  the  most  classical, 
because  the  freest  from  mere  classicalism,  the  most  Greek,  because 
pre-eminently  and  purely  English,  and  the  fittest  of  all  to  achieve 
what  Plato  calls  a  triumph  in  eloquence,  the  successful  commendation 
of  Athens  in  the  midst  of  the  Peloponnesus." 


JET.  54- 60.]  PERICLES   AND    ASPASIA.  493 

PERICLES    OX    HOMER. 

"  Some  tell  us  that  there  were  twenty  Homers,  some  deny  that  there  was 
ever  one.  We  are  perpetually  laboring  to  destroy  our  delight,  our  compo- 
sure, our  devotion  to  superior  power.  Of  all  the  animals  upon  earth  we 
least  know  what  is  good  for  us.  My  opinion  is,  that  what  is  best  for  us  is 
our  admiration  of  good.  No  man  living  venerates  Homer  more  than  I  do. 
He  was  the  only  author  I  read  when  a  boy.  .  .  .  He  then  nourished  my 
fancy,  animated  my  dreams,  awoke  me  in  the  morning,  marched  with  me, 
sailed  with  me,  taught  me  morals,  taught  me  language,  taught  me  music  and 
philosophy  and  war.  .  .  .  His  beautiiul  creation  lies  displayed  before  us ; 
the  creator  is  hidden  in  his  own  splendor.  I  can  more  easily  believe  that 
his  hand  constructed  the  whole  than  that  twenty  men  could  be  found,  at 
nearly  the  same  time,  each  of  genius  sufficient  for  the  twentieth  part; 
because  in  many  centuries  there  arose  not  a  single  one  capable  of  such  a 
production  as  that  portion." 

HOMER   LIKELY   TO    REMAIN    UNKNOWN. 

"  The  heavenly  bodies  may  keep  their  secrets  two  or  three  thousand 
years  yet;  but  one  or  other  will  betray  them  to  some  wakeful  favorite, 
some  Endymion  beyond  Latmos,  perhaps  in  regions  undiscovered,  certainly 
in  uncalculated  times.  Men  will  know  more  of  them  than  they  will  ever 
know  of  Homer.  Our  knowledge  on  this  miracle  of  our  species  is  unlikely 
to  increase." 

HESIOD    AND    HOMER. 

"  Hesiod,  who  is  also  a  Boeotian,  is  admirable  for  the  purity  of  his  life  and 
soundness  of  his  precepts,  but  there  is  hardly  a  trace  of  poetry  in  his 
ploughed  field.  I  find  in  all  his  writings  but  one  verse  worth  transcribing, 
and  that  only  for  the  melody  :  — 

'  In  a  soft  meadow  and  on  vernal  flowers.' 

I  do  not  wonder  he  was  opposed  to  Homer.  What  an  advantage  to  the 
enemies  of  greatness  (that  is,  to  mankind)  to  be  able  to  match  one  so  low 
against  one  so  lofty  I  " 

ARISTOPHANES. 

"  Aristophanes,  in  my  opinion,  might  have  easily  been  the  first  lyric  poet 
now  living,  except  Sophocles  and  Euripides ;  he  chose  rather  to  be  the  bitterest 
satirist,  How  many,  adorned  with  all  the  rarities  of  intellect,  have  stum- 
bled on  the  entrance  into  life,  and  have  made  a  wrong  choice  on  the  very 
thing  which  was  to  determine  their  course  forever !  This  is  among  the 
reasons,  and  perhaps  is  the  principal  one,  why  the  wise  and  the  happy  are 
two  distinct  classes  of  men." 

SAPPHO   AND   THE   TRAGEDIANS. 

"  Her  finest  ode  is  not  to  be  compared  to  many  choruses  in  the  trage- 
dians. We  know  that  Sappho  felt  acutely ;  yet  Sappho  is  never  pathetic. 
Euripides  and  Sophocles  are  not  remarkable  for  the  purity,  the  intensity,  or 
the  fidelity  of  their  loves,  yet  they  touch,  they  transfix  the  heart.  Her  im- 
agination, her  whole  soul,  is  absorbed  in  her  own  breast :  she  is  the  prey  of 
the  passions ;  they  are  the  lords  and  masters." 


491  AT    FIESOLE.  tBxa£-^ 

THE    PROMETHEUS    AND    THE    ILIAD. 

"  I  agree  with  you  that  the  conception  of  such  a  drama  is  in  itself  a  stu- 
pendous effort  or  genius;  that  the  execution  is  equal  to  the  conception: 

that  the  character  of  Prometheus  is  more  heroic  than  any  in  heroic  poetry; 
ami  that  no  production  of  the  same  extent  is  so  magnificent  and  SO  exalted. 
But  the  Iliad  is  not  a  region,  —  it  is  a  continent;  and  you  might  as  well 
compare  this  prodigy  to  it  as  the  cataract  of  the  Nile  to  the  Ocean.  In  the 
one  we  are  overpowered  by  the  compression  and  burst  of  the  element;  in 
the  other  we  are  carried  over  an  immensity  of  space,  bounding  the  earth, 
not  bounded  by  her,  and  having  nothing  above  but  the  heavens." 

PERICLES    ON    HIS    LIBELLERS. 

"  Why  should  I  be  angry  with  the  writers  of  comedy  ?  Is  it  because 
they  tell  me  of  the  faults  I  find  in  myself?  Surely  not,  for  he  who  finds 
them  in  himself  may  be  quite  certain  that  others  have  found  them  in  him 
long  before,  and  have  shown  forbearance  in  the  delay.  Is  it  because  I  am 
told  of  those  I  have  not  discovered  in  me  ?  Foolish  indeed  were  this.  I 
am  to  be  angry,  it  seems,  because  a  man  forewarns  me  that  I  have  enemies 
in  my  chamber,  who  will  stab  me  when  they  find  me  asleep,  and  because  he 
helps  me  to  catch  them  and  disarm  them.  But  it  is  such  an  indignity  to  be 
ridiculed  !  I  incurred  a  greater  when  I  threw  myself  into  the  way  of  ridi- 
cule:  a  greater  still  should  I  suffer,  if  I  tried  whether  it  could  be  remedied 
by  resentment.  Ridicule  often  parries  resentment,  but  resentment  never 
yet  parried  ridicule." 

LITTLE    POETS. 

"  He  is  among  the  many  poets  who  never  make  us  laugh  or  weep  ;  among 
the  many  whom  we  take  into  the  hand  like  pretty  insects,  turn  them  over, 
look  at  them  for  a  moment,  and  toss  them  into  the  grass  again.  The  earth 
swarms  with  these;  they  live  their  season,  and  others  similar  come  into  life 
the  next." 

SCULPTURE,    PAINTING,    AND    POETRY. 

" Painting  by  degrees  will  perceive  her  advantages  over  Sculpture;  but 
if  there  are  paces  between  Sculpture  and  Painting,  there  are  parasangs 
between  Painting  and  Poetry.  The  difference  is  that  of  a  lake  confined  by 
mountains,  and  a  river  running  on  through  all  the  varieties  of  scenery,  per- 
petual and  unimpeded.  Sculpture  and  Painting  are  moments  of  life ;  Poetry 
is  life  itself,  and  everything  around  it  and  above  it." 

LIFE. 

"  Ii  is  ,i  casket  not  precious  in  itself,  but  valuable  in  proportion  to  what 
fortune,  or  industry,  or  virtue,  has  placed  within  it." 

TRUE    LOVE. 

"  At  last,  Aspasia,  you  love  indeed.  The  perfections  of  your  beloved 
interest  you  less  than  the  imperfections,  which  you  no  sooner  take  up  for 
reprehension,  than  you  admire,  embrace,  and  defend.  Happy,  happy  Aspa- 
sia!" « 

LITTLE    AGLAE 

To  her  Father,  on  her  Statue  being  called  like  her. 

"  Fattier,  the  little  girl  we  see 
[a  n<>t,  i  fancy,  so  like  me : 
You  never  hold  her  on  your  knee. 


JET.  54-60.]  PERICLES    AND    ASPASIA.  405 

When  she  came  home  the  other  day 
*  You  kissed  her;  but  I  cannot  say 

She  kissed  you  first  and  ran  away." 

ASPASIA    ON    HER   NURSE'S    DEATH. 

"Ah  poor  Demophile,  she  remembered  me,  then!  How  sorry  I  am  I 
cannot  tell  her  I  remember  her !  Cleone,  there  are  little  things  that  leave 
no  little  regrets.  I  might  have  said  kind  words,  and  perhaps  have  done 
kind  actions,  to  many  who  now  are  beyond  the  reach  of  them." 

A    PHILOSOPHER'S    JUDGMENT    OF    PERICLES. 

"Much  is  wanting  to  constitute  his  greatness.  He  possesses,  it  is  true, 
more  comprehensiveness  and  concentration  than  any  living  ;  perhaps  more 
than  any  since  Solon  ;  but  he  thinks  that  power  over  others  is  better  than 
power  over  himself;  as  if  a  mob  were  worth  a  man,  and  an  acclamation 
were  worth  a  Pericles." 

ANAXAGORAS    IN    AGE    AND    EXILE. 

"Believe  me,  I  am  happy.  ...  I  am  with  you  still;  I  study  with  you, 
just  as  before,  although  nobody  talks  aloud  in  the  school-room.  This  is  the 
pleasantest  part  of  life.  Oblivion  throws  her  light  coverlet  over  our  in- 
fancy ;  and  soon  after  we  are  out  of  the  cradle  we  forget  how  soundly  we 
had  been  slumbering,  and  how  delightful  were  our  dreams.  Toil  and 
pleasure  contend  for  us  almost  the  instant  we  rise  from  it;  and  weariness 
follows  whichever  has  carried  us  away.  We  stop  awhile,  look  around  us, 
wonder  to  find  we  have  completed  the  circle  of  existence,  fold  our  arms, 
and  fall  asleep  again." 

ADVICE    ON    THE    WRITING   OF    HISTORY. 

"  We  are  growing  too  loquacious  both  on  the  stage  and  off.  We  make 
disquisitions  which  render  us  only  more  and  more  dim-sighted,  and  excur- 
sions that  only  consume  our  stores.  .  .  .  The  field  of  history  should  not 
merely  be  well  tilled,  but  well  peopled.  None  is  delightful  to  me,  or  inter- 
esting, in  which  I  find  not  as  many  illustrious  names  as  have  a  right  to  enter 
it.  We  might  as  well  in  a  drama  place  the  actors  behind  the  scenes,  and 
listen  to  the  dialogue  there,  as  in  a  history  push  valiant  men  back,  and  pro- 
trude ourselves  with  husky  disputations.  Show  me  rather  how  great 
projects  were  executed,  great  advantages  gained,  and  great  calamities 
averted.  Show  me  the  generals  and  the  statesmen  who  stood  foremost,  that 
I  may  bend  to  them  in  reverence ;  tell  me  their  names,  that  I  may  repeat 
them  to  my  children.  Teach  me  whence  laws  were  introduced,  upon  what 
foundation  laid,  by  what  custody  guarded,  in  what  inner  keep  preserved. 
Let  the  books  of  the  treasury  lie  closed  as  religiously  as  the  Sibyl's ;  leave 
weights  and  measures  in  the  market-place.  Commerce  in  the  harbor,  the 
Arts  in  the  light  they  love,  Philosophy  in  the  shade ;  place  History  on  her 
rightful  throne,  and  at  the  sides  of  her  Eloquence  and  War." 

THE    TROJAN    WAR   AND    OTHER   HISTORIC    MYTHS. 

"  We  make  a  bad  bargain  when  we  change  poetry  for  truth  in  the  affairs 
of  ancient  times,  and  by  no  means  a  good  one  in  any.  Remarkable  men  of 
remote  ao;es  are  collected  together  out  of  different  countries  within  the  same 
period,  and  perform  simultaneously  the  same  action.     On  an  accumulation 


496  AT    FIESOLE.  I*5£»" 

of  obscure  deeds  arises  a  wild  spirit  of  poetry  ;  and  images  and  pames  burst 
forth  and  spread  themselves,  which  cany  with  them  something  like  en- 
chantment, far  beyond  the  infancy  of  nations.  What  was  vague  imagina- 
tion settles  at  last  and  is  received  for  history.  It  is  difficult  to  effect  and 
idle  to  attempt  the  separation  :  it  is  like  breaking  off  a  beautiful  crystalliza- 
tion from  the  vault  of  some  intricate  and  twilight  cavern,  out  of  mere  curi- 
osity to  see  where  the  secretion  terminates  and  the  rock  begins." 

VERSES    BY    A    PHILOSOPHER. 

"Pleasures!  away;  they  please  no  more. 
Friends!  are  they  what  they  were  before? 
Loves !  they  are  very  idle  things, 
The  best  about  them  are  their  wings. 
The  dance!  't  is  what  a  bear  can  do. 
Music  !  I  hate  your  music  too. 
"Whene'er  these  witnesses  that  time 
Hath  snatcht  the  chaplet  from  our  prime 
Are  called  by  Nature,  as  we  go 
With  eye  more  wary,  step  more  slow, 
And  will  be  heard  and  noted  down, 
However  we  may  fret  and  frown,  — 
Shall  we  desire  to  leave  the  scene 
Where  all  our  former  joys  had  been? 
No,  'twere  ungrateful  and  unwise! 
But  when  die  down  our  charities 
For  human  weal  and  human  woes, 
Then  is  the  time  our  eyes  should  close." 

THE   OTHER   SIDE   TO    THE    "  SI    VIS   ME   FLERE." 

"  Homer,  in  himself,  is  subject  tV  none  of  the  passions ;  but  he  sends 
them  all  forth  on  his  errands,  with  as  much  precision  and  velocity  as  Apollo 
his  golden  arrows.  The  hostile  Gods,  the  very  Fates  themselves,  must  have 
wept  with  Priam  in  the  tent  before  Achilles:  Homer  stands  unmoved." 

TRUE    WIFE. 

"  If  he  loves  me,  the  merit  is  not  mine ;  the  fault  will  be,  if  he  ceases." 

LOVE. 

"  Like  the  ocean,  love  embraces  the  earth ;  and  by  love,  as  by  the  ocean, 
whatever  is  sordid  and  unsound  is  borne  away." 

ASTASIA    TO    CLEONTE. 

"  The  largest  heart,  0  Cleone,  is  that  which  only  one  can  rest  upon  or 
impress;  the  purest  is  that  which  dares  to  call  itself  impure ;  the  kindest 
is  that  which  shrinks  rather  at  his  own  inhumanity  than  at  another's." 

PRIDE   AND    DELICACY. 

"  There  are  proud  men  of  so  much  delicacy  that  it  almost  conceals  their 
pride,  and  perfectly  excuses  it." 

REALLY    RESTLESS    MEN. 

"  I  do  believe,  Aspasia,  that  studious  men  who  look  so  quiet  are  the  most 
restless  men  in  existence." 


JET.  54-60.]  PERICLES   AND    ASPASIA.  497 

CAUTION    FROM    A    PHILOSOPHER. 

"Be  cautious,  0  Aspasia,  of  discoursing  on  philosophy.  Is  it  not  in 
philosophy  as  in  love  ?  the  more  we  have  of  it,  and  the  less  we  talk  about 
it,  the  better." 

STUDY. 

"  Study  is  the  bane  of  boyhood,  the  aliment  of  youth,  the  indulgence  of 
.  manhood,  and  the  restorative  of  age." 

YOUTH. 

"  There  is  something  like  enchantment  in  the  very  sound  of  the  word 
youth,  and  the  calmest  heart,  at  every  season  of  life,  beats  in  double  time 
to  it." 

MONUMENTS. 

"  The  monument  of  the  greatest  man  should  be  only  a  bust  and  a  name. 
If  the  name  alone  is  insufficient  to  illustrate  the  bust,  let  them  both  perish." 

TEARS. 

"  Tears,  0  Aspasia,  do  not  dwell  long  upon  the  cheeks  of  youth.  Rain 
drops  easily  from  the  bud,  rests  on  the  bosom  of  the  maturer  flower,  and 
breaks  down  that  one  only  which  hath  lived  its  day." 

DEATHS    OF   FRIENDS. 

"  We  both  are  young ;  and  yet  we  have  seen  several  who  loved  us  pass 
away ;  and  we  never  can  live  over  again  as  we  lived  before.  A  portion  of 
our  lives  is  consumed  by  the  torch  we  follow  at  their  funerals.  We  enter 
into  another  state  of  existence,  resembling  indeed  and  partaking  of  the 
former,  but  another !  it  contains  the  substance  of  the  same  sorrows,  the 
shadow  of  the  same  joys.    Alas,  how  true  are  the  words  of  the  old:  poet :  — 

We  lose  a  life  in  every  friend  we  lose, 
And  every  death  is  painful  but  the  last." 

A   MOTHER   ON    HER    CHILD'S    COMPANIONSHIP. 

"  Where  on  earth  is  there  so  much  society  as  in  a  beloved  child  ?  He 
accompanies  me  in  my  walks,  gazes  into  my  eyes  for  what  I  am  gathering 
from  books,  tells  me  more  and  better  things  than  they  do;  and  asks  me 
often  what  neither  I  nor  they  can  answer.  When  he  is  absent  I  am  filled 
with  reflections ;  when  he  is  present  I  have  room  for  none  beside  what  I 
receive  from  him.  The  charms  of  his  childhood  bring  me  back  to  the 
delights  of  mine,  and  I  fancy  I  hear  my  own  words  in  a  sweeter  voice. 
Will  he  —  0  how  I  tremble  at  the  mute  oracle  of  futurity !  —  will  he  ever 
be  as  happy  as  I  have  been  ?  " 

MUSIC   AND    MEMORY. 

"  When  Pericles  is  too  grave  and  silent,  I  usually  take-  up  my  harp  and 
sing.  .  .  .  '  That  instrument,'  said  he,  '  is  the  rod  of  Hermes ;  it  calls  up 
the  spirits  from  below,  or  conducts  them  back  again  to  Elysium.  With 
what  ecstasy  do  I  throb  and  quiver  under  those  refreshing  showers  of 
sound ! ' 

32 


498  AT    FIESOLE.  ^^ 

Come,  sprinkle  me  soft  music  o'er  the  breast, 

Bring  me  the  varied  colors  into  light 
That  now  obscurely  on  its  tablet  rest, 

Show  me  its  flowers  and  figures  fresh  and  bright. 

Waked  at  thy  voice  and  touch,  again  the  chords 

Restore  what  restless  years  hath  moved  away, 
Restore  the  glowing  cheeks,  the  tender  words, 

Youth's  short-lived  spring  and  pleasure's  summer-day." 

Extracts  express  an  original  book  badly,  whether  in  matter  or 
manner,  although  the  above  have  some  interest  in  themselves ;  but 
the  three  scenes  in  which  Aspasia  completes  the  story  of  Agamemnon 
it  will  be  best  to  leave  untouched.  The  first,  wherein  the  shade  of 
Iphigenia,  unconscious  of  her  mother's  double  crime,  meets  on  his 
descent  from  death  the  shade  of  her  father,  by  whose  hand  she  had 
herself  perished,  is  for  the  originality  of  its  conception  unsurpassed  ; 
and  the  second  and  third,  representing  the  fate  of  Clytemnestra  and 
the  madness  of  Orestes,  are,  in  my  judgment,  for  the  intensity  and 
vividness  of  their  dramatic  expression,  unequalled  in  the  dramatic 
writings  of  our  time.  "  My  Agamemnon,"  wrote  Landor  (14th  April, 
1836),  "was  composed  in  bed,  all  night  and  half  the  morning,  on 
my  recollecting  what  defects  the  Greek  tragedians  had  left  in  their 
management  of  the  house  of  Atreus.  And  yet  it  is  on  this  ground 
that  their  laurels  have  grown  so  high.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  do 
anything  admirable,  for  men's  admiration  will  spring  from  something 
worse.  Critics  admire  the  Agamemnon  of  ^Eschylus  far  above  his 
Prometheus.  .  .  .  There  is,"  he  wrote  in  the  same  letter,  "  only  one 
thought  of  another  man  beside  myself,  in  the  whole  book,  and  this 
I  have  given  twice,  wishing  it  to  be  the  one  that  weighed  most  with 
Pericles,  —  that  he  never  caused  an  Athenian  to  put  on  mourning. 
In  the  rest,  prose  and  poetry,  wherever  I  detected  a  similarity  to 
another,  I  struck  out  the  sentence,  however  loath,  and  however  certain 
that  it  would  have  been  mine.  But,  alas,  the  air  we  breathe  is 
breathed  by  millions  ;  so  are  the  thoughts.  They  both  act  as  new 
organs,  and  both  diversely."  Though  scrupulous  not  to  commit  the 
offence,  he  could  not  avoid  the  charge ;  and  the  reader  will  be  amused 
to  learn  the  effect  hereafter  produced  by  it.  Suffice  it  now  to  say 
that  the  book  was  not  published  until  the  spring  of  1830  ;  and  that 
in  the  interval  Landor  had  left  the  villa  Gherardescha,  and  taken  up 
his  residence  in  England. 


IX.     SELF-BANISHMENT   FROM  FIESOLE. 

"  I  leave  thee,  beauteous  Italy !  no  more 
From  the  high  terraces,  at  even-tide, 
To  look  supine  into  thy  depths  of  sky, 
Thy  golden  moon  between  the  cliff  and  me, 
Or  thy  dark  spires  of  fretted  cypresses 
Bordering  the  channel  of  the  milky-way 
Fiesole  and  Valdarno  must  be  dreams 
Hereafter,  and  my  own  lost  Affrico 


/ET.  54-60.]  SELF-BANISHMENT    FROM    FIESOLE.  499 

Murmur  to  me  hut  in  the  poet's  song. 

I  did  believe  (what  have  I  not  believed?) 

Weary  with  age,  but  unopprest  by  pain, 

To  close  in  thy  soft  clime  my  quiet  day, 

And  rest  my  bones  in  the  mimosa's  shade. 

Hope !  hope !  few  ever  cherisht  thee  so  little, 

Few  are  the  heads  thou  hast  so  rarely  raised ; 

But  thou  didst  promise  this,  and  all  was  well: 

For  we  are  fond  of  thinking  where  to  lie 

When  every  pulse  hath  ceast,  when  the  lone  heart 

Can  lift  no  aspiration  .  .  .  Over  all 

The  smiles  of  Nature  shed  a  potent  charm, 

And  light  us  to  our  chamber  at  the  grave."  w.  s.  L. 

"  Among  the  unaccountable  things  in  me,  and  many  are  so  even 
to  myself,  is  this,  that  I  admired  Pindar  somewhat  more  in  youth 
than  in  what  ought  to  be  a  graver  age.  However,  his  wisdom,  his 
high-mindedness,  and  his  excellent  selection  of  topics,  in  which  no 
writer  of  prose  or  verse  ever  equalled  him,  render  him  worthy  to 
spend  the  evening  with  one  who  has  passed  the  earlier  part  of  the 
day  with  Dante."  His  old  school-fellow  Carey  had  visited  Italy,  and 
to  him  these  words  were  addressed,  thanking  him  for  his  translation 
of  Pindar.  What  also  the  course  of  my  narrative  requires  that  I  should 
now  relate,  the  reader  must  be  content  to  accept  among  the  "  unac- 
countable things."  No  account  can  as  yet  be  given  of  it  which  he 
will  be  able  to  regard  as  entirely  intelligible. 

In  April,  1835,  Landor  had  left  his  villa,  and  was  in  Florence  wait- 
ing a  letter  from  Armitage  Brown,  at  this  time  on  his  way  to  Eng- 
land. A  few  nights  before  his  departure,  when  bidden  to  his  last 
dinner  at  the  villa,  he  had  been  present  at  the  scene  that  had  driven 
Landor  from  Fiesole ;  and  in  justification  of  this  extreme  step  an 
account  of  what  he  witnessed  had  been  asked  from  him.  "  It  was 
scarcely  possible  for  me,"  he  wrote  from  Genoa  on  the  4th  of  April,* 
"  to  make  such  a  reply  as  your  letter  required  before  I  quitted 
Florence.  As  we  have  a  da^y's  rest  here  I  avail  myself  of  it." 
He  grieves  to  have  to  be  ungracious  to  one  who  had  uniformly  treated 
him  with  the  utmost  courtesy  and  kindness  ;  "  but  there  are  certain 
words,  which,  once  uttered,  whether  directed  towards  myself  or  my 
friend,  cancel  every  obligation ;  nor  can  I  affect  to  feel  their  power 
lessened  on  account  of  their  being  uttered  by  the  wife  of  my  friend." 
He  then  describes  language  used  in  presence  of  the  elder  children, 
which  had  constituted  the  unpardonable  offence,  and  which  he  de- 
clares to  have  bad  no  provocation.  "  It  commenced  by  upbraiding  you 
for  conduct  excessively  bad  towards  herself;  but  her  own  statement, 
as  well  as  your  answer,  certainly  proved  that  you  were  blameless,  and 
I  ventured  to  point  out  her  mistake.  Unfortunately  no  attention 
was  paid  to  either  of  us  ;  and  still  more  unfortunately  —  "  But 
the  story  is  an  old  and  familiar  one,  that  it  is  the  very  consciousness 
of  our  own  injustice  which  will  make  us  add  to  the  injury  we  inflict, 
and  that,  by  doing  all  we  can  to  aggravate  the  wrong  we  commit,  we 
seem  to  justify  ourselves  for  committing  it. 

*  The  letter  is  addressed  "  Post  restante,  Florence." 


500  AT    FIESOLE.  !  '   "  :  VI- 

H  I  am  ashamed  to  write  down  the  words,  but  to  hear  them  was  painful. 
...  I  am  afraid  my  patience  would  have  left  me  in  a  tenth  part  of  the 
time;  but  you,  to  my  astonishment,  sat  with  a  composed  countenance, 
never  once  making  use  of  an  uncivil  expression,  unless  the  following  mr.y 
be  so  considered,  when,  after  about  an  hour,  she  seemed  exhausted  :  '  I 
beg,  madam,  you  will,  if  you  think  proper,  proceed ;  as  I  made  up  my 
mind,  from  the  first,  to  endure  at  least  twice  as  much  as  you  have  hern  yet 
pleased  to  speak.'  After  dinner,  when  I  saw  her  leave  the  room,  I  fol- 
lowed, and  again  pointed  out  her  mistake;  when  she  readily  agreed  with 
me,  saying  she  was  convinced  you  were  not  to  blame.  At  this  I  could  not 
forbear  exclaiming,  '  Well,  then  ? '  in  the  hope  of  bearing  back  to  you  some 
slight  acknowledgment  of  regret  on  her  part:  but  in  this  I  was  disap- 
pointed. You  conclude  your  letter  with,  '  I  feel  confident  you  will 
write  a  few  lines,  exculpating  me  if  you  think  I  have  acted  with  propriety 
in  very  trying  circumstances;  and  condemning  me  if  I  acted  with  violence, 
precipitation,  or  rudeness.'  For  more  than  eleven  years  I  have  been  inti- 
mate with  you,  and,  during  that  time,  frequenting  your  house,  I  never  once 
saw  you  behave  towards  Mrs.  Landor  otherwise  than  with  the  most  gentle- 
manly demeanor,  while  your  love  for  your  children  was  unbounded.  I  was 
always  aware  that  you  gave  entire  control  into  her  hands  over  the  children, 
the  servants,  and  the  management  of  the  house ;  and  when  vexed  or  an- 
noyed at  anything,  I  could  not  but  remark  that  you  were  in  the  habit  of 
requesting  the  cause  to  be  remedied  or  removed,  as  a  favor  to  yourself. 
All  this  I  have  more  than  once  repeated  to  Mrs.  Landor  in  answer  to  her 
accusations  against  you,  which  I  could  never  well  comprehend.  When  I 
have  elsewhere  heard  you  accused  of  being  a  violent  man,  I  have  frankly 
acknowledged  it;  limiting  however  your  violence  to  persons  guilty  of 
meanness,  roguery,  or  duplicity ;  by  which  I  meant,  and  said,  that  you  ut- 
terly lost  3rour  temper  with  the  Italians." 

It  will  not  be  supposed  that  these  sentences,  or  even  the  entire 
contents  of  the  letter,  if  it  had  been  possible  to  quote  them,  are 
thought  by  me  to  afford  the  justification  for  which  they  were  sought 
by  Landor  and  written  by  his  friend  :  but  what  they  tell  has  the 
value  of  suggesting  much  that  the  writer  had  not  the  power  to  tell  ; 
the  "  gentlemanly  demeanor  "  and  the  "  unbounded  love  "  are  sig- 
nificant of  more  than  was  intended  by  such  contrasted  expressions ; 
and  in  the  scene  referred  to,  taken  at  its  worst,  even  in  the  step  that 
followed,  extravagant  as  it  was,  the  reader  of  former  passages  of  this 
work*  may  possibly  see  but  the  sequel  of  what  could  not  ever  have 
been  expected  to  have  favorable  issue.  If,  at  the  same  time,  I  have 
delineated  fairly  the  character  it  was  my  purpose  to  express,  it  will 
seem  that  no  injury  so  fatal  could  be  done,  nor  any  offence  so  unpar- 
donable be  committed,  as  one  that  might  wound  such  a  man  in  his 
self-love  by  lowering  him  in  his  own  opinion  before  others,  with  whom 
especially  he  desired  to  stand  well.  He  fled  from  his  young  wife  at 
Jersey,  not  because  of  her  expressions,  but  because  her  little  sister 
heard  them  ;  f  and  he  had  now  the  same  reason  for  deserting  his 
home  at  Fiesole,  without,  alas,  the  same  excuse  for  returning.  It  was  a 
home  that  must   in  future  have  always  listeners  for  such  disputes; 

*  Ante,  pp.  196-198,  250-252.  t  Ante,  pp.  250,  251. 


JET.  54-60.]  SELF-BANISHMENT    FROM    FIESOLE.  501 

and  perhaps,  with  every  day  that  now  passed,  disposed  more  and 
more  themselves  to  take  part  in  them.  "  It  was  not  willingly,"  he 
wrote  to  Southey,  "  that  I  left  Tuscany  and  my  children.  There  was 
but  one  spot  upon  earth  on  which  I  had  fixed  my  heart,  and  four 
objects  on  which  my  affection  rested.  That  they  might  not  hear 
every  day  such  language  as  no  decent  person  should  ever  hear  once, 
nor  despise  both  parents,  I  left  the  only  delight  of  my  existence." 
The  conclusion  nevertheless  is  forced  upon  us,  that  it  was  more  for 
his  own  sake  than  for  theirs  the  extraordinary  determination  was 
taken.  He  could  not  believe,  if  we  are  to  trust  the  language  always 
afterwards-  used  by  him,  that,  with  his  own  mere  withdrawal  from 
his  home,  all  indecency  of  language  or  temper  was  to  cease  there  for- 
ever ;  and  the  more  he  condemns  what  had  become  unbearable  by 
himself,  the  more  he  condemns  himself  for  having  left  his  children 
exposed  to  it.     There  is  no  escape  from  this  difficulty. 

It  is  true  that  attempts  were  made  for  him  by  friends,  in  which  he 
took  part  more  or  less  eagerly,  to  induce  at  least  the  two  elder 
children  to  join  him  in  England  ;  he  had  settled  so  far  as  to  engage 
to  meet  them  at  Verona  in  the  hope  of  their  return  with  him  ;  in 
negotiations  having  this  object  in  view,  or  similar  but  more  partial 
concessions,  Francis  Hare  and  his  relative  Mrs.  Dashwood,  Miss  Mac- 
kenzie of  Seaforth,  his  friend  Ablett,  and  others  very  warmly  en- 
gaged :  there  were  even  proposals  for  his  own  return  urged  in  the 
year  of  his  flight  by  his  wife's  relatives  in  England,  pressed  upon  him 
two  years  afterwards  by  Crabb  Robinson  when  visiting  Italy  with 
Wordsworth,  and  revived,  at  the  instance  of  Mrs  Landor  herself,* 
when  Kenyon  was  at  Fiesole  with  Mr.  Bezzi  two  years  later ;  but  to 
these  last  overtures  the  only  answer  was  a  peremptory  negative,  and, 
under  objections  that  would  have  seemed  to  me  very  far  from  in- 
superable, all  the  other  endeavors  broke  down.  I  am  bound  to  add, 
at  the  same  time,  that  to  an  excessively  urgent  appeal  from  Mr. 
Ravenshaw,  who  had  married  one  of  his  wife's  sisters,  he  made  detailed 
reply  of  such  a  character  as  to  elicit  from  his  brother-in-law  frank 
admission  of  the  strength  of  the  grounds  on  which  his  refusal  to 
comply  was  based  ;  nor  was  the  application  from  that  quarter  ever 
renewed.  "  I  am  sure  you  are  wanted  at  home,"  wrote  Crabb  Robin- 
son to  him  from  the  villa  itself  in  June,  1837,  "and  that  your  pres- 
ence might  have  the  happiest  effect  on  the  character  of  your  children. 
It  might  be  decisive  as  to  the  happiness  of  your  daughter."  "  I 
wish  to  Heaven  Julia  were  with  you,"  Mr.  James  had  written  to  him 
in  the  same  month  of  the  previous  year,  1836.  "  It  would  be  a  com- 
fort to  you  and  a  blessing  to  her  ;  for  Italy,  and  Italy  without  a 
father's  care,  is  a  sad  land  for  young  fair  woman."  Between  these 
dates  I  ventured  myself  to  make  inquiry  if  there  were  any  chance  of 

*  "  Their  mother  "  (I  quote  Mr.  Bezzi's  letter  to  Landor,  19th  November,  1839).  "  as 
you  well  know,  does  not,  perhaps  cannot,  exercise  any  wholesome  control  over  them  " 
(the  children);  "  she  plainly  admits  this:  and  adduces  it  as  a  reason,  among  others, 
why  she  wishes  and  hopes  you  will  return." 


502  AT    FIESOLE.  *^ 

his  consenting  to  return ;  and  his  reply  gave  me  no  hope  whatever. 
The  condition  he  would  have  imposed  rendered  it  equally  impossible 
that  he  should  rejoin  his  children  in  Italy,  or  that,  with  the  decision 
at  which  the  elder  ones  had  arrived  respecting  their  mother,  they 
should  join  him  in  England.  He  showed  me  at  the  time,  I  well  re- 
member, a  then  unfinished  Conversation  in  which  he  had  just  written 
these  sentences  :  "  Negligence  of  order  and  propriety,  of  duties  and 
civilities,  long  endured,  often  deprecated,  ceases  to  be  tolerable,  when 
children  grow  up  and  are  in  danger  of  following  the  example.  It 
often  happens  that,  if  a  man  unhappy  in  the  married  state  were  to 
disclose  the  manifold  causes  of  his  uneasiness,  they  would  be  found, 
by  those  who  were  beyond  their  influence,  to  be  of  such  a  nature  as 
rather  to  excite  derision  than  sympathy.  The  waters  of  bitterness 
do  not  fall  on  his  head  in  a  cataract,  but  through  a  colander ;  one 
however  like  the  vases  of  the  Danaides,  perforated  only  for  replenish- 
ment. We  know  scarcely  the  vestibule  of  a  house  of  which  we  fancy 
we  have  penetrated  all  the  corners.  We  know  not  how  grievously  a 
man  may  have  Buffered,  long  before  the  calumnies  of  the  world  befell 
him  as  he  reluctantly  left  his  house  door.  There  are  women  from 
whom  incessant  tears  of  anger  swell  forth  at  imaginary  wrongs  ;  but 
of  contrition  for  their  own  delinquencies  not  one."  Arrangements 
continued  to  be  suggested,  and  there  were  even  active  measures  on 
foot  to  give  them  trial,  going  so  far  in  one  instance  as  the  engagement 
of  a  house  near  Plvmouth  in  which  the  mother  might  reside  with  all 
the  children,  the  father  living  in  lodgings  near ;  *  but  I  believe  his 
own  resolve  to  have  been  now  so  decisively  and  so  finally  taken  that 
at  this  point  I  quit  the  subject.  Whatever  further  illustration  it  re- 
ceives in  these  pages  will  be  from  circumstances  or  allusions  unavoid- 
ably incident  to  the  narrative. 

In  the  month  when  he  quitted  Florence  he  had  a  letter  from  Fran- 
cis Hare,  at  this  time  in  Rome,  full  of  pleasure  and  wonder  at  his 
Shakespeare;  telling  him  his  genius  had  become  stronger  of  wing 
under  the  heights  of  Fiesole  ;  hoping  thr.t  his  volume  of  unpublished 
Conversations  had  been  found  ;  and  suggesting  as  a  subject  for  a  new 
conversation  to  be  added  to  it,  the  meeting  and  dinner  of  Pope  Julius 
the  Second,  during  his  flight  from  Rome,  with  the  two  cardinals  that 
succeeded  him  as  Popes  Leo  and  Clement.  It  was  a  good  subject, 
but  an  unlucky  time  ;  and  as  to  the  missing  Conversations  Landor 

*  The  unceasing  efforts  of  Francis  Hare  and  his  cousin  Mr*.  Dashwood  brought  mat- 
ters thus  far.  The  latter  wrote  in  November,  L887,  to  Landor's  sister  Elizabeth  that  he 
had  consented  to  allow  the  whole  Family  to  come  to  England  in  the  following  April. 
"A  inure  affectionate  letter  than  usual  from  Arnold,  and  a  most  kimi  and  sensible  one 
from  my  excellent  cousin  Francis  Hare,  strongly  advising  the  step  for  his  children's 
Bake,  have  led  to  this."  I. an. lor  had  written  to  her:  "  I  shall  tell  him  (F.  II.)  that  they 
niay  all  come  next  April,  on  condition  that  I  never  sec  her."  Of  course  it  all  went  off; 
and  in  the  next  following  month,  at  the  end  of  a  letter  describing  a  proposal  of  Dr. 

Col  lolly'-  to  re- tore  "  Shakespeare's  chapel,"  to  which  he  had  Subscribed  live  ]  ion  lids,  he 

named  Mrs.  Dashwood's  scheme  to  me  as  a  thing  of  the  past,  speaking  at  the  same  time 
very  highly  of  her  kindness  "The  concern  she  takes  in  my  family  is  infinitely 
greater  than  that  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world:  and  the  last  tiling  i  forget  will  be  that." 


MT.  54-60.]  SELF-BANISHMENT    FROM    FIESOLE.  503 

had  to  reply  even  less  favorably.  He  had  just  received  a  letter  from 
Mr.  Willis  giving  doubtful  hope  of  their  recovery.  "  I  have  to  beg," 
said  this  characteristic  effusion,  "  that  you  will  lay  to  the  charge  of 
England  a  part  of  the  annoyance  you  will  feel  about  your  books  and 
MS.  I  was  never  more  nattered  by  a  commission,  and  I  have  never 
fulfilled  one  so  ill.  They  went  to  America  via  Leghorn,  and  I  ex- 
pected fully  to  have  arrived  in  New  York  a  month  or  two  after  them. 
But  here  I  am  still,  and  here  I  fear  I  shall  be  for  six  months  or  a 
year  to  come.  I  will  write  immediately  to  the  United  States  for 
them."  England  was  the  culprit  for  having  treated  Mr.  N.  P.  Willis 
so  well  that  he  could  not  find  it  in  his  heart  to  quit  the  entertaining 
land.  He  was  become  Anglomane.  "I  think  no  king  in  Europe 
lives  half  so  well "  as  he  had  lived  in  Gordon  Castle  and  other  Scotch 
houses,  and  in  the  hospitable  halls  of  Lady  Blessington.*  As  for 
what  Landor  had  written  to  him  in  praise  of  New  England,  —  well, 
he  thought  that  country  really  did  deserve  not  ill  of  his  respect, 
"but  it  is  an  ungracious  people,  and  best  judged  at  a  distance. 
They  would  offend  your  notions  of  what  is  due  from  one  gentleman 
to  another  every  hour  if  you  lived  among  them,  while  in  the  great 
outline  (all  that  is  seen  in  the  distance)  they  are  a  just  and  intelli- 
gent race,  and  good  trustees  of  one's  birthright  of  national  pride. 
The  perfection  of  good  fortune,  I  think,  is  to  he  an  American  and  live 
with  Englishmen."  Landor  will  perhaps  be  thought  not  without  ex- 
cuse for  the  way  in  which  he  always  afterwards  spoke  of  Mr.  N.  P. 
Willis. 

Before  quitting  Italy  he  stayed  some  time  at  the  Baths  of  Lucca, 
and  he  did  not  arrive  in  England  until  the  autumn  of  1835.  He 
stayed  three  months  at  Llanbedr  Hall  with  Mr.  Ablett,  passed  the 
winter  months  at  Clifton,  and  rejoined  his  friend  at  Llanbedr  in  the 
spring  of  1836. 

*  She  is  my  lodestar  and  most  valued  friend,  for  whose  acquaintance  I  am  so  much 
indebted  to  you  that  you  will  find  it  difficult  in  your  lifetime  to  diminish  my  obliga- 
tions.   I  thank  you  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart." 


BOOK    SEVENTH. 

1836-1857.     iET.  61-82. 

TWENTY -ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH. 

I.  New  and  Old  Friendships.  —  II.  The  Pentameron  of  Boccaccio  and  Petrarca. 
—  III.  Writing  Plays.  —  IV.  Reviewing  a  Reviewer. — V.  Visits  and  Vis- 
itors. —  VI.  Death  of  Southey.  —  VII.  Last  Series  of  Conversations.  — 
VIII.  A  Friend  not  Literary.  —  IX.  Reviews,  Collected  Works,  Poemata 
et  Inscriptiones,  and  Hellenics.  —  X.  Summer  Holidays  and  Guests  at 
Home. —XI.  Deaths  of  Old  Friends. — XII.  Fruit  gathered  from  an  Old 
Tree.  —  XIII.  Silent  Companions.  —  XIV.  Last  Days  in  Bath,  and  Final 
Departure  from  England. 

I.    NEW  AND  OLD  FRIENDSHEPS. 

I  have  described  in  a  former  page  the  impression  made  upon  me 
by  Landor  when  I  met  him  first  in  the  summer  of  183G.  He  and 
Wordsworth  had  come  to  town  expressly  to  witness  Talfourd's  Ion; 
with  Crabb  Robinson  they  occupied  the  same  box  on  the  first  night 
of  that  beautiful  tragedy  ;  and  well  satisfied  they  seemed  with  them- 
selves and  with  each  other,  as,  to  many  who  watched  them  during 
the  performance,  they  half  divided  the  interest  with  the  play.  We 
all  of  us  met  afterwards  at  Talfourd's  house  ;  but  of  the  talk  that 
might  have  made  such  a  night  memorable  I  regret  that  I  recollect 
only  one  thing,  impressed  upon  my  memory  by  what  followed  a  little 
later,  that  when  the  absence  of  Southey  was  deplored  in  connection 
with  the  domestic  griefs  that  sadly  occupied  him  at  the  time,  there 
was  an  expression  of  feeling  from  both  Wordsworth  and  Landor  of 
unrestrained  and  unaffected  earnestness.  AVhcn  a  very  few  weeks  had 
passed  after  this,  it  was  not  a  little  startling  to  receive  a  Satire 
on  Satirists,  very  evidently  by  Landor,  in  which  Wordsworth  was 
handled  sharply  for  alleged  disrespect  to  Southey. 

It  is  hardly  worth  mention  here.  It  made  Crabb  Robinson  very 
angry,  and,  to  propitiate  him,  Landor  good-naturedly  called  back  the 
copy  of  the  satire  already  on  its  way  to  Southey  ;  but  he  stuck  to 
his  point  that  Wordsworth  had  been  unjust  to  Southey's  poetry,  and 
had  indeed  small  appreciation  generally  for  the  highest  kinds  of  merit. 
To  which  Robinson  made  an  excellent  reply  ;  going  wider  and  deeper 
than  he  meant  to  go,  or  perhaps  knew  that  he  was  going.  "  What 
matters  it  that  he  is  insensible  to  the  astonishing  powers  of  Voltaire 
or  Goethe1?  He  is,  after  all,  Wordsworth.  In  all  cases  I  care  little 
what  a   man   is   nut;  I   look   to  what  he  is.     And  Wordsworth  has 


;et.  61-S2.]  NEW   AND    OLD   FRIENDSHIPS.  505 

written  a  hundred  poems  the  least  excellent  of  which  I  would  not 
sacrifice  to  give  him  that  openness  of  heart  you  require.  Productive 
power  acts  by  means  of  concentration.  With  few  exceptions  those 
only  love  everything  who,  like  me,  can  themselves  do  nothing."  Nor 
was  the  satire  itself  all  satire  ;  for  not  a  few  passages  from  it  might 
be  cited  that  rise  equally  above  the  injustice  committed  and  the 
anger  provoked  by  it.  Pericles  and  Aspasia  had  at  this  time  been 
published,  and  to  Southey  thanks  are  given  for  having  encouraged  its 
writer  to  efforts  of  which  the  fruit  was  its  Agamemnon  scenes. 

"  Called  up  by  genius  in  an  after-age, 
That  awful  spectre  shook  the  Athenian  stage : 
From  eve  to  morn,  from  morn  to  parting  night, 
Father  and  daughter  stood  before  my  sight; 
I  felt  the  looks  they  gave,  the  words  they  said, 
And  reconducted  each  serener  shade. 
Ever  shall  those  to  me  be  well-spent  days; 
Sweet  fell  the  tears  upon  them,  sweet  the  praise." 

For  some  of  the  praise  I  was  responsible  ;  and  very  cordial  ac- 
knowledgment of  it  reached  me  in  a  letter  written  from  Heidelberg 
(1st  September,  1836),  whither  he  had  gone  in  the  vain  hope  of 
being  joined  there  by  his  elder  children  ;  when  at  the  same  time  he 
sent  me  a  fresh  scene  of  Orestes  at  Delphos,  and  told  me  that  those 
that  had  been  most  admired  were  "  written  at  our  friend  Kenyon's 
before  breakfast,  but  chiefly  in  the  bedtime  morning,  while  the  sheets 
of  Pericles  were  passing  through  the  press."  Not  praise  only  fell, 
however,  but  here  and  there  a  less  kindly  word  for  which  he  had  lit- 
tle tolerance.  "  I  returned  from  Germany  a  fortnight  since,"  he 
wrote  to  me  from  Clifton,  on  the  29th  of  October,  "  but  found  myself 
so  fatigued  and  spiritless  that  I  remained  only  a  night  in  London, 
not  even  going  to  pay  my  respects  at  Gore  House.  The  splendid 
things  you  have  written  of  me  have  aroused,  it  seems,  the  choler  of 
Blackwood.  I  never  have  read  until  this  moment  (nor  now)  a  single 
number  of  that  worthy,  who,  I  understand,  has  the  impudence  to  de- 
clare that  I  have  stolen,  God  knows  what,  from  him  and  others.  .  .  . 
I  am  not  informed  how  long  this  Scotchman  has  been  at  work  about 
me,  but  my  publisher  has  advised  me  that  he  loses  £  150  by  my 
Pericles.  So  that  it  is  probable  the  Edinburgh  Areopagites  have  con- 
demned me  to  a  fine  in  my  absence  ;  for  I  never  can  allow  any  man 
to  be  a  loser  by  me,  and  am  trying  to  economize  to  the  amount  of 
this  indemnity  to  Saunders  and  Otley.  ...  I  think  it  probable  that 
I  shall  fix  myself  at  Clifton  for  a  year."  The  Blackwood  review  was 
really  not  a  bad  one,  and,  with  a  laugh  for  the  absurdity  of  its  par- 
allel passages,  might  have  satisfied  any  man-;  he  described  it  himself 
as  a  mere  "  kick  on  the  shin  between  two  compliments  "  ;  yet  what 
was  here  threatened  was  soon  afterwards  actually  done,  and  the  hun- 
dred pounds  which  Mr.  James  had  obtained  for  the  MS.  of  Pericles^ 
was  paid  back  by  Landor  to  its  publishers  !  It  may  be  held  perhaps 
hereafter  among  the  curiosities  of  literature  that  an  author  should 
have  done  this.     I  am  not  acquainted  with  any  other  instance. 


506  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  **%#   s"' 

In  the  same  letter  he  sent  me  a  copy  of  the  original  edition  of  a 
book  which  had  belonged  to  Swift's  celebrated  nncle  Godwin,  progen- 
itor of  the  so-named  first  husband  of  his  friend  the  Countess  de  Mo- 
lande,  —  Milton's  Defensio  :  and  here  I  may  say,  once  for  all,  that  a 
continual  and  inexhaustible  source  of  sympathy  between  us  was  our 
common  admiration  of  those  chiefs  of  our  English  Commonwealth  to 
whom  early  studies  had  led  me  ;  and  that  even  the  glittering  forms 
of  antique  gods  and  heroes  never  took  more  radiant  shape  in  Landor's 
imagination,  than  the  homely  iron  helmets  and  buffalo  cuirasses  of 
our  own  Hampdens,  Iretons,  Blakes,  and  Cromvvells. 

At  Clifton  the  winter  was  passed  ;  but  before  1  mention  his  meet- 
ing with  the  friend  who  joined  him  there,  a  couple  of  extracts  from 
his  letters  addressed  to  that  friend  may  be  given. 

TO  SOUTHEY  :  FROM  LLANBEDR  HALL,  4TH  FEBRUARY,  1836. 

"  You  too  have  had  great  sufferings  "  [this  followed  the  mention  already 
quoted  of  his  own  family  sorrow],  ''but  not  hopeless,  and  every  source  of 
pride  that  virtue  can  open  to  assuage  them.  Pray  tell  me  whether  there  is 
any  certainty  of  your  being  in  London  soon.  I  abhor  the  very  name,  but 
I  will  meet  you  there  if  you  will  let  me.  But  I  am  afraid  you  will  hardly 
have  patience  with  a  man  so  obstinate  and  incorrigible  in  his  politics.  I 
detest  the  trickery  and  sheer  dishonesty  of  many  of  the  Whigs  as  much  as 
you  do:  but  I  am  convinced  that  we  must  yield  to  the  impulse  that  has 
been  given  to  men's  minds,  and  that  we  must  remove  (since  we  cannot 
cure)  what  works  upon  their  envy  and  malice.  I  have  not  been  quite  un- 
occupied. You  will  soon  have  iheLetters  of  Pericles  and  Asjpasia,  which  I 
could  have  greatly  increased  in  number ;  but  I  often  have  had  occasion  to 
say  to  myself, 

'  Non  profecturis  litora  bobus  aras.' 

Now  I  should  construe  bobus  not  '  with  the  oxen,'  but  'for  the  oxen.'  Did 
you  ever  peradventure  meet  with  Mr.  Willis,  the  American?"  [He  tells 
the  story  already  told,  up  to  the  assurance  he  had  received,  just  before 
quitting  Fiesole,  that  the  books  and  MS.  had  been  "consigned  to  an 
American  near  the  Leghorn  gate."]  "  I  called  on  the  American  :  he  denied 
that  he  had  ever  seen  them,  and  was  angry  at  such  an  intimation  that  he 
was  deficient  in  punctuality.  I  took  no  more  trouble  about  them.  The 
corrections  and  additions  cost  me  more  trouble  and  time  than  the  composi- 
tion had  done.  But  there  is  enough  without  any  more.  I  am  now  on  my 
way  to  my  favorite  Clifton,  where  my  intention  is  to  remain  a  month  at 
least;  for  the  fogs  of  London  make  my  heart  quite  flabby,  to  say  nothing 
of  quinsey ; 

'  0,  tormento  maggior  d'  ogiii  tormento ! '  " 

TO    80UTHEY  I    FROM    PENROSE    COTTAGE,    CLIFTON  I     30TH    OCTOBER,    1836. 

"  I  have  been  in  Germany  three  months,  hoping  that  some  of  my  family 
would  meet  me  there.  Here  I  am  again  at  Chiton,  and  here  I  think  I  shall 
finish  my  days;  the  climate  suits  my  health  so  perfectly.  Again  I  hear  the 
rumor,  and  this  time  1  hope  it  is  not  a  false  one,  that  you  are  coming 
amongst  us.  God  granl  that  the  expectation  may  arise  from  some  improve- 
ment in  the  health  of  Mrs.  Southey.     I  shall  never  regret  that  you  do  not 


JET.  61-82.]  NEW   AND    OLD    FRIENDSHIPS.  507 

come,  if  I  hear  that  you  could  consistently  with  your  sense  of  duty ;  so 
much  greater  would  be  my  pleasure  at  this  event "  [he  means  the  recovery 
of  Mrs.  Southey]  "  than  even  your  society  could  give  me.  .  .  .  Nothing 
can  exceed  the  civilities  I  met  with  in  Germany  among  the  learned.  No 
sooner  had  I  reached  England  than  I  was  informed  of  an  attack  made  on  me, 
and  a  worse  threatened,  by  some  doctor  or  professor  in  Edinburgh.  But  his 
labor  is  vain  in  regard  to  me.  I  have  only  to  send  back  the  £  100  I  got  for 
my  Pericles,  which  I  have  already  told  the  publisher  I  shall  do.  Did  you 
ever  receive  those  two  volumes  ?  The  short  letter  of  Pericles  on  the  death 
of  his  sons  will  please  you,  and  perhaps  some  few  others.  If  the  Edin- 
burgh worthy  wished  to  impose  a  fine  on  me  for  my  delinquency,  why 
could  not  he  mention  some  respectable  family  who  wanted  the  amount. 
He  may  influence  the  opinion  of  a  certain  number  of  people  for  a  little 
while,  but  of  none  about  whom  I  care  a  straw.  I  never  remonstrate :  and 
never  will  contend  with  any  man  for  anything.  I  formed  this  resolution 
when  I  went  to  college  and  have  kept  it.  I  have  been  reading  for  the 
third  time  Charles  Elton's  Elegy  on  the  loss  of  his  two  sons.  It  is 
not  an  elegy  (though  the  structure  of  the  verse  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
matter),  but  many  parts  strike  me  as  much  as  anything  1  ever  read  of  the 
elegiac.  Tears  were  in  my  eyes  the  first  time,  the  second  time,  and  the  third 
time,  on  reading 

'  That  night  the  little  chamber  where  they  lay, 
Fast  by  my  own,  was  vacant  and  was  still.' 

I  do  not  like  the  Rhine  so  much  as  many  parts  of  Italy.  Como,  Sorrento, 
and  Amalfi,  to  say  nothing  of  Ischia  and  Capri,  far  surpass  all  without  the 
Alps,  I  mean  on  this  side  of  them.  Let  me  hear  anything  which  gives  you 
satisfaction  or  hope." 

There  was  little  of  either,  alas,  left  for  Southey  in  this  world ;  but 
such  lights  and  shadows  of  the  pleasant  past  as  were  still  to  be  re- 
flected from  its  old  associations  and  memories,  he  now  for  the  last 
time  enjoyed  in  company  with  his  friend.  Their  sympathies  were 
close  and  affectionate  as  ever,  widely  as  their  opinions  had  diverged ; 
and  even  of  some  later  Conversations,  in  which  idols  of  his  own  were 
overthrown,  Southey  had  written  shortly  before  to  another  friend  : 
"  What  you  have  heard  me  say  of  his  temper  is  the  only  explanation 
of  his  faults.  Never  did  man  represent  himself  in  his  writings  so 
much  less  generous,  less  just,  less  compassionate,  less  noble  in  all 
respects  than  he  really  is.  I  certainly  never  knew  any  one  of  brighter 
genius  or  of  kinder  heart."  With  this  bright  genius  and  kind  heart 
he  now,  accompanied  by  his  son,  walked  for  the  last  time  over  the 
downs  of  Clifton,  and  revisited  in  Bristol  the  places  of  his  boyhood. 
The  good  old  Cottle,  who  had  published  his  Joan  of  Arc  exactly  forty 
years  before,  and  advanced  him  the  money  to  buy  his  wedding-ring, 
entertained  them  there  ;  they  went  to  the  house  of  Southey's  grand- 
mother at  Bedminster,  and  to  the  church  which  with  her  and  his 
mother  he  had  attended  half  a  hundred  years  before  ;  they  went  to 
his  Aunt  Tyler's  in  College  Green ;  they  included  in  their  pilgrimage 
the  house  in  which  he  was  born,  the  schools  he  had  been  sent  to,  and 
what  had  been  his  father's  shop.     Nothing  was  omitted,  and  Southey 


508  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS   AT    BATII.  '"'s^  57."' 

seemed  to  have  forgotten  nothing ;  not  even  a  short-cut  or  by-way  of 
that  strangely  unattractive  city  ;  and  as  he  darted  down  some  alley,  or 
threaded  some  narrow  lane,  he  would  tell  his  companions  that  he  had 
not  traversed  it  since  his  school-boy  days.  "  Ah,"  said  Landor  to  him, 
as  they  stumbled  over  some  workmen  in  turning  away  from  College 
Green,  "  workmen  some  day  may  be  busy  on  this  very  spot  putting  up 
your  statue  ;  but  it  will  be  twenty  years  hence."  "  Well,"  was  his 
frierM's  rejoinder,  "  if  ever  I  have  one,  I  would  wish  it  to  be  here." 
The  wish  has  not  had  fulfilment,  though  more  than  thirty  years  have 
passed  since  then.  "  This  was  a  pleasant  visit,"  writes  Air.  Cuthbert 
Southey,  "and  my  father's  enjoyment  was  greatly  enhanced  by  the 
company  of  Mr.  Savage  Landor,  who  was  then  residing  at  Clifton,  and 
in  whose  society  we  spent  several  delightful  days.  He  was  one  of 
the  few  men  with  whom  my  father  used  to  enter  freely  into  con- 
versation, and  on  such  occasions  it  was  no  mean  privilege  to  be  a 
listener." 

Landor  quitted  Clifton  in  the  early  spring  of  1837,  was  again  for  a 
time  at  Llanbedr,  visited  Lady  Blessington  in  London  and  his  sisters 
at  Warwick,  joined  Kenyon  and  Torquay,  and  passed  some  of  the 
later  days  of  summer  with  his  friend  Brown  at  Plymouth.  Yet  idle 
as  such  a  life  might  have  been  to  another  man,  it  was  not  so  to  him. 
Creatures  of  his  fancy  went  with  him  everywhere ;  were  present  with 
him  most  in  crowds  ;  and  were  altogether  much  more  real  to  him,  when 
he  cared  to  converse  with  them  at  all,  than  any  actual  living  compan- 
ions. Wherever  pen  and  ink  were  accessible  to  him,  and  a  sheet  of 
paper,  he  was  equipped  for  every  enterprise.  "  When  I  think  of 
writing  on  any  subject,  I  abstain  a  long  while  from  every  kind  of  read- 
ing, lest  the  theme  should  haunt  me,  and  some  of  the  ideas  take  the 
liberty  of  playing  with  mine.  I  do  not  wish  the  children  of  my  brain 
to  imitate  the  gait  or  learn  any  tricks  of  others."  All  the  time  I 
have  named  was  one  of  rich  and  ready  productiveness ;  "  conserva- 
tive "  letters,  conversations,  dramatic  scenes,  came  forth  abundantly  ; 
and  a  work  was  brought  to  completion  which  he  had  begun  before 
quitting  Italy,  in  which  Boccaccio  and  Petrarca  were  the  speakers,  and 
which  with  the  Shakespeare  and  the  Pericles  formed  a  trilogy  so  filled 
with  the  greatness  and  variety  of  his  genius  that  it  may  be  called, 
upon  the  whole,  its  most  complete  expression.  My  account  of  this 
work  may  be  preceded  by  a  few  notes  from  letters  written  in  the 
interval  which  will  tell  us  something  of  the  friends  seen  or  books  read 
by  him  while  he  had  it  in  hand. 

At  an  old  bookseller's  in  Bristgl  he  picked  up  some  of  the  writings 
of  Blake,  and  was  strangely  fascinated  by  them.  He  was  anxious  to 
have  collected  as  many  more  as  he  could,  and  enlisted  me  in  the  ser- 
vice ;  but  he  as  much  wanted  patience  for  it  as  I  wanted  time,  and 
between  us  it  came  to  nothing.  He  protested  that  Blake  had  been 
Wordsworth's  prototype,  and  wished  they  could  have  divided  hi* 
madness  between  them ;  for  that  some  accession  of  it  in  the  one  case, 


^ET.  61-82.]  NEW   AND    OLD    FRIENDSHIPS.  509 

and  something  of  a  diminution  of  it  in  the  other,  would  very  greatly 
have  improved  both.  He  had  been  reading  Wordsworth's  "  last " 
volume  when  he  first  wrote  to  me  from  Clifton,  and  was  confirmed  in 
the  opinion  he  had  held  when  most  admiring  him,  that  his  ship  would 
sail  the  better  for  casting  many  loose  things  overboard.  What  a  fine 
poem  was  the  Power  of  Sound,  and  how  magnificently  the  tenth 
stanza  began  !  "  But  after  eight  most  noble  Pindaric  verses  on  Pan 
and  the  Fawns  and  Satyrs,  he  lays  hold  on  a  coffin  and  a  convict,  and 
ends  in  a  flirtation  with  a  steeple.  We  must  never  say  all  we  think, 
and  least  so  in  poetry."  What  follows  is  dated  a  few  months  later 
(9th  December,  1837),  when  he  was  still  angry  with  Wordsworth  ; 
who  yet  retained  enough  of  his  old  admiration  to  have  been  able  to 
afford  to  give  a  smile  to  this,  if  I  could  have  shown  it  to  him.  "  Yes- 
terday a  Mr.  Moreton,  a  young  man  of  rare  judgment,  read  to  me  a 
manuscript  by  Mr.  Tennyson,  very  different  in  style  from  his  printed 
poems.  The  subject  is  the  death  of  Arthur.  It  is  more  Homeric  than 
any  poem  of  our  time,  and  rivals  some  of  the  noblest  parts  of  the 
Odyssea.  There  are  two  kinds  of  simplicity  :  this  exhibits  one.  If  I 
have  time  between  the  .present  hour  and  the  postman,  I  will  attempt 
the  other,  the  more  popular. 

"  I  met  a  little  boy  on  the  canal, 
And  he  was  singing  blithely  fal-de-ral. 
Now  Heaven  has  placed  it  high  'mid  human  joys 
To  talk  with  elf-lock  girls  and  ragged  boys. 
'  Have  you  a  father?  '     '  Plenty,'  he  replied. 
'  A  mother?  '     '  She  was  yesterday  a  bride.' 
'  A  brother?  '     '  One  too  many.'     '  Any  sister ?  ' 
'  She  's  dead;  I  never  (till  you  named  her)  mist  her.' 
At  these  quick  answers,  as*  was  meet,  I  smiled, 
And  tapped  the  shoulder  of  the  clever  child." 

Thanking  him  for  his  Pericles  and  Aspasia,  Crabb  Robinson  had 
mentioned  his  having  "  put  into  the  lips  of  Nurse  Demophile  a  sarcasm 
which  dear  Charles  Lamb  uttered  when  a  little  child.  Indeed  at  his 
ase  it  was  no  sarcasm,  but  mere  childish  naivete.  His  sister  took  him 
into  a  churchyard,  where  he  amused  himself  for  a  considerable  time 
reading  the  inscriptions,  and  at  last  came  to  her,  and  with  great 
gravity  said,  '  Sister  Mary,  where  do  the  naughty  people  lie  1 ' " 
"  Your  anecdote  of  Lamb's  childhood,"  replied  Landor,  "  makes  my 
heart  overflow.  How  much  wiser  are  we  with  our  own  wisdom  than 
with  other  people's!  It  fits  us.  .  .  .  Somebody  told  me,"  he  adds, 
"  that  your  illustrious  friend  Goethe  hated  dogs.  God  forgive  him,  if 
he  did.  I  never  can  believe  it  of  him.  They  too  are  half-poets  ;  they 
are  dreamers.  Do  any  other  animals  dream  ]  For  my  part,  as  you 
know,  I  love  them  heartily.  They  are  grateful,  they  are  brave,  they 
are  communicative,  and  they  never  play  at  cards."  At  the  close  of  his 
letter  he  wishes  for  a  translation  of  Goethe's  Ipkigeneia,  and  in  his 
next  has  found  what  he  wanted  in  Taylor's  Specimens.  There  it  was, 
with  "  fifty  other  fine  things,"  of  which  Nathan  the  Wise  had  im- 
pressed him  most ;  though  he  thought  the  other  a  "  great  work,"  and 


510  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ' :  v:i- 

Ib3>  -  57- 

only  regretted  that  Goethe  had  not  corrected  in  it  the  principal  fault 
of  the  old  tragedians  by  making  the  chorus  at  all  times  subservient  to 
the  action.  Two  lines  of  Taylor's  version  he  hoped  the  original  did 
not  contain  :  where  he  talks  of  Iris  with  "  painted  baud"  dividing  the 
"dusky-skirted"  clouds.  "This  is  not  the  language  of  tragedy,  nor 
good  or  tolerable  poetry  of  any  kind.  Clouds  are  never  dusky-skirted, 
the  skirt  being  always  the  lightest  part  of  them  ;  and  skirt  itself  is  a 
mean  and  vile  word  on  the  occasion,  though  common,  and  defended  in 
some  sort  by  the  practice  of  Shakespeare.  But  we  ought  never  to 
borrow  his  skirt  or  his  blanket,  though  he  has  both  at  our  service." 
He  hopes  too  that  it  is  Taylor  and  not  Goethe  who  has  added  a  new 
god  to  the  Greek  theogony,  "Fulfilment,  daughter  of  the  almighty 
sire."  That  would  never  do,  either  for  gods  or  allegorical  personages ; 
nor  could  allegorical  personages  ever  come  forward  with  effect  in  the 
drama. 

"  I  shall  be  at  Gore  House  on  Monday,"  he  says  in  a  letter  of  this 
date  ;  "  pray  come  in  the  evening.  I  told  Lady  Blessington  I  should 
not  let  any  of  her  court  stand  at  all  in  my  way.  When  I  am  tired  of 
them,  I  leave  them.  But  if  you  come,  I  can  fly  to  you  at  once  in  case 
of  annoyance.  Courtesy  is  not  an  unpleasant  exercise  for  a  little 
while.  It  is  like  riding  a  spirited  horse  well  enough  to  show  we  can 
keep  our  scat  and  do  it  gracefully,  but  there  is  no  occasion  to  be  at  it 
all  day  long.  It  is  quite  enough  to  let  the  beast  know  that  he  has  a 
master  who  is  up  to  him  and  the  worst  of  his  curvets  and  prances." 
But  not  after  the  visit  did  he  so  speak  of  the  house  in  which  his  hap- 
piest London  life  was  passed,  for  of  all  others  it  was  that  in  which  he 
felt  the  least  constraint,  and  knew  that  he  should  always  And  the 
warmest  welcome.  Its  attraction  to  those  who  had  familiar  admission 
there  was  even  less  the  accomplishments  and  grace  of  its  mistress,  than 
her  trueheartedness  and  constancy  in  friendship  ;  and  no  one  had  rea- 
son to  know  this  better  than  Landor.  Again  and  again  he  dwells  upon 
it  in  letters  to  his  sister.  From  the  splendor  of  the  mansion,  the  taste 
and  order  of  its  interior,  the  extent  and  beauty  of  its  pleasure-grounds, 
its  company  of  men  the  most  distinguished  and  of  opinions  the  most 
various  and  opposed,  — he  comes  always  back  to  its  central  charm,  the 
unaffectedness  and  warmth  of  heart  that  presided  over  all.  and  yielded 
to  every  one  who  entered  it  his  greatest  enjoyment.  He  had  himself 
at  lust  (piite  a  tender  friendship  for  two  lilac-trees  that  flowered  under 
the  terrace  where  he  had  his  favorite  scat,  overlooking  what  tradition 
still  eagerly  claimed  as  the  birthplace  and  deathplace  of  the  two  great- 
est of  English  sovereigns,  Elizabeth  and  Cromwell  ;  and  if  he  did  not, 
as  each  year  came  round,  appear  wThen  those  lilacs  were  in  bloom,  he 
was  playfully  reminded  that  they  waited  and  were  longing  for  him. 
All  are  gone  now  ;  a  public  garden  has  swallowed  Tip  house  and  ter- 
race, and  Cromwell  Roads  and  Cromwell  Houses  have  covered  once- 
memorable  spots  with  mere  shadows  of  a  name  ;  but  there  are  sumo 
who  never  pass  where  they  once  were  without  thinking  of  her  to  whom 


JET.  61-82.]  NEW    AND    OLD    FRIENDSHIPS.  511 

their  pleasantest  associations  belong,  and  who  merited  so  well  the  grate- 
ful affection  which  Landor  was  always  eager  to  express  for  her. 

"  White  and  dim-purple  breathed  my  favorite  pair 
Under  thy  terrace,  hospitable  heart, 
Whom  twenty  summer*  more  and  more  endeared; 
Part  on  the  Arno,  part  where  every  clime 
Sent  its  most  graceful  sons  to  kiss  thy  hand, 
To  make  the  humble  proud,  the  proud  submiss, 
Wiser  the  wisest,  and  the  brave  more  brave. 
Never,  ah  never  now,  shall  we  alight 
Where  the  man-queen  was  born,  or,  higher  up, 
The  nobler  region  of  a  nobler  soul, 
Where  breathed  his  last  the  more  than  kingly  man. 
Thou  sleepest,  not  forgotten  nor  unmourned, 
Beneath  the  chestnut  shade  by  Saint  Germain." 

From  other  letters  written  to  myself  at  this  time  I  take  what  fol- 
low. The  first  arose  out  of  some  remarks  made  by  me  on  his  Peri- 
cles ;  and  never,  I  think,  was  there  better  refutation  of  a  common 
fallacy  that  great  men  who  have  succeeded  to  the  great,  and  are 
mounted  as  it  were  on  their  shoulders,  must  necessarily  be  of  taller 
stature  and  wider  vision  than  their  predecessors. 

"  Critics,  in  supposing  that  improvements  were  constantly  made  in 
poetry  by  the  successors  of  the  first  great  masters,  add  an  apex  to  the 
accumulated  foolery  of  ages.  Thus  not  only  was  Virgil  preferred  to 
Homer  (and  especially  in  those  very  qualities  in  which  he  is  most  sig- 
nally the  inferior),  but  Euripides  to  Sophocles,  and  Sophocles  to  ^Eschylus. 
Whereas  there  is  enough  of  materials  in  ^Eschylus  to  equip  a  troop  of 
Sophocleses  and  a  squadron  of  Euripideses.  The  tragedies  of  this  latter, 
of  which  the  choruses  are  admirable,  are  as  ill-constructed  as  Virgil's 
epic.  On  the  contrary,'  nothing  is  more  skilful  in  the  Attic  scheme  than  the 
dramas  of  ^Eschylus,  nude  as  the  heroes  and  gods,  and  as  well  proportioned 
and  potent.  So  shall  I  think  until  it  is  disproved  that  there  is  any  skill  in 
so  ordaining  them  that  every  action  shall  be  the  legitimate  parent  of  its 
successor.  The  Spaniards  were  the  first  discoverers  of  a  new  world  in 
tragedy,  rich  indeed,  but  spreading  in  all  countries  a  sad  distemper.  Plot 
was  the  word.  Labyrinths  to  the  ignorant  bear  always  the  semblance  of 
deep  contrivance  and  rare  ingenuity,  of  amplitude  and  extent.  All  the 
Greeks  renounced  such  barbarism  ;  ^Eschylus  most  decidedly.  In  him  there 
is  no  trickery,  no  trifling,  no  delay,  no  exposition,  no  garrulity,  no  dog- 
matism, no  declamation,  no  prosing;  none  of  the  invidious  sneers,  none  of 
the  captious  sophistry,  of  the  Socratic  school ;  but  the  loud  clear  challenge, 
the  firm  unstealthy  step,  of  an  erect  broad-breasted  soldier.  Depend  on  it 
that  the  reader  to  whom  is  granted  an  ardent  mind  with  a  clear  judgment 
will  discover  in  ^Eschylus  a  far  higher  power  of  poetry  than  in  those  an- 
cients who  drug  us  with  soporific  apophthegms,  or  in  those  moderns  who 
mystify  us  with  impenetrable  metaphysics.  Our  best  sympathies  rest  ever 
among  the  generous,  among  the  brave,  among  those  who  are  fallen  from  the 
summits  of  the  world  ;  and  our  hearts  are  the  most  healthily  warmed  when 
they  are  drawn  before  their  sufferings  and  wrongs.  I  scarcely  dare  lift  up 
my  eyes  when  I  remember  that  on  this  subject  I  differ,  although  but  in  a 
degree,  from  Aristoteles.  He,  however,  had  seen  only  a  few  headlands : 
the  continent  of  Shakespeare,  with  its  prodigious  range  of  inextinguishable 
fires,  its  rivers  of  golden  sands,  its  very  deserts  paved  with  jewels,  its  forests 
of  unknown  plants  to  which  the  known  were  dwarfs,  this  unpromised  and 


512  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  [l;,';i™ 

unexpected  land,  in  all  its  freshness  and  variety  and  magnitude,  was  to 
emerge." 

In  connection  with  the  same  book  and  the  specimens  it  contains  of 
orators,  I  had  asked  him  what  he  thought  the  finest  thing  in  that 
kind,  modern  or  ancient ;  and  he  answered  without  hesitation  by 
naming  these  dozen  words  of  Chatham  :  "  The  first  shot  that  is  fired 
in  America  separates  the  two  countries." 

"  What  searching  sagacity  1  what  inevitable  truth!  The  surest  sign  of  a 
great  prophecy  is  the  coincidence  of  admiration  and  unbelief.  For  anything 
like  this  of  our  last  and  almost  only  grand  minister,  we  must  press  through 
the  crowd  of  orators,  we  must  pass  Cicero,  we  must  pass  Demosthenes,  we 
must  raise  up  our  eyes  to  Pericles,  when  he  tells  the  childless  of  the 
Athenians  that  '  the  year  hath  lost  its  spring.' " 

THE    LESBIA    OF    CATULLUS. 

"  Nothing  is  absurder  than  the  idea  of  the  grammarians  that  the  Lesbia 
of  Catullus  was  the  wife  of  Quinctus  Metellus  Celer,  who  was  one  of  the 
Claudian  family,  and  as  wicked  as  any  of  it.  Lesbia  was  not  indeed,  as 
most  of  Horace's  girls  were,  a  girl  of  straw :  she  was  really  of  flesh  and 
blood,  but  evidently  of  common  life,  and  she  descended  but  little  when  she 
ran  down  from  her  dead  sparrow  to  display  herself  '  in  quadriviis  et  angi- 
portis.' " 

ANECDOTE   OF   CANNING. 

"  Canning  had  much  festivity  and  frolic,  and  he  retained  to  the  last  years 
of  his  life  no  little  of  the  school-boy  in  his  manners  and  conversation,  with 
about  the  same  indifference  whom  they  might  offend.  So  unstudied  and 
ingenuous  were  his  courtesies,  that,  when  George  III.  saw  him  again  for 
the  first  time  after  his  duel  with  Castlereagh,  and  inquired  with  his  usual 
curiosity  where  he  was  hit,  he  snatched  the  king's  hand  and  placed  it  on  the 
part,  which  happened  to  be  among  the  least  opportune  for  inspection  or 
demonstration.  George  raised  his  white  eyebrows,  opened  his  glassy  eyes, 
turned  round  to  the  lord-in-waiting,  and  said  with  perturbation,  'Avery 
odd  man  this  Mr.  Canning !  a  very  odd  man  indeed ! '  " 

Landor  was  close  on  Canning's  heels  at  Oxford,  had  been  in  com- 
munication with  him  more  than  once,  and  had  not  been  very  tolerant 
of  many  passages  in  his  public  life ;  but  he  never  denied  his  posses- 
sion of  rare  and  exquisite  powers,  and  it  was  upon  my  calling  his 
attention  to  what  seemed  an  unfair  application  of  some  remarks  on  the 
Castlereagh  quarrel  that  these  letters  wei-c  written. 

"  Arrogant  as  he  was  in  pretension  while  holding  office,  indifferent  to 
veracity  in  assertion,  and  swayed  by  vanity  or  resentment  from  any  princi- 
ple to  its  opposite,  he  was  delightful  in  private  society,  adapting  his  conver- 
sation to  the  temper  and  abilities  of  those  with  whom  he  happened  to  con- 
verse. There  he  was  never  in  opposil ion,  but  always  in  power:  there  his 
humor  was  easy  and  graceful:  there  his  arrows  were  placed  with  the  points 
downward,  attracting  all.  wounding  none.  But  minds,  like  bodies,  if  they 
prematurely  swell  out,  then  suddenly  cease  to  grow  in  height  and  compass, 
and  become  sickly  and  irritable;  Mr.  Canning's  did;  and  his  tongue  be- 
trayed his  distemper.     His  petulance  in  Parliament  made  it  incredible  that, 


MT.  6l-82.]  THE-  PEN'TAMERON.  513 

in  addition  to  his  witticisms  in  poetry,  he  had  formerly  been  the  rival  of  the 
otherwise  unrivalled  Sydney  Smith  in  the  piquancy  and  aptness  of  his  crit- 
icisms." 

From  letters  of  the  same  date,  explaining  other  allusions  in  his 
published  dialogues,  I  take  two  extracts  more. 

ANECDOTE    OF    THURLOW. 

"  Thurlow  was  a  chancellor  who  little  adorned  the  woolsack.  .  .  .  He  is 
recorded  to  have  given  no  important  decision  without  having  first  con- 
sulted Sergeant  Hill,  unless  he  had  in  view  some  private  object.  His  wis- 
dom rested  all  on  his  massive  eyebrows ;  and  there  was  room  for  more.  A 
modest  young  clergyman  was  earnestly  recommended  to  his  patronage  for 
preferment  by  a  gentleman  who  on  his  entering  life  had  rendered  him  many 
services.  He  received  him  with  his  usual  surliness  and  brutality,  threw 
before  him  wide  open  his  Book  of  Livings,  and  told  him  to  take  up  a  pen 
and  to  pat  it  on  the  one  he  wished  to  have.  Entreaty  that  his  lordship 
would  himself  name  the  benefice  was  vain.  At  last  the  pen  timidly  rested 
on  a  vicarage.  '  By  God,  sir,'  cried  Thurlow  (who,  as  he  never  was  likely 
to  be  by  God  otherwise  than  in  an  oath,  never  missed  the  opportunity), 
'  you  have  taken  a  beggarly  cure  close  to  the  best  living  in  my  gift ! '  " 

SIR    SAMUEL    ROMILLT. 

"  No  ministry  ever  thought  of  raising  Romilly  to  the  peerage,  although 
never  was  a  gentleman  of  his  profession  respected  more  highly  or  more 
universally.  The  reason  could  not  be  that  already  too  many  of  it  had  en- 
tered the  House  of  Lords ;  since  every  wind  of  every  day  had  blown  bellying 
silk  gowns  to  that  quarter,  and  under  the  highest  walls  of  Westminster  was 
moored  a  long  galley  of  lawyers,  chained  by  the  leg  to  their  administrations, 
some  designated  by  the  names  of  fishing- towns  and  bathing-machines  they 
had  never  entered,  and  others  of  hamlets  and  farms  they  had  recently  in- 
vaded." 

He  never  changed  or  faltered  in  this  love  and  admiration  for  Rom- 
illy ;  and  one  of  his  letters  to  me  written  after  his  80th  year 
expressed  the  delight  with  which  he  had  again  been  reading  the 
memoir  of  him  by  his  sons.  "  Of  all  the  public  men  in  England  at 
any  time  he  was  the  honestest.     He  may  be  compared  with  Phocion." 


II.     THE  PENTAMERON   OF  BOCCACCIO   AND  PETRARCA. 

When  Armitage  Brown  thanked  Landor  for  this  little  volume,  say- 
ing that  never  had  he  devoured  a  book  with  fiercer  appetite,  he-  also 
reminded  him  that  already  he  had  heard  some  portion  of  it  under  the 
hills  at  Fiesole.  There  it  had  been  begun,  and  on  every  lustrous  page 
of  it  will  be  found  the  genius  of  the  country  that  so  gave  it  birth.  I 
have  spoken  of  the  memories  of  Boccaccio  that  were  on  all  sides  of 
Landor  at  his  villa,  from  whose  gate  up  to  the  gates  of  Florence  there 
was  hardly  a  street  or  farm  that  the  great  story-teller  had  not  asso- 
ciated with  some  witty  or  affecting  narrative.  The  place  was  peopled 
by  his  genius  with  creatures  that  neither  seasons  nor  factions  had 

33 


514  TWEXTY-OXE   YEARS   AT   BATH.  lB"°K  }""• 

JB30-57. 

been  able  to  change.  Happy  and  well  founded  was  the  prediction  of 
his  friend,  that  long  before  the  Decameron  would  cease  to  be  recited 
under  their  arching  vines,  the  worms  would  be  the  only  fighters  for 
Guelph  or  Ghibelline ;  and  that  even  under  so  terrible  a  visitation  as 
another  plague,  its  pages  would  remain  a  solace  to  all  who  could  find 
refuge  and  relief  in  letters. 

Such  a  refuge  and  relief  had  they  been  to  Landor  in  every  plague 
by  which  he  had  been  visited,  and  this  book  was  payment  for  a  por- 
tion of  the  debt.  Boccaccio  is  its  hero  ;  and  the  idea  of  it  was  doubt- 
less taken  from  his  letter  to  Petrarca  accompanying  the  copy  of  D<tute 
transcribed  by  himself  for  his  use,  inviting  him  to  look  more  closely 
into  it,  and  if  possible  to  admire  it  more.  In  his  illness  at  Certaldo 
he  is  visited  by  his  friend  ;  during  interviews  that  occupy  five  several 
days,  the  Divine  Comedy  is  the  subject  of  their  talk  ;  and  very  won- 
derful talk  it  is  that  can  make  any  subject,  however  great,  the  centre 
of  so  wide  a  range  of  scholarship  and  learning  and  of  such  abounding 
wealth  of  illustration,  can  press  into  the  service  of  argument  such 
a  delightful  profusion  of  metaphor  and  imagery,  can  mingle  humor 
and  wit  with  so  much  tenderness  and  wisdom,  and  clothe  in  language 
of  consummate  beauty  so  much  dignity  and  variety  of  thought.  But 
amidst  it  all  we  never  lose  our  interest  in  the  simple  and  kindly  old 
burgess  of  Certaldo  and  his  belongings;  his  little  maid  Assunta  and 
her  lover  ;  even  the  rascally  old  frate  confessor,  who  suggests  his  last 
witty  story  :  and  not  more  delightful  is  the  grave  Petrarca  when  his 
eloquence  is  at  its  best,  than  in  the  quaint  little  scene  where  Assun- 
tina  has  to  girth  up  his  palfrey  for  him. 

The  title  of  the  book  should  be  given  in  full.  The  Pentameron ; 
or  Interviews  of  Messer  Giovanni  Boccaccio  and  Messer  Francesco  Pe- 
trarca, when  saiJ  Messer  Giovanni  lay  infirm  at  Viletta  land  by  Cer- 
taldo :  after  which  they  saio  not  each  other  on  our  Side  of  Paradise  : 
shewing  how  they  discoursed  upon  that  famous  Theologian  Messer  Dante 
Alighieri,  and  sundry  other  Matters.  Edited  by  Pievano  D.  Grigi. 
And  here  I  may  remark  that  Mr.  Kirkup,  the  greatest  authority  in 
everything  relating  to  Dante,  thinks  it  as  much  an  error  of  his  friend 
to  have  called  him  Messer  as  if  some  Italian  critic  had  called  himself 
Sir  Landor.  "  In  all  the  legal  documents  I  have  of  the  sale  of  Peter 
Dante's  estate  he  is  called  Dominus  Petrus  filius  Dantii  Allighierii  : 
Dominus  being  the  Latin  for  Lord  or  Messire,  the  title  applied  to  a 
judge  in  the  republic,  while  poor  Dante  is  named  as  a  common  citi- 
zen in  the  same  legal  deeds  in  which  his  son  is  always  styled  Messire, 
or  Dominus."  All  which  might  be  perfectly  true,  said  Landor  pleas- 
antly ;  but  perhaps  the  prete  Grigi,  who  thought  Dante  memorable 
.only  for  his  theology,  did  not  know  it. 

As  on  the  title-page  of  the  Shakespeare  we  find  only  Mr.  Ephraim 
Barnett's  name,  so  on  this  stands  only  Domenico  Griyi's.  in  what 
way  he  possessed  himself  of  the  manuscript  is  not  clearly  stated,  but, 
after  translation  by  the  best  hand  he  could  afford  to  engage,  he  had 


JET.  61-82.]  THE    PEXTAMERON.  515 

brought  it  over  to  London ;  because  he  greatly  wanted  a  bell,  he 
says,  for  his  church  at  San  Vivaldo,  and  hearing  that  the  true  religion 
was  rapidly  gaining  ground  in  England,  to  the  unspeakable  comfort 
and  refreshment  of  the  faithful,  he  bethought  himself  that  he  might 
peradventure  obtain  such  effectual  aid  from  the  piety  and  liberality 
of  converts  as  wellnigh  to  accomplish  the  purchase  of  one.  He  has 
also  a  word  or  two  on  what  was  still  remaining  at  Certaldo  of  Ser  Gio- 
vanni's house,  and  of  his  tomb  and  effigy  in  the  church  ;  remarking 
that  nobody  had  opened  the  grave  to  throw  light  upon  his  relics,  no- 
body had  painted  the  marble,  nobody  had  broken  off  a  foot  or  a  finger 
to  do  him  honor,  and  not  even  an  English  name  was  engraven  on  the 
face,  although  the  English  held  confessedly  the  highest  rank  in  that 
department  of  literature.  Nor  out  of  keeping  with  the  playful  humor 
that  thus  runs  through  the  whole  of  his  introduction  is  the  grave  lit- 
tle note  which  is  struck  at  its  close,  when,  after  relating  the  death  of 
Petrarca  not  very  long  after  their  interview,  and  that  Boccaccio  fol- 
lowed him  before  he  had  worn  the  glossiness  off  the  cloak  which  the 
other  in  his  will  had  bequeathed  to  him,  the  good  priest  adds  :  "  We 
struggle  with  death  while  we  have  friends  around  to  cheer  us  ;  the 
moment  we  miss  them,  we  lose  all  heart  for  the  contest.  Pardon  my 
reflection.  I  ought  to  have  remembered  I  am  not  in  my  stone  pulpit 
at  home." 

Landor  had  no  ground  for  complaining  of  the  reception  of  this 
book,  by  the  few  whose  good  opinion  he  valued  :  and  for  the  rest  he 
had  but  to  remember,  what  is  said  in  the  course  of  it.  that  what 
makes  the  greatest  vernal  shoot  is  apt  to  make  the  least  autumnal ; 
that  what  was  true  of  the  fame  of  Marcellus,  "  crescit  occulto  velut 
arbor  sevo,"  is  true  of  every  other  fame  ;  and  that  since  we  can  hard- 
ly hope  for  this,  and  enjoy  immediate  celebrity  besides,  the  few  may 
be  held  supremely  fortunate  to  whom  a  choice  between  them  has 
been  given.  Upon  the  same  subject,  in  that  highest  aspect  of  it 
which  takes  the  form  of  admonition  to  the  worshippers  of  immediate 
ascendencies,  this  very  volume  contained  a  saying  remarkable  for  its 
beauty.  It  occurred  in  a  note  to  the  five  dramatic  scenes  which 
originally  closed  the  Pentameron  with  a  Pentalogia  ;  one  of  these  be- 
ing the  quarrel  of  Bacon  and  Essex,  where  Bacon's  proud  belief  in  his 
own  superiority  to  all  living  men,  drawn  from  him  by  the  contempt 
of  Essex,  is  thus  checked  by  Landor.  "  Bacon  little  knew  or  sus- 
pected that  there  was  then  -existing  (the  only  one  that  ever  did  exist) 
his  superior  in  intellectual  power.  Position  gives  magnitude.  While 
the  world  was  rolling  above  Shakespeare,  he  was  seen  imperfectly  : 
when  he  rose  above  the  world,  it  was  discovered  that  he  was  greater 
than  the  world.  The  most  honest  of  his  contemporaries  would 
scarcely  have  admitted  this,  even  had  they  known  it.  But  vast  ob- 
jects of  remote  altitude  must  be  looked  at  a  long  while  before  they 
are  ascertained.  Ages  are  the  telescope-tubes  that  must  be  length- 
ened out  for  Shakespeare  ;  and  generations  of  men  serve  but  as  single 
witnesses  to  his  claims." 


51G  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  [n.  k  vn. 

"  I  was  at  Talfourd's  yesterday,"  wrote  Kenyon,  soon  after  the  vol- 
ume appeared,  "  and  was  condemned  to  listen  on  all  sides  to  the 
praises  of  your  Pentameron.  My  friend  Miss  Barrett,  too,  says  of  it 
that  if  it  were  not  for  the  necessity  of  getting  through  a  book,  some 
of  the  pages  are  too  delicious  to  turn  over.  Leigh  Hunt  reckoned  it  to 
be,  on  the  whole,  Landor's  masterpiece  ;  and  Julius  Hare  said  that  liter- 
ature had  nowhere  so  delightful  a  picture  of  the  friendship  of  two  sup- 
posed rivals,  Goethe's  actual  intercourse  with  Schiller  being  the  only 
thing  to  compare  with  it  in  beauty.  To  Crabb  Robinson  also,  who  found 
it  waiting  for  him  on  his  return  from  Italy  with  Wordsworth  in  the 
autumn  of  1837,  it  seemed  as  if  no  other  of  Landor's  books  had 
given  him  so  great  a  pleasure ;  and  the  generality  of  prose  writing, 
by  the  side  of  it,  seemed  to  him  but  as  the  murky  fog  of  Little 
Knight  Street  during  Michaelmas  term  compared  to  the  pure  atmos- 
phere of  Certaldo  on  such  summer  nights  as  he  had  spent  between 
Fiesole  and  Florence  "  with  Parigi  for  my  protector."  Parigi  was 
Landor's  favorite  Italian  dog,  and  the  only  inmate  of  the  villa  that 
had  not  welcomed  the  traveller  at  his  recent  visit.  "  Purigi  was  not 
so  kind  as  he  \ised  to  be  ;  yet  when  I  called  to  him  he  came  to  me, 
and  only  turned  back  slowly  as  if  he  felt,  '  This  is  not  the  one  I  ex- 
pected.' I  really  had  that  fancy  at  the  time."  Another  remark  from 
this  letter  *  will  properly  introduce  the  passage  of  which  it  speaks. 
"  There  is  a  piece  of  humor  where  you  compare  Lucretius  and  Dante 
so  precisely  in  the  style  of  dear  Charles  Lamb,  that  when  I  read  it 
to  any  one,  which  I  have  done  six  times  already,  I  cannot  help  stut- 
tering as  he  used  to  do,  and  half  shutting  my  eye  when  I  come  to  the 
words,  and  not  damned  for  it."  The  comparison,  a  masterly  one,  is 
made  by  Petrarca,  but  the  words  referred  to  are  in  Boccaccio's  mouth. 

"  I  have  always  heard  that  Ser  Dante  was  a  very  good  man  and  sound 
Catholic:  but  Christ  forgive  me  if  my  heart  is  oftener  on  the  side  of  Lucre- 
tius! Observe,  I  say  my  heart;  nothing  more.  I  devoutly  hold  to  the 
sacraments  and  the  mysteries:  yet  somehow  I  would  rather  see  men  tran- 
quillized than  frightened  out  of  their  senses,  and  rather  fast  asleep  than 
burning.  Sometimes  I  have  been  ready  to  believe,  as  far  as  our  holy  faith 
will  allow  me,  that  it  were  better  our  Lord  were  nowhere,  than  torturing  in 
his  inscrutable  wisdom,  to  all  eternity,  so  many  myriads  of  us  poor  devils, 
the  creatures  of  his  hands.  Do  not  cross  thyself  so  thickly,  Francesco;  for 
I  would  be  a  good  Catholic,  alive  or  dead.     But,  upon  my  conscience,  it 

*  Thoro  is  a  further  allusion  in  it  to  some  lines  found  in  Boccaccio's  desk  that  are  in 
fact  a  very  exact  picture  of  Landor's  farm  at  Fiesole  and  the  imagined  pursuits  of  his 
children,  which  Mr.  Layard  will  forpive  me  for  quoting  in  unexpected  illustration  of 
what  very  lately  he  told  me  himself  of  his  still  vivid  recollection  of  those  scenes.  "  By 
the  by  there  was  with  me  yesterday  a  remarkable  young  man  with  whom  I  travelled 
a  few  years  ago,  and  who  was  a  school-fellow  of  your  son's.  To  him  the  lucnle  of  those 
lines  i^  very  familiar.  He  says  you  perhaps  will  not  recollect  him,  though  he  remem- 
ber- yini  and  yours  80  well.  His  name,  Layard.  Be  recognized  at  once  the  pool,  as  I 
did  the  myrtles."  I  may  add  tin'  mention  of  another  of  Landor's  kindest  friends,  Miss 
Mackenzie  <'('  Seaforth,  «  itli  whom  Robinson  and  Wordsworth  passed  a  month  at  Roma 
'■  She  tell  in  love  with  the  poet,  calling  him,  however,  a  dear  old  man  ;  and  has  promised 
tu  spend  a  month  with  him  at  Rydal  Mount."  She  died,  alas,  in  less  than  two  years: 
not  visiting  England  again. 


.ET.  61-S2.]  THE    PENTAMERON.  517 

goes  hard  with  me  to  think  it  of  him,  when  I  hear  that  woodlark  yonder, 
gushing  with  joyousness,  or  when  I  see  the  beautiful  clouds,  resting  so 
softly  one  upon  another,  dissolving  .  .  .  and  not  damned  for  it." 

Yet  is  it  no  merely  one-sided  view  thus  taken  of  the  great  Floren- 
tine, for  never  by  any  single  hand  has  he  had  censure  and  praise 
dealt  out  to  him  in  such  equally  exalted  measure  ;  if  indeed  the 
doubt  may  not  arise  whether  censure  itself  be  not  only  another  form 
of  praise,  when  it  has  the  character  of  greatness  that  often  accom- 
panies it  here.  "  Alighieri  is  grand  by  his  lights,  not  by  his  shad- 
ows ;  by  his  human  affections,  not  by  his  infernal.  As  the  minutest 
sands  are"  the  labors  of  some  profound  sea  or  the  spoils  of  some  vast 
mountain,  in  like  manner  his  horrid  wastes  and  wearying  minuteness- 
es are  the  chafings  of  a  turbulent  spirit,  grasping  the  loftiest  things 
and  penetrating  the  deepest,  and  moving  and  moaning  on  the  earth 
in  loneliness  and  sadness."  And  again  how  finely  it  is  said,  that  "  he 
is  forced  to  stretch  himself,  out  of  sheer  listlessness,  in  so  idle  a 
place  as  Purgatory  :  he  loses  half  his  strength  in  Paradise  :  Hell  alone 
makes  him  alert  and  lively  :  there  he  moves  about  and  threatens  as 
tremendously  as  the  serpent  that  opposed  the  legions  on  their  march 
in  Africa."  ■ 

The  more  delicate  graces  of  this  astonishing  genius  are  at  the 
same  time  not  overlooked  :  — 

"  All  the  verses  that  ever  were  written  on  the  nightingale  are  scarcely 
worth  the  beautiful  triad  of  this  divine  poet  on  the  lark :  — 

'  La  lodoletta,  che  in  aere  si  spazia, 
Prima  cantando,  e  poi  tace  contenta 
Dell'  ultima  dolcezza  che  la  sazia.' 

In  the  first  of  them  do  not  you  see  the  twinkling  of  her  wings  against  the 
sky  ?  As  often  as  I  repeat  them  my  ear  is  satisfied,  my  heart  (like  hers) 
contented." 

Nor  his  claim  to  be  remembered  as  a  master  of  pathos.  It  is 
here  Petrarca  who  speaks,  after  celebrating  his  friend's  power  over 
the  affections  :  — 

"  My  nature  leads  me  also  to  the  pathetic ;  in  which,  however,  an  imbe- 
cile writer  may  obtain  celebrity.  Even  the  hard-hearted  are  fond  of  such 
reading  when  they  are  fond  of  any ;  and  nothing  is  easier  in  the  world 
than  to  find  and  accumulate  its  sufferings.  Yet  this  very  profusion  and 
luxuriance  of  misery  is  the  reason  why  few  have  excelled  in  describing  it. 
The  eye  wanders  over  the  mass  without  noticing  the  peculiarities.  To 
mark  them  distinctly  is  the  work  of  genius ;  a  work  so  rarely  performed, 
that,  if  time  and  space  may  be  compared,  specimens  of  it  stand  at  wider 
distances  than  the  trophies  of  Sesostris.  Here  we  return  again  to  the  In- 
ferno of  Dante,  who  overcame  the  difficulty.  In  this  vast  desert  are  its 
greater  and  less  oasis,  Ugolino  and  Francesca  di  Rimini." 

Very  opportunely  observed  too  is  the  distinction,  most  necessary 
.to  be  remembered,  between  the  prosaic  treatment  of  an  appalling 
subject  and  such  treatment  as  Dante's.     What  is  horror  in  prose  be- 


518  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.   '  ^fi-^L 

comes  terror  in  poetry,  and  in  the  most  dreadful  circumstances  the 
soul  is  kept  from  sinking  by  the  buoyancy  of  imagination. 

'•  The  sunshine  of  poetry  makes  the  color  of  blood  less  horrible,  and 
draws  up  a  shadowy  and  a  softening  haziness  where  the  scene  would  other- 
wise be  too  distinct.  Poems,  like  rivers,  convey  to  their  destination  what 
must  without  their  appliances  be  left  unhandled:  these  to  ports  and  arse- 
nals, this  to  the  human  heart." 

But,  above  all,  Dante  receives  in  this  book  the  supreme  distinction 
which  belongs  to  him  pre-eminently,  which  removes  him  far  beyond 
the  reach  of  either  the  praise  or  censure  that  may  now  be  applied  to 
him,  and  sets  his  name  "  on  a  hill  apart  "  with  the  three,  or  at  most 
four,  out  of  all  known  literatures,  which  are  imperishable  on  earth. 

"  I  cannot  but  think  again  and  again  how  fruitlessly  the  bravest  have 
striven  to  perpetuate  the  ascendency  or  to  establish  the  basis  of  empire, 
when  Alighieri  hath  fixed  a  language  for  thousands  of  years  and  for  myriads 
of  men :  a  language  far  richer  and  more  beautiful  than  our  glorious  Italy 
ever  knew  before  in  any  of  her  regions,  since  the  Attic  and  the  Dorian 
contended  for  the  prize  of  eloquence  on  her  southern  shores.  Eternal 
honor,  eternal  veneration  to  him  who  raised  up  our  country  from 
the  barbarism  that  surrounded  her!  Remember  how  short  a  time  before 
him  his  master  Brunetto  Latini  wrrote  in  French;  prose  indeed;  but  what- 
ever has  enough  in  it  for  poetry  has  enough  for  prose  out  of  its  shreds  and 
selvages." 

Nor  is  Dante  the  only  attraction  of  the  book,  which  would  indeed 
be  poorly  represented  without  something  also  of  the  wealth  of 
thought  and  fancy  that  with  almost  boundless  variety  of  illustration 
enriches  its  principal  theme,  and  which  one  or  two  selections  may 
help  to  show,  though  they  show  it  badly. 

MIDDLING    MEN    AND    GREAT    MEN. 

"  Middling  men,  favored  in  their  lifetime  by  circumstances,  often  appear 
of  higher  stature  than  belongs  to  them;  great  men  always  of  lower. 
Time,  the  sovran,  invests  with  befitting  raiment  and  distinguishes  with 
proper  ensigns  the  familiars  he  has  received  into  his  eternal  habitations:  in 
these  alone  are  they  deposited :  you  must  wait  for  them." 

DEATH'S   ALLEVIATIONS. 

"  Petrarca.  0  Giovanni,  the  heart  that  has  once  been  bathed  in  love's 
pure  fountain  retains  the  pulse  of  youth  forever.  Death  can  only  take 
away  the  sorrowful  from  our  affections ;  the  flower  expands;  the  colorless 
film  thai  enveloped  it  falls  off  and  perishe8. 

••  Boccaccio.  We  may  well  believe  it:  and  believing  it,  let  us  cease  to  be 
disquieted  lor  their  absence  who  have  bu1  retired  into  another  chamber. 
We  are  like  those  who  have  overslept  the  hour:  when  we  rejoin  our 
friends  there  is  only  the  more  joyance  and  congratulation.  Would  we 
break  a  precious  vase  because  it  is  as  capable  of  containing  the  bitter  as  the 
sweet?  No:  the  very  things  which  touch  us  the  most  sensibly  are  those 
which  we  should  be  the  most  reluctant  to  forget.  The  noble  mansion  is 
most  distinguished  by  the  beautiful  images  it  retains  of  beings  past  away  ; 


JET.  6l-82.]  THE    PENTAMERON.  519 

and  so  is  the  noble  mind.  The  damps  of  autumn  sink  into  the  leaves  and 
prepare  them  for  the  necessity  of  their  fall :  and  thus  insensibly  are  we,  as 
years  close  round  us,  detached  from  our  tenacity  of  life  by  the  gentle  pres- 
sure of  recorded  sorrows." 

SUPERFICIAL    AND    CENTRAL    WARMTH. 

"  There  are  few  in  any  other  country  of  such  easy,  grateful,  unaffected 
manners  as  our  Italians.  We  are  warmer  at  the  extremities  than  at  the 
heart:  sunless  nations  have  central  fires." 

poetry's  highest  reach. 

"  A  good  satire  or  good  comedy,  if  it  does  not  always  smile,  rarely  and 
briefly  intermits  it,  and  never  rages.  A  good  epic  shows  us  more  and  more 
distinctly,  at  every  book  of  it  we  open,  the  features  and  properties  of 
heroic  character,  and  terminates  with  accomplishing  some  momentous  ac- 
tion. A  good  tragedy  shows  us  that  greater  men  than  ourselves  have 
suffered  more  severely  and  more  unjustly  ;  that  the  highest  human  power 
hath  suddenly  fallen  helpless  and  extinct;  or,  what  is  better  to  con- 
template and  usefuller  to  know,  that  uncontrolled  by  law,  unaccom- 
panied by  virtue,  unfollowed  by  contentment,  its  possession  is  undesirable 
and  unsafe.  Sometimes  we  go  away  in  triumph  with  Affliction  proved  and 
purified,  and  leave  her  under  the  smiles  of  heaven.  In  all  these  consumma- 
tions the  object  is  excellent ;  and  here  is  the  highest  point  to  which  poetry 
can  attain.  Tragedy  has  no  by-paths,  no  resting-places ;  there  is  every- 
where action  and  passion." 

GREATNESS    IN    POETRY. 

"Amplitude  of  dimensions  is  requisite  to  constitute  the  greatness  of  a 
poet,  beside  his  symmetry  of  form  and  his  richness  of  decoration.  .  .  .  We 
may  write  little  things  well,  and  accumulate  one  upon  another ;  but  never 
will  any  be  justly  called  a  great  poet  unless  he  has  treated  a  great  subject 
worthily.  He  may  be  the  poet  of  the  lover  and  the  idler,  he  may  be  the  poet 
of  green  fields  or  gay  society ;  but  whoever  is  this  can  be  no  more.  A 
throne  is  not  built  of  birds'-nests,  nor  do  a  thousand  reeds  make  a  trumpet." 

PRIVILEGED    PLAGIARISTS. 

"  A  great  poet  may  really  borrow  ;  he  may  even  condescend  to  an  obliga- 
tion at  the  hand  of  an  equal  or  inferior ;  but  he  forfeits  his  title  if  he 
borrows  more  than  the  amount  of  his  own  possessions.  The  nightingale 
himself  takes  somewhat  of  his  song  from  birds  less  glorified  ;  and  the  lark, 
having  beaten  with  her  wing  the  very  gates  of  heaven,  cools  her  breast 
among  the  grass.  The  lowlier  of  intellect  may  lay  out  a  table  in  their  field, 
at  which  table  the  highest  one  shall  sometimes  be  disposed  to  partake : 
want  does  not  compel  him.  Imitation,  as  we  call  it,  is  often  weakness,  but 
it  likewise  is  often  sympathy." 

CRITICS. 

"  There  are  critics  who,  lying  under  no  fear  of  a  future  state  in  literature, 
and  all  whose  hope  is  for  the  present  day,  commit  injustice  without  com- 
punction." 


520  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^rtfr-a?" 

PRAISING   JOHN    TO    SPITE    THOMAS. 

"  Petrarca.  Why  cannot  we  be  delighted  with  an  author,  and  even 
feel  a  predilection  for  him,  without  a  dislike  to  others?  An  admiration  of 
Catullus  or  Virgil,  of  Tibullus  or  Ovid,  is  never  to  be  heightened  by  a  dis- 
charge of  bile  on  Horace. 

"  Boccaccio.  The  eyes  of  critics,  whether  in  commending  or  carping,  are 
both  on  one  side,  hke  a  turbot's." 

ROME. 

"  Boccaccio.  "When  I  was  in  Rome  nothing  there  reminded  me  of  her 
former  state,  until  I  saw  a  goose  in  the  grass  under  the  Capitoline  hill. 
This  perhaps  was  the  only  one  of  her  inhabitants  that  had  not  degenerated. 
Even  the  dogs  looked  sleepy,  mangy,  suspicious,  perfidious,  and  thievish. 
The  goose  meanwhile  was  making  his  choice  of  herbage  about  triumphal 
arches  and  monumental  columns,  and  picking  up  worms;  the  surest 
descendants,  the  truest  representatives,  and  enjoying  the  inalienable  suc- 
cession, of  the  Caesars.  This  is  all  that  goose  or  man  can  do  at  Rome. 
She,  I  think,  will  be  the  last  city  to  rise  from  the  dead. 

"  Petrarca.  There  is  a  trumpet,  and  on  earth,  that  shall  awaken  even 
her." 

THE    PILGRIM'S    SHELL. 

"  Under  a  tuft  of  eglantine,  at  noon 
I  saw  a  pilgrim  loosen  his  broad  shell 
To  catch  the  water  off  a  stony  tongue; 
Medusa's  it  might  be  or  Pan's  ere  while; 
For  the  huge  head  was  shapeless,  eaten  out 
By  time  and  tempest  here,  and  here  embost 
With  clasping  tangles  of  dark  maidenhair. 

'  How  happy  is  thy  thirst !  how  soon  assuaged! 
How  sweet  that  coldest  water  this  hot  day  ! ' 
AVhispered  my  thoughts;  not  having  yet  observed 
His  shell  so  shallow  and  so  chipt  around. 
Tall  though  he  was,  he  held  it  higher  to  meet 
The  sparkler  at  its  outset:  with  fresh  leap, 
Vigorous  as  one  just  free  upon  the  world, 
Impetuous  too  as  one  first  cheekt,  with  stamp 
Heavy  as  ten  such  sparklers  might  be  deemed, 
L'usht  it  amain,  from  cavity  and  rim 
And  rim's  divergent  channels,  and  dropt  thick 
(Issuing  at  wrist  and  elbow)  on  the  grass. 
The  pilgrim  shook  his  head,  and  fixing  up 
His  scallop,  'There  is  something  yet,'  said  he, 
'  Too  scanty  in  this  world  for  my  desires !  '" 

That  is  one  of  the  many  perfect  pieces  scattered  through  the  book, 
to  which  were  added,  as  I  have  said,  five  scenes  in  blank  verse,  of 
which  the  speakers  were  Essex  and  Bacon  during  their  quarrel ; 
Walter  Tyrrel  and  "William  Rufus  immediately  before  the  king's 
death  ;  the  Parents  of  Luther  shortly  before  his  birth  ;  and  Electra 
and  Orestes  in  the  pieces  sent  to  me  from  Heidelberg.  Every  one  of 
these  scenes  has  that  vividness  and  force  of  reality  which  gave  to  all 
the  forms  of  Landor's  writing  its  mastery  of  dramatic  expression; 
and  there  is  one  in  particular,  the  Parents  of  Luther,  quite  unsur- 
passed for  character  and  delicacy,  from  the  first  blushing  avowal  of 
the  young  mother  to  her  dream  about  a  coming  boy  that  follows,  the 


JET.  61-82.]  THE    PENTAMERON.  521 

naming  him  Martin  because  that  saint  clothed  the  poor,  and  the 
guessing  what  the  dream  might  portend  of  the  lad's  possible  rise  in 
life,  from  chorister  to  sacristan,  sacristan  to  priest,  and  priest  to 
abbot,  till  the  father's  irrepressible  faith  and  boisterous  confidence 
bursts  out,  "  Ring  the  bells  !  Martin  is  pope,  by  Jove  !  "  The  scenes 
were  dedicated  to  Southey  in  a  few  words,  saying  that  only  he  and 
two  others,  Mr.  James  and  myself,  would  care  for  them. 

Nor  did  many  more  care  for  the  book  containing  them,  which, 
fascinating  as  it  proved  to  the  few,  for  the  many  fell  still-born  ;  and 
at  the  close  of  the  year  of  its  publication  he  wrote  to  me  of  the  fine 
he  had  to  pay  for  it.  "  I  have  just  this  moment  paid  a  fine  of  a 
hundred  and  forty  pounds  to  Saunders  and  Otley  for  having  a  hand 
in  printing,  and  probably  of  the  eighty  I  still  owe  them  I  shall  have 
to  pay  sixty  next  year."  His  letter  was  from  Bath.  "  It  was  my 
intention,"  he  had  written  to  Southey  from  Twquay  a  month  or  two 
before  (18th  September,  1837),  "to  return  at  the  end  of  the  month 
to  Clifton  ;  but  a  few  days  since  I  had  a  letter  from  my  friend  Elton, 
telling  me  that  he  is  about  to  leave  that  place  for  Southampton,  and 
his  daughter  wrote  to  me  a  few  lines  in  the  same  letter  very  much  re- 
gretting the  scenes  of  her  childhood.  I  have  a  great  love  for  Clifton, 
above  all  other  places  in  England  ;  yet  I  cannot  endure  the  sight  of 
flowers  or  fields  where  I  had  ever  spent  pleasurable  hours.  So,  in- 
stead of  Clifton,  I  think  I  shall  go  to  Bath  in  the  middle  of  next 
month  "  :  to  the  very  place,  that  is,  where  he  had  spent  all  the  most 
pleasurable  hours  of  his  early  life.  If  the  same  wisdom  had  but 
guided  him  in  all  his  contradictions  !  He  really  liked  Bath  ;  the 
choice  was  the  happiest  he  could  have  made  ;  and  what  led  him  to  it 
was  not  the  dislike  but  the  love  of  pleasurable  associations,  hardly 
then  to  be  obtruded  on  Southey.  Some  very  old  friends  made  it  still 
their  home,  and  it  had  become  recently  the  home  of  others  of  later 
date.  Colonel  William  Napier  lived  there,  with  whose  brother  Henry 
he  had  been  intimate  in  Florence  ;  and  among  its  more  recent  resi- 
dents were  Mrs.  Paynter  and  her  children,  members  of  that  Aylmer 
family  formerly  so  dear  to  him,  who  had  themselves  been  the  visitors 
last  received  at  his  villa  before  he  quitted  Italy,  and  among  whom  he 
was  to  find  another  Rose,*  happier  and  not  less  fair  than  the  first. 
Here  then  he  pitched  his  tent  ;  and  the  city  which  he  would  always 
say  reminded  him  most  of  Florence  became  his  last  English  home. 
I  passed  with  him  there  his  sixty-third  birthday,  and  with  hardly  an 
intermission  for  the  next  twenty  years  we  dined  together  on  that 
memorable  30th  of  January.  It  was  our  Calves'-head  Club  day  ; 
though  Landor  had  commonly  in  hand  too  fierce  a  quarrel  with  some 
living  sovereign,  to  trouble  himself  much  with  one  who  had  paid 
with  life  the  penalty  of  his  misdoing. 

The  letter  to  which  I  have  referred  told  me  also  of  the  recovery 
of  his   corrected   copy  of  the   published  Conversations  and   of  the 

*  See  ante,  p.  305. 


522  TWENTY-OXE    YEARS   AT   BATH.  rB,s?6K- £"" 


'836-57- 


manuscript  of  the  new  ones  which  he  had  placed  in  Mr.  Willis's 
hands,  which  had  crossed  and  recrossed  the  Atlantic,  and  at  last,  not 
even  addressed  to  Landor,  had  found  their  way  to  Lady  Blessington. 
He  had  not  been  sorry  to  recover  them,  he  said  ;  for  though  ho 
should  not  have  minded  the  loss  of  a  volume  that  had  never  been 
published,  he  did  not  wish  his  corrections  of  himself  to  be  ineffectual. 
The  corrections  in  this  particular  copy,  however,  he  found  to  have 
been  written  so  badly,  and  so  much  interlined,  that  they  would  only 
have  wearied  out  my  patience ;  and  he  had  therefore  seriously  set 
about  a  fresh  copy  in  which  many  additional  insertions  had  been 
made  that  it  had  required  a  good  deal  of  attention,  contrivance,  and 
delicacy  to  engraft  in  the  trunk  and  branches  ;  but  the  wearisome 
work,  a  labor  of  now  many  months,  would  shortly  be  completed,  and 
thenceforward  he  proposed  to  place  them,  with  whatever  else  he  had 
written,  or  might  write,  at  my  disposal.  "  I  am  resolved  to  hold  no 
intercourse  with  publishers,  to  claim  no  notice  from  the  public,  and 
never  even  to  announce  what  I  have  done,  am  doing,  or  may  do." 
I  already  knew  his  temper  well  enough  to  receive  this  kind  of  state- 
ment at  its  worth  ;  but  at  least  it  was  clear  that  for  the  sort  of  inter- 
course with  publishers  of  which  I  lately  gave  an  illustration,  or 
indeed  for  business  of  any  kind  requiring  prudence  and  patience,  he 
was  dangerously  unfit. 

His  reply  to  my  half-jesting  remonstrance  was  very  characteristic. 
He  admitted  there  was  a  future  day,  though  probably  a  distant  one, 
when  his  books  would  be  rightly  estimated,  and  that  it  was  certainly 
in  their  favor  not  to  have  been  too  much  extolled.  "  Marmion  was 
at  first  too  much  applauded  ;  it  is  now  too  much  underrated.  Such 
trash  of  Byron's  as  the  Giaour  kept  women  from  sleep  and  almost 
from  scandal,  and  who  reads  it  now  %  whereas  such  lines  of  his  (I  for- 
get the  title)  as  '  A  change  came  o'er  the  spirit  of  my  dream,'  few 
people  cared  for,  yet  they  live,  and  will  live  always.  I  have  no  rea- 
son to  complain,  and  never  did.  I  found  my  company  in  a  hothouse 
warmed  with  steam,  and  conducted  them  to  my  dining-room  through 
a  cold  corridor  with  nothing  but  a  few  old  statues  in  it  from  one  end 
to  the  other,  and  they  could  not  read  the  Greek  names  on  the  plinth, 
which  made  them  hate  the  features  above  it.  This  only  amused 
me  ;  for  the  guests'  in  good  truth  had  a  better  right  to  be  displeased 
with  the  entertainer  than  he  with  them.  God  grant  I  may  never  be 
popular  in  any  way,  if  I  must  pay  the  price  of  self-esteem  for  it.  I 
do  not  know  whether  my  writings  are  ever  to  emerge  above  those  of 
my  contemporaries,  but  if  they  do  I  am  sure  it  will  be  after  my  life- 
time ;  and  some  seem  to  think  they  will.  Read  the  enclosed."  It 
was  a  letter  from  the  author  of  the  Curiosities  of  Literature.  It 
touched  a  chord  of  the  very  earliest  years  of  his  life,  even  the  old 
days  of  his  friendship  with  Mocatta ;  and  was  indeed  an  expression  of 
opinion  lie  might  fairly  be  proud  to  receive. 

It  was  dated  from  Bradenham  House,  Wycombe,  on  the  29th  Sep- 


JET.  61-82.]  WRITING   PLAYS.  523 

tember,  1838,  and  was  written  after  reading  the  Pentameron.  Various 
circumstances,  it  said,  had  prevented  the  writer  doing-  this  before. 
"  I  have  now  just  closed  it,  to  be  opened  however  hereafter.  It  has 
happened  to  me,  from  early  years  in  my  life,  to  have  been  acquainted 
both  with  your  name  and  your  writings.*  I  have  been  your  constant 
reader.  I  have  never  turned  over  a  page  of  your  writing  but  with  a 
pause  of  reflection.  In  the  present  imaginary  conversations  you 
have,  if  possible,  excelled  yourself ;  so  perfectly  have  you  personated 
the  spirits  of  your  two  great  actors,  such  novelty  have  you  given  to 
a  searching  and  exquisite  criticism  on  the  three  finest  geniuses  of 
modern  literature.  You  have  shown  the  caustic  smile  of  Petrarch 
on  Dante  ;  and  surely  Boccaccio  himself  would  have  laughed  heartily, 
as  at  least  I  did,  at  the  lovely  girl  so  kindly  watchful  over  our  cor- 
pulent sentimentalist  girthing  his  mule.  All  that  you  have  written 
has  been  masterly,  and  struck  out  by  the  force  of  an  original  mind. 
You  have  not  condescended  to  write  down  to  the  mediocrity  of  the 
populace  of  readers.  You  will  be  read  hereafter.  I  know  not 
whether  you  have  written  a  century  too  late  or  too  early  :  too  late, 
if  the  taste  for  literature  has  wholly  left  us ;  too  early,  if  the  public 
mind  has  not  yet  responded  to  your  sympathies.  Believe  me  with 
great  regard  faithfully  yours,  I.  D'Israeli." 

III.     WRITING  PLAYS. 

Thirteen  days  after  the  date  of  Mr.  D'Israeli's  letter,  on  the  12th 
October,  1838,  I  received  what  follows  :  — 

"  He  who  sprains  an  ankle  breaks  a  resolution.  I  sprained  my  ankle  a 
week  ago  by  treading  on  a  lump  of  mortar  which  a  beast  of  a  mason  let 
drop  out  of  his  hod  in  Milsom  Street.  It  twisted  under  my  leg,  and  down 
I  came.  Nevertheless  I  resolved  to  walk  home,  after  I  was  picked  up,  two 
gentlemen  having  run  across  the  street  and  helped  me :  for  as  to  getting  up 
by  my  own  efforts,  that  was  out  of  the  question.  With  great  difficulty  I 
reached  my  lodgings.  And  now  for  the  breach  of  resolution  I  have  com- 
mitted. I  am  a  great  admirer  of  Mrs.  Jameson's  writings.  So  I  sent  on 
Saturday  night  for  her  Female  Sovereigns.  On  Sunday  after  tea  I  began  a 
drama  on  Giovanna  di  Napoli  (God  defend  us  from  the  horrid  sound,  Joan 
of  Naples !) ;  and  before  I  rose  from  my  bed  on  Monday  morning,  I  had 
.  written  above  a  hundred  and  seventy  verses  as  good  as  any  I  ever  wrote  in 
my  life  excepting  my  Death  of  Clytemnestra.  Of  course  I  slept  little.  In 
fact,  I  scarcely  sleep  at  all  by  night  while  the  people  of  my  brain  are  talk- 
ing. While  others  are  drinking  I  doze  and  dream,  and  sometimes  snore 
peradventure ;  at  least  those  have  told  me  so  who  know  best.  Now  not  a 
word  to  any  one  about  this  drama,  which  I  promise  to  send  you  before  a 
month  is  over.  Since  the  first  day  I  have  done  nothing  in  the  composition 
of  it,  so  many  people  have  been  calling  on  me.  However,  nobody  shall 
come  in  before  two  nor  after  three  for  the  future.  But  I  must  return 
the  calls  as  soon  as  I  can  get  out,  and  these  are  grievous  losses  of  time.  It 
is  odd  enough  that  I  had  written  a  good  many  scraps  of  two  Imaginary 
Conversations  in  which  Giovanna  is  a  speaker;  but  I  cannot  remember  a 

*  See  ante,  p.  84. 


524  TWEXTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  fno00^  vn- 

i  1830  -  57. 

syllable  of  them,  nor  would  they  do.  She  and  Vittoria  Colonna  are  my 
favorites  among  the  women  of  [taly,  as  Boccaccio  and  Petrarca  among  the 
men.  But  to  have  clear  perceptions  of  women,  to  elicit  their  thoughts 
and  hear  their  voices  to  advantage.  I  must  be  in  the  open  air,  in  the  sun, 
alas!  in  Italy,  were  it  possible.  My  sprained  ankle  will  not  let  me  take  my 
long  and  rapid  strides.  I  am  an  artificial  man.  I  want  all  these  helps  for 
pu.try.  Quiet  and  silent  nights  are  the  next  things  needful.  How  happy 
is  Southey,  who  can  do  all  things  better  than  any  of  us,  and  can  do  them 
all  in  the  midst  of  noise  and  interruption!  He  is  gone  into  Brittany.  May 
he  return  in  health  and  spirits.  .  .  .  God  bless  you.  Do  not  think  it  neces- 
sary to  condole  with  me  on  my  sprain." 

Five  days  later  came  the  following.  I  had  meanwhile,  after  ex- 
pressing my  delight  that  out  of  such  a  nettle  as  a  sprain  he  was 
plucking  the  flower  of  a  tragedy,  endeavored  to  point  out  to  him  that 
a  drama,  if  it  meant  anything,  should  mean  what  could  be  acted  ;  and 
that  if  he  had  not  something  to  say  which  the  theatre  would  enable 
him  to  say  best,  it  was  unwise  to  adopt  a  form  that  surrendered  ob- 
vious advantages  without  corresponding  return. 

"  My  drama  will  never  do  for  the  stage.  Besides,  why  should  I  make  so 
many  bad  men  worse  ?  Is  there  any  poet,  beside  Southey  and  perhaps  our 
Paracelsus  [Mr.  Browning],  who  would  not  suffer  from  blue  devils  at  any 
success  of  mine?  The  best  of  our  living  dramatic  writers,  Sheridan 
Knowles,  gets  grudgingly  praised.  I  would  not  be  mobbed,  present  or 
absent.  Even  Macready's  genius  and  judgment  can  hardly  bring  together 
half  a  dinner-party  to  see  living  Shakespeare.  Yet  Shakespeare  not  only 
keeps  poetry  alive,  but  Christianity.  When  people  see  one  inspired  man, 
inspired  to  delight  and  elevate  them,  they  may  believe  that  there  may  be 
another  inspired  and  sent  to  save  them  from  the  devil.  My  scenes  fall  in 
the  natural  order.  What  is  plot  but  trick?  However,  my  team  is  strong 
enough  to  carry  my  materials  from  one  part  of  the  field  to  the  other,  if  need 
be.  You  must  tell  me  about  it.  You  shall  not  have  any  of  it  before  you 
have  the  whole  ;  and  it  shall  not  be  a  fortnight  first." 

The  promise  was  kept ;  all  the  scenes  composing  the  tragedy 
known  afterwards  as  Andrea  of  Hungary  were  in  my  hands  on  the 
2d  of  November  j  and  the  subjoined  characteristic  letter  accompanied 
them :  — 

" Conceived,  planned,  and  executed  in  thirteen  days;  transcribed  (the 
worst  of  the  business)  in  six.  Any  man.  I  am  now  convinced,  may  write  a 
do/en  such  within  the  year.  The  worst  of  it  is  in  anything  dramatic,  such 
IS  the  rapidity  of  passion  the  words  escape  before  they  can  be  taken  down. 
If  you  lose  one,  you  lose  the  tone  of  the  person,  and  never  can  recover  it. 
Desperation!  And  the  action  is  gone  too.  You  have  a  dead  man  before 
you,  —  but  galvanized. 

" How  a  sprained  ankle  helps  a  poet  in  getting  over  the  ground!  It 
should  not  have  hindered  inc.  had  the  weather  been  finer,  and  the  walks 
less  slippery,  from  creeping  along  through  my  favorite  lanes,  and  inhaling 
the  incense  round  the  (lying  hawthorn-leaves,  the  viaticum  of  their  depart- 
ure.     They  quit  the  world  without  sprained  ankles,  happy  souls! 

"  Make  the  best  of  my  phantasmagoria;  shift  the  glasses  as  you  will,  and 
toss  as  many  of  the  figures  as  you  will  aside.     I  will  have  no  further  con- 


JET.  61-82.]  WRITING   PLAYS.  525 

cern  or  thought  about  trie  matter.  I  have  enjoyed  my  sunshine  once  more 
in  pleasant  Italy,  and  am  ready  for  my  siesta.  If  your  opinion  is  a  favor- 
able one  let  me  hear  it,  —  se  no,  no,  as  the  Arragonese  say  to  their  king. 

"  By  the  by,  I  am  half  a  Carlist.  I  would  rather  the  Biscayans  were  in- 
dependent and  free  than  all  the  rest  of  the  Spaniards ;  they  are  the  very 
best  people  upon  earth,  not  excepting  the  Tyrolese. 

"  Write  me  one  line  as  soon  as  you  receive  the  parcel.  My  hodge-podge 
was  completed  on  Friday  night  just  before  twelve. 

"  I  have  not  had  leisure  to  count  the  verses.  There  should  not  be  many 
more  than  1,800  ;  at  least  there  are  not,  if  I  remember,  in  tragedies  or  mixt 
dramas.  However,  I  have  weeded  out  and  weeded  out,  and  have  rejected 
as  much  as  would  furnish  any  friend  for  another  piece  —  as  good  as  this. 

"  Any  of  my  worthy  critics  may  tell  me  that  I  do  not  know  the  difference 
between  an  act  and  a  scene.  Very  true  ;  I  have  said  something  about  this 
in  my  Milton  and  Marvell*  So,  I  have  merely  markt  out  the  scenes,  as 
they  are  called,  and  leave  the  acts  to»the  curious.  I  had  myself  a  fanciful 
division  of  them  into  five;  but  their  length  was  not  symmetrical  V  any 
means.  Now  adieu,  my  dear  friend  ;  I  have  given  you  but  a  tough  and  dry 
radish  as  a  whetting  for  your  entertainment. 

"  A  capital  prologue  has  this  instant  come  into  my  head,  if  hereafter  the 
piece  should  be  licked  into  shape :  — 

No  prologue  will  our  author's  pride  allow; 
If  you  can  Jo  without  it,  show  it  now. 

f  Observe,  I  have  made  Andrea  rather  tolerable :  at  last  rather  interest- 
ing :  quite  uneducated  :  ductile  :  but  gentle-hearted,  compliant,  compassion- 
ate, and,  above  all,  a  graceful  rider.  These  qualities,  taken  together,  are 
enough  to  make  a  sensible  woman  of  great  generosity  love  him  even.  Such 
a  woman  would  be  more  likely  than  another.  I  never  knew  a  very  sensible 
woman,  once  excepted,  love  a  very  sensible  man.  There  never  was  one 
who  could  resist  a  graceful  and  bold  rider,  if  there  was  only  one  single 
thing  about  him  which  would  authorize  her  to  say,  '  It  was  not  merely  for 
his  horsemanship.' 

"  In  the  characters  generally  I  have  avoided  strong  contrasts.  These  are 
the  certain  signs  of  a  weak  artist.  There  are  however  shades  of  complex- 
ion, diversities  of  manner,  and  degrees  of  height.  It  would  be  ridiculous  to 
tell  you  this  after  you  have  read  the  thing ;  less  amiss,  before." 

Hardly  had  I  written  what  I  thought  of  the  scenes,  or  suggested 
what  seemed  to  me  required  for  their  orderly  arrangement,  when 
tidings  of  another  completed  portion  reached  me  ;  second  of  a  trilogy 
on  the  theme  he  had  chosen.  I  had  written  on  the  3d  of  November ; 
and  five  days  later  had  this  startling  announcement :  — 

"  Thursday,  November  9.  —  Your  praises,  which  came  this  day  se'nnight, 
created  the  last  drama  I  shall  ever  Avrite.     It  contains  about  1100  verses. 

"  I  only  write  now  to  tell  you  that  I  completed  (just  before  dinner)  the 
second  of  my  trilogy.  I  will  not  ever  write  the  third,  though  I  have  a 
scrap  or  two  for  it.  No,  the  easy  part,  the  part  that  anybody  else  would 
have  taken,  shall  be  left  for  somebody  to  try  his  hand  against  me.  Grio- 
vanna  is  absolved  by  Rienzi,  and  returns  to  Naples.  Let  another  kill  her: 
let  another  make  her  cry  out  against  the  ingratitude  of  Durazzo.  Unluckily 
I  have  not  the  life  of  Rienzi.     I  had  it  in  Italian  by  a  contemporary.    What 

*  And  see  ante,  p.  237. 


526  TWENTY-ONE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  ^is^s;"' 

was  his  wife's  name?  Was  lie  married?  Had  he  a  mistress?  Pray  let 
me  know  ;  perhaps  I  may  want  it,  but  probably  not.  I  am  a  horrible  con- 
founder  of  historical  facts.  I  have  usually  one  history  that  I  have  read, 
another  that  1  have  invented." 

Observing  so  resolute  an  asseveration  that  he  would  never  write 
the  third  in  the  trilogy,  I  half  expected  to  receive  it  before  even  the 
completion  of  the  second  ;  but  1  had  to  wait  a  little.  On  the  13th 
of  November  he  wrote  again  :  — 

"  Gratifying  as  your  praises  are,  I  like  your  objections  still  better,  and 
would  rather  have  the  utmost  of  your  severity.  My  division  of  the  acts  fan 
arbitrary  one)  would  probably  be  the  same  as  yours.  The  first  would  contain 
3GG  verses,  the  second  255,  the  third  448.  My  fourth  was  inordinately  long- ; 
my  last  little  more  than  one  scene.  I  want  you  to  make  some  insertions  in 
the  first,  where  the  queen  speaks  of  her  husband  to  her  sister  Maria,  and 
afterwards  to  her  foster-mother  Filippa.     After  '  I  will  earn,'  paste  in  — 

Maria.     How  can  we  love  — 
Giovanni  [interrupting).     Mainly  by  hearing  none 
Decry  the  object;  then,  by  cherishing 

The  good  we  »<■•(■  in  it,  ami  overlooking 
What  is  less  pleasant  in  the  paths  of  life. 
All  have  some  virtue,  if  we  leave  it  them 
In  peace  ami  quiet;  all  may  lose  some  part 
By  sifting  too  minutely  had  and  good. 

"Where  Andrea  follows  Fra  Rupert,  after  '  he  went  in  wrath,'  I  would  add 

He  may  do  mischief,  if  he  thinks  it  right; 
As  those  religious  people  often  do. 

And  where  Filippa  says  that  he  deserves  their  pity,  let  this  follow:  — 

Gioeanna.     0,  more  than  pity.     If  our  clime,  our  nation, 
Bland,  constant,  kind,  congenial  with  each  other, 
Were  granted  him,  how  much  more  was  withheld! 
Sterile  the  soil  is  not,  but  sadly  waste. 
What  buoyant  spirits  and  what  pliant  temper! 
How  patient  of  reproof!  how  he  wipes  off 
All  injuries  before  they  harden  on  him, 
And  wonders  at  affronts  and  doubts  they  can  be! 
Then  his  wild  quickness!     0,  the  churl  that  bent  it 
Into  the  earth,  colorless,  shapeless,  thriftless, 
Fruitless,  forever!     Had  he  been  my  brother, 
1  should  have  wept  all  my  life  over  him: 
But  being  my  husband,  one  hypocrisy 
I  must  put  on.  one  only  ever  will  I. 
Others  must  think,  by  my  observance  of  him, 
I  hold  him  prudent,  penetrating,  firm, 
No  less  than  virtuous:  I  must  place  myself 
In  my  own  house  (now  indeed  his)  below  him. 

Filippa.     I  almost  think  you  love  him. 

Gioeanna      He  has  U-w. 
1    en  small  faults,  which  small  minds  spy  the  soonest; 
He  has,  what  those  will  never  Bee  nor  heed, 
Wit  of  bright  feather,  but  of  broken  wing; 
No  >tain  of  malice,  none  of  spleen  about  it. 
For  this,  and  more  things  nearer  .   .   .  for  the  worst 
Of  orphancy,  the  crudest  of  frauds, 
Stealth  of  tis  education  while  he  played, 
Nor  fancie  1  he  could  want  it;  for  our  ties 
Of  kindred;  for  our  childhood  spent  together; 
For  those  dear  face-  that  once  smiled  upon  us 


JET.  6l-82.]  WRITING    PLAYS.  527 

At  the  same  hour,  in  the  same  balcony; 
Even  for  the  plants  we  reared  in  partnership, 
Or  spoiled  in  quarrel,  I  do  love  Andrea. 
But,  from  his  counsellors ! 

"  The  Second  Part  is  more  regular  ;  but  in  this  the  first  act  is  longer  than 
any  of  the  rest :  it  contains  448  verses.  Yet  the  whole  piece  is  little  more 
than  1,100,  I  think  ;  but  I  have  not  counted  farther  than  I  have  transcribed, 
which  is  only  one  page  beyond  the  first  act.  If  you  should  really  be  con- 
tented with  the  First  when  your  changes  are  made,  you  might  ask  Mac- 
ready  whether  he  thinks  it  adapted  to  the  stage,  and  whether  he  can 
surest  any  improvement.  We  English  have  done  less  for  the  stage  in  the 
lasTtwo  centuries  and  a  quarter  than  any  other  nation  in  Europe ;  less  than 
an  acted  tragedy  in  a  century !  The  best,  I  think,  since  Venice  Preserved, 
are  Virginius  and  the  Hunchback.  We  want  the  coming-out  of  character : 
We  want  more  than  side-faces.  In  a  grand  historical  picture  all  the  faces 
must  not  be  painted  in  profile,  nor  all  the  figures  come  with  the  best  leg 
foremost." 

His  next  letter,  four  days  later,  brought  me  more  of  the  scenes  of 
the  second  play,  and  some  inserted  passages  of  extraordinary  beauty. 
I  at  first  doubted  whether  it  was  right  thus  to  exhibit  a  work  of  art 
in  the  process  of  construction,  with  its  scaffolding  around  it  ;  but  as 
with  Count  Julian,  so  here,  both  the  character  and  the  genius  of 
Landor  receive  illustration  from  the  intimate  view  thus  afforded,  not 
merely  of  his  rapid  and  impulsive  composition,  but  of  the  rare  power 
he  possessed  in  putting  into  his  numberless  additions,  insertions,  and 
corrections,  into  his  second  and  third  and  fourth  and  twentieth 
thoughts,  all  the  heat  and  glow  of  his  first  noble  fancy.  The  in- 
spiration has  never  dropped.  There  is  nothing  finer  in  the  tragedies 
than  the  after-insertions  sent  in  these  letters. 

"  You  shall  not  be  disappointed  in  my  Rienzi  as  far  as  vigor  goes.  I 
represent  him  as  a  very  imperfect  character ;  he  was  so.  His  wife,  or  mis- 
tress, whichever  was  the  best  of  the  two,  says  great  things  to  him,  when, 
after  Griovanna's  appeal  to  him  against  the  charge  of  having  murdered  her 
husband,  he  wavers  on  equity  for  the  sake  of  maintaining  his  power,  saying 
that  since  his  rise  many  friends  have  fallen  from  him :  — 

Wife.     Throw  not  off  the  rest. 
What !  is  it,  then,  enough  to  stand  before 
The  little  crags  and  sweep  the  lizards  dojira 
From  their  warm  basking-place  with  idle  wand, 
While  under  them  the  drowsy  panther  lies 
Twitching  his  paw  in  his  dark  lair,  and  waits 
Secure  of  springing  when  thy  back  is  turned? 
Popular  power  can  stand  but  with  the  people: 
Let  them  trust  none  a  palm  above  themselves, 
For  sympathy  in  high  degrees  is  frozen.  .  .  . 

Rienzi.     Peace,  peace!  confound  me  not. 

Wife.     The  brave,  the  wise, 
The  just,  are  never,  even  by  foes,  confounded. 
Promise  me  but  one  thing.     If  in  thy  soul 
Thou  thinkest  this  young  woman  free  from  blame, 
Thou  wilt  absolve  her,  openly,  with  honor, 
Whatever  Hungary,  whatever  Avignon 
May  whisper  or  may  threaten. 

Rienzi.     If  my  power 
Will  bear  it;  if  the  sentence  will  not  shake 
This  scarlet  off  mv  shoulder — 

Wife.    Cola!  Cola! 


528  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  [B2ZK  -  H- 

1830-57. 

I  have  made  the  changes  you  wished  at  the  deaths  of  Caraffa  and  Caraccioli, 
and  you  must  add  to  where  Andrea  says  'he  is  gone' :  — 

To  think  of  this;  to  think  how  lie  has  fallen 
Amid  his  pranks  and  jovances,  amid 
His  wild  heath  myrtle-blossoms,  one  might  say, 
It  quite  unmans  me. 

Bancia.     Speak  not  so,  my  son : 
Let  others,  when  their  nature  has  been  changed 
To  such  unwonted  state,  when  they  are  called 
To  do  what  angels  do  and  brutes  do  not, 
Sob  at  their  shame,  and  say  they  arc  unmanned: 
Unmanned  they  cannot  be:  they  are  not  men. 
At  glorious  deeds,  at  sufferings  well  endured, 
Yea,  at  life's  thread  snapt  with  its  gloss  upon  it, 
Be  it  man's  pride  and  privilege  to  weep. 

This  week  I  shall  transcribe  little  more  "  (the  first  two  acts  came  with  the 
letter) ;  "  before  the  end  of  next,  you  phall  have  the  whole.  Should  not 
the  title  of  the  first  be  Andrea?  the  second,  Giovanna? —  Or  Giovanna  of 
Naples  ?  and  the  other,  Andrea  of  Hungary  ?  " 

I  had  not  had  time  to  reply  when  the  following  day  brought  an- 
other letter.  "  The  packet  was  sent  to  the  coach-office,  and  my  letter 
in  it ;  and  now,  five  minutes  afterwards,  1  find  I  am  about  to  trouble 
you  again,  as  usual.  In  fact  I  seldom  write  straight  on  end  as  the 
hunters  say,  or  in  the  house,  but  generally  while  I  am  walking  or 
riding,  or  sitting  out  in  the  air  ;  sometimes  in  a  very  small  pocket- 
book,  sometimes  on  a  scrap  of  paper.  Do,  in  your  long-suffering, 
paste  in  this  where  Giovanna  and  her  sister  are  together,  and  she 
talks  of  life  being  made  almost  as  welcome  to  her  as  death  itself. 
The  other  will  reply  :  — 

AYhen  sunshine  glistens  round, 
And  friends  as  young  as  we  are  sit  beside  us, 
We  smile  at  Death  .  .  .  one  rather  grim  indeed 
And  whimsical,  but  not  disposed  to  hurt  us  .  .  . 
And  give  and  take  fresh  courage.     But,  sweet  sister. 
The  days  are  maiiv  when  he  is  unwelcome, 
And  you  will  think  so  too  another  time. 
'T  is  chiefly  in  cold  places,  with  old  folks. 
His  features  seem  prodigiously  amiss. 
But  Life  looks  always  pleasant,  sometimes  more 
And  sometimes  less  bo,  but  looks  always  pleasant, 
And,  when  we  cherish  him,  repays  us  well. 

And  when,  in  the  first  part,  they  are  talking  of  the  good  King  Robert, 

I  would  have  this  :  — 

Finmmetln  (to  Filippa).     Have  you  not  praised  the  king  your  very  self 
For  saying  to  Petrarca,  as  he  did, 
'  Letters  are  dearer  to  me  than  my  crown. 
And,  were  I  forced  to  throw  up  one  or  other, 
Away  should  go  the  diadem,  by  Jove! ' 

Bancia.    Thou  art  thy  very  father.     Kiss  me,  child: 
His  father  said  it,  and  thy  father  would. 
When  shall  such  kings  adorn  the  throne  again? 

Fictmmttta.     When  the  same  love  of  what  Heaven  made  most  lovely 
Enters  their  heart-.;  when  genius  shines  above  them, 
And  not  beneath  their  feet." 

On  the  last  day  of  November  the  whole  of  the  second  tragedy  was 
in  my  possession,  and  I  had  sent  him  further  objections  to  portions 


JET.  61-82.]  WRITING    PLAYS.  529 

of  the  first  which  it  seemed  desirable  to  alter.  His  reply  came  next 
day  :  — 

"  Your  objections  are  so  admirably  just,  that  it  is  almost  a  shame  to  de- 
prive the  world  of  them ;  yet  I  resolved  from  the  first  moment  to  abolish 
the  whole  scene  of  the  old  women ;  there  is  quite  enough  without  it.  Draw 
your  pen  unsparingly  over  every  other  passage  that  in  any  manner  is  dis- 
creditable to  me.  I  wrote  the  songs  in  Italian  because  it  is  so  incomparably 
easier  than  English,  in  which  Moore  alone  writes  short  things  gracefully. 
Mine  were  on  a  level  with  what  are  sung  about  the  streets  at  Naples  and 
elsewhere.  There  are  so  many  conspiracies  in  tragedies,  that  nothing  new 
could  be  devised.  I  have  varied  the  old  scheme -by  the  diversified  tones  and 
feelings  of  Psein  and  the.other  two  Hungarians,  then  of  Maximin,  then  of 
Caraccioli  and  CarafFa.  My  frate  Eupert  has  a  slice  of  old  Falstaff  in  him, 
not  very  perceptible.  He  is  never  at  fault:  this  is  the  resemblance.  Be- 
side what  you  have  shown  me,  I  can  find  only  to  alter,  the  bringing  back 
the  queen  dowager  to  take  her  seat  with  Giovanna  when  audience  is  given 
to  the  nobles ;  and,  on  the  queen  saying  she  would  call  round  her  all  the 
good  and  wise,  I  would  have  King  Eobert's  widow  overhear  those  words  as 
she  returns. 

Sancia  (reluming).     Daughter,  no  palace  is  too  small  to  hold  them. 
The  good  love  other  places,  love  the  fields, 
And  ripen  the  pale  harvest  with  their  prayers. 
Solitude,  solitude,  so  dread  a  curse 
To  princes,  such  a  blight  to  sycophants, 
Is  their  own  home,  their  healthy  thoughts  grow  in  it. 
The  wise  avoid  all  our  anxieties: 
The  cunning,  with  the  tickets  of  the  wise 
Push  for  the  banquet,  seize  each  vacant  chair, 
Gorge,  pat  their  spaniel,  and  fall  fast  asleep. 

In  the  scene  toward  the  close,  where  Andrea  speaks  of  the  mulberries,  it 
should  be,  '  I  wish  the  mulberries  were  not  past,'  because  they  not  only 
were  ripe,  but  over  by  above  a  month,  in  Naples ;  the  marriage  being  on 
the  20th  of  September.  The  greater  correction  of  substituting  English  for 
Italian  I  finished  before  I  sent  away  my  breakfast,  and  you  will  see  it  at 
length  on  the  opposite  side.  You  are  right  in  what  you  say  of  the  theatre. 
I  shrink  from  the  acting.  We  Avill  give  up  that  idea,  both  for  one  and  other 
of  the  dramas ;  and  as  to  printing,  you  know  I  said  openly  I  would  publish 
no  more." 

"What  I  replied  on  this  latter  point  Landor  took  as  good-naturedly 
as  Benedick  when  rallied  on  his  change  of  intention,  and  the  trage- 
dies were  printed  without  waiting  for  completion  of  the  trilogy. 
Few  know  anything  of  them ;  but  enough,  even  in  these  letters,  has  been 
shown  of  their  singular  and  exceptional  beauty  of  thought  and  lan- 
guage, to  justify  such  further  explanatory  words  as  may  increase  the 
reader's  interest  in  them.  They  have  no  single  figure  of  such  gran- 
deur of  conception  as  Julian  ;  but  in  another  kind  I  doubt  whether 
Andrea  may  not  claim  a  place  as  distinct  and  separate,  nor  in  a  lower 
rank  of  poetical  creation.  Poetry  has  indeed  few  conceptions  more 
touching  than  this  boy-prince.  Of  Giovanna  Landor  takes  the  fa- 
vorable view,  as  it  was  fairly  open  to  him  to  do.  She  is  to  Italy  what 
Mary  Stuart  is  to  Scotland,  and  different  judgments  of  her  will  al- 
ways exist ;  but  any  man  may  be  justified  in  taking  her  character 

34 


530  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^'3^-57!'' 

from  the  two  Italians  who  were  the  most  illustrious  of  her  contempo- 
raries, —  Boccaccio,  who  calls  her  the  singular  pride  of  Italy,  so  gra- 
cious, gentle,  compassionate,  and  kind,  that  she  seemed  rather  the 
companion  than  the  queen  of  those  around  her;  and  Petrarca,  who, 
in  a  strain  hardly  less  affectionate,  compares  her  and  her  young  hus- 
band, surrounded  by  the  Hungarians,  to  two  lambs  in  the  midst  of 
wolves.      Nor  is  that  a  bad  description  of  Land or's* first  tragedy. 

What  indeed  no  one  disputes  to  have  been  her  position  on  the 
death  of  her  grandfather,  gives  warrant  for  the  view  taken  by  Lan- 
dor.  Ill-fated  as  the  marriage  was,  it  originated  in  King  Robert's  de- 
sire to  compose  the  differences  between  Naples  and  Hungary  by  re- 
storing the  throne  of  Naples  to  the  elder  branch  in  the  person  of 
Andrea,  without  prejudice  to  the  existing  rights  of  Giovanna ;  but 
several  years  after  the  betrothment  he  discovered  that  Andrea,  placed 
by  the  king  of  Hungary  under  the  sole  care  of  a  wicked  monk,  had 
grown  up  into  his  helpless  victim ;  indolent,  idle,  pliant,  half  silly  it 
was  supposed,  certainly  altogether  ignorant ;  and  it  was  resolved,  as 
a  protection  to  the  youth,  that  Giovanna  should  be  proclaimed  queen 
in  her  own  right.  She  was  however  but  fifteen  when  the  king  died, 
Andrea  heing  seventeen  ;  and,  by  the  time  of  her  accession  and  mar- 
riage, the  monk  fra  Rupert  had  so  employed  the  two  years'  interval 
of  regency  in  supplanting  Neapolitan  by  Hungarian  influence,  that 
Giovanna  and  Andrea  were  become  little  better  than  his  prisoners. 

At  this  point  the  tragedy  opens  ;  and  with  the  greatest  delicacy  the 
position  of  both  queen  and  husband  is  expressed  perfectly  in  the  first 
scene.  She,  with  wonderful  beauty,  is  already  a  woman  in  fulness 
and  generosity  of  soul,  and  wise  beyond  her  years  ;  he,  a  mere  1  loyish 
stripling,  is  in  mind  and  manners  more  boyish  still,  but  ductile,  gen- 
tle-hearted, compliant  ;  and  it  is  the  triumph  of  Landor's  achieve- 
ment to  have  shown  the  influence  of  two  such  characters  on  each 
other.  One  sees  that  her  expression  of  love  at  the  outset  is  but  a 
sweet  hypocrisy  ;  indeed  she  loves  another;  but  she  is  so  bent  on  be- 
ing true  to  Andrea  that  her  tenderness  and  compassion,  trembling 
only  on  love's  outermost  verge,  soon  borrow  from  his  glad  simplicity 
and  sprightly  fondness  something  of  his  own  affection ;  and  still,  as 
his  mind  opens  under  love  for  her,  and  new  beauties  of  disposition 
respond  to  her  influence  over  him,  her  own  eyes  brighten  afore  and 
ni" re.  But  there  is  of  course  little  for  the  stage  in  this;  nor  has 
the  play  otherwise  the  kind  of  contrasts  required  by  tragedy.  There 
are  indeed  plenty  of  shades  of  complexion,  and  diversities  of  manner, 
i"  show  the  artist;  no  one  could  mistake  Sancia's  gentle  wisdom  for 
the  lofty  intellect  of  Filippa  ;  but  the  women  are  all  so  good  and  so 
generous  that  it  takes  a  second  reading,  such  as  one  cannot  have  at 
a  theatre,  to  understand  the  niceties  that  separate  each  from  the 
other ;  and,  for  even  the  motive  that  leads  to  the  catastrophe,  the 
same  sort  of  study  is  required.  In  actual  life  this,  no  doubt,  would 
be  enough.     We  should   want  no  more  than  our  knowledge  of  the 


;ET.  61-S2.]  WRITING   PLAYS.  531 

probable  effect  upon  the  mind  of  fra  Rupert  of  the  growing  change 
in  Andrea.  But  we  cannot  thus  receive  things  for  granted  on  the 
stage  ;  we  want  a  plot ;  character  and  motive  must  be  in  visible  col- 
lision ;  and  it  will  not  do  to  have  the  agents  of  a  catastrophe  in  as  much 
apparent  unconsciousness  as  ourselves  of  what  they  have  in  hand,  until 
the  catastrophe  itself  is  upon  us.  This  is  the  case  with  fra  Rupert's 
Hungarians.  They  prowl  about  the  court  avenues  and  entrances 
like  hungry  wolves  ;  each  with  his  mark  upon  him ;  Zinga  not  to  be 
mistaken  for  Klapwrath,  or  Psein  for  Maximin ;  but  all  of  them 
mere  shadows  of  something  else,  of  which  neither  they  nor  we  know 
anything  except  by  remote  suspicion.  A  power  opposed  to  fra  Ru- 
pert's might  fairly  have  been  found  in  the  two  gallant  Neapolitan 
nobles  who  love  Giovanna  ;  but  they  are  killed  in  the  third  act,  and 
he  remains  the  solitary  genius  of  the  scene.  That  this  is  what  in 
life  might  have  been  probable  does  not  of  course  dispose  of  the  ques- 
tion of  the  stage  ;  here,  as  in  Julian,  Landor  fails  in  its  necessary 
requirements  ;  yet  there  are  no  finer  studies  in  dramatic  writing  than 
are  afforded  by  both,  in  the  rich  fulness  as  well  as  easy  flexibility  of 
the  verse,  in  the  extraordinary  beauty  of  the  detached  thoughts  and 
sayings,  and  in  the  individual  traits  of  character.  The  very  want  of 
passion  in  his  wickedness  which  repels  interest  from  fra  Rupert  in 
these  earlier  plays,  and  altogether  Tinsuits  him  for  the  stage,  helps  to 
make  him  a  wonderful  creation,  as  we  follow  and  track  him  out  in 
the  study.  Present  or  absent,  he  is  master  of  the  scene.  We  see 
his  horrible  shadow,  if  not  himself.  We  think  him  baffled  by  the 
modest  firmness  of  Giovanna,  or  the  light-hearted  resistance  of  An- 
drea, but  already  his  web  encircles  both.  By  the  unexpected  defiance 
of  Caraffa  and  Caraccioli,  we  fancy  him  struck  to  the  earth  ;  but  as 
he  steals  out  from  his  cell  through  one  passage,  their  lifeless  bodies 
encumber  the  other.  Resource  never  fails  him.  When  all  seems 
gay  and  joyous  in  the  revels  at  Aversa,  and  we  half  incline  to  think 
the  danger  past,  his  crooked  figure  disguised  and  masked  crawls  in, 
joy  gives  place  to  terror,  the  lights  at  the  brilliant  balcony  are  ex- 
tinguished, and  displacing  suddenly  the  roses  and  festoons  suspended 
there,  the  lifeless  body  of  the  poor  Andrea  swings  heavily  down. 
Even  after  the  scene  has  closed  we  do  not  know  the  actual  murderer. 
As  in  ordinary  life,  though  not  in  ordinary  tragedies,  doubt  remains 
with  us.  We  know  the  heart  that  prompted,  but  not  the  hand  that 
did  the  deed.  There  is  nothing  so  fine  as  all  this  in  the  second  part 
of  the  trilogy,  which  yet  contains  single  passages  superior  to  any  in 
the  first,  and  has  a  scene  of  Rienzi  and  his  wife  that  would  act  great- 
ly on  the  stage.  This  middle  play  is  wholly  occupied  by  Giovanna's 
appeal  to  the  Pope  and  the  Tribune,  by  her  exculpation  from  the 
charge  of  Andrea's  murder,  and  by  her  second  marriage.  Fra  Ru- 
pert is  on  the  scene,  endeavoring  to  fix  suspicion  on  Giovanna ;  but 
he  plays  an  unimportant  part. 

Hardly  had  the  Andrea  and  Giovanna  appeared  however,  with  inti- 


532  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^1^-37"" 

mation  that  the  profits  of  tho  publication  were  to  be  given  to  a  very 
humble  but  very  noble  heroine  of  that  day  who  lives  also  in  the  page 
of  Wordsworth,  Grace  Darling,*  when  I  received  an  intimation  from 
him  that  he  was  busy  on  the  last  of  the  trilogy,  of  which  fra  Rupert 
was  to  be  hero.- 

"  Being  here  alone  for  several  days  "  (written  from  Bath  ir.  the  autumn 
of  1840),  "  I  was  resolved  to  do  what  I  was  told  would  be  very  difficult,  if 
not  impossible:  to  give  a  little  more  interest  to  the  character  of  Giovanna 
after  her  second,  nay  even  alter  her  third  marriage.  Certainly  it  is  some- 
what unromantic  and  unpoetical.  Racine,  in  his  Andromache,  has  made  sad 
work  of  it,  although  he  had  but  two  to  deal  with.  I  had  indeed  maliciously 
lain  in  wait  thus  long  for  somebody  to  attempt  it.  Well,  I  must  do  it  my- 
self, I  see.  I  have  written  now  the  last  drama  of  the  trilogy ;  imperfect  no 
doubt,  as  you  will  discover,  but  better,  I  promise  you,  both  as  poetry  and 
drama,  than  the  two  first.  You  will  like  what  one  of  my  characters  says  on 
reading  Dante's  story  of  Francesco  da  Rimini :  — 

Piteous,  most  piteous,  for  most  guilty  passion. 
Two  lovers  are  condemned  to  one  unrest 
For  ages.     I  now  first  knew  poetry, 
I  had  known  song  and  sonnet  long  before: 
I  sailed  no  more  amid  the  barren  isles 
Each  one  small  self;  the  mighty  continent 
Rose  and  expanded;  I  was  on  its  shores. 

I  felt  something  like  this  when  disposing  at  last  of  my  old  friar.  You  shall 
see.  But  mind,  I  will  not  be  damned  for  it.  In  other  words,  it  shall  never 
be  offered  to  the  stage.  Popularity  is  not  what  I  want,  or  care  for.  I  have 
received  from  it  all  the  pleasure  and  gratification  I  ever  can  receive;  tender 
emotions,  sweet  and  strong  excitement,  and  the  hope  that  it  will  communi- 
cate these  to  others." 

The  manuscript  reached  me  a  few  days  later,  with  what  follows  :  — 

"  Well,  now  I  have  netted  my  purse,  have  I  drawn  the  two  ends  together 
as  they  should  be  ?  Have  I  kept  up  the  frate's  character,  changing  only  by 
the  change  of  fortune  and  pressure  of  circumstances?  It  was  requisite  to 
show  Giovanna  as  mother  and  friend.  Thus  her  character  is  completed  by 
a  few  touches.  Stephen  and  Maximin  I  hope  and  trust  are  not  too  light. 
It  was  the  custom  of  the  Athenian  dramatists  to  make  the  last  piece  in  the 
trilogy  a  farce,  or  farcical.  This  is  the  only  thing  in  their  literature  inele- 
gant or  injudicious.  We  imitate  it  in  souk.1  degree,  by  acting  an  after-piece 
to  our  tragedies.     This,  however,  is  not  quite  so  bad,  though  bad  enough.'' 

I  found  a  fair  reason  for  this  exulting  tone  on  reading  the  play. 
My  preachments  to  him  on  stage  requirements  had  not  been  without 
effect.  This  was  the  most  dramatic  of  the  three.  Not  so  rich  in 
poetry,  and  having  fewer  single  sayings  conspicuous  for  beauty  ;  but 
with  greater  vigor  of  treatment,  with  characters  more  broadly  con- 
trasted, and  with  a  hero  not  tragical  in  guilt  alone,  but  also  in  remorse 
and  suffering.  It  made  a  corresponding  impression  on  those  who 
read  it;  nor  did  any  opinion  expressed  of  it  please  Landor  more,  or 

*  "  .  .  .  One  whose  very  name  bespeaks 
Favor  divine,  exacting  human  love  .  .  . 

W  Ihmii  ...  a  siiiL'l''  act  endears  to  high  and  low 
Through  the  whole  land."  Wurdsworih. 


JET.  61-82.]  WRITING  PLAYS.  533 

with  better  reason,  than  his  brother  Robert's.  "  I  cannot  say  "  (Bir- 
lingham,  2 Gth  December,  1840)  "  that  anything  which  you  have  writ- 
ten since  has  given  me  more  pleasure  than  Pericles  and  Aspasia  ;  for  I 
am  unable  to  imagine  greater  strength  and  originality  of  thought 
united  with  greater  elegance  and  purity  of  language  than  that  book 
contains.  But  I  rejoice  nevertheless  at  the  publication  of  these  dra- 
mas as  fresh  evidences  that  your  powers  are  increased  by  time. 
Many  men  appear  to  have  larger  capacities  and  greater  reasoning 
powers  than  they  had  in  the  middle  of  life,  even  at  a  greater  age  than 
yours  ;  but  I  can  remember  no  instance  beside,  at  such  an  age,  where 
the  imagination  was  more  energetic,  and  its  manner  of  expression 
more  original.  I  will  not  suppose,  that  in  giving  me  your  Fra  Ru- 
pert, you  have  also  given  a  right  to  trouble  you  with  my  opinion ; 
but  I  must  say  that  it  appears  a  far  greater  work  than  Count  Julian, 
written  just  thirty  years  ago.  The  power  of  communicating  so  much 
meaning  beyond  what  is  expressed  directly  by  words,  is  the  most  ex- 
traordinary difference."  Crabb  Robinson  had  struck  the  same  note, 
eight  days  before,  in  contrasting  the  unimpaired  power  of  Fra  Rupert 
with  the  many  instances  that  were  happening  around  to  impress  him 
with  "  a  sense  of  the  danger  to  which  all  genius  is  exposed  of  decaying 
prematurely  " ;  Mr.  Macready  told  him  that  the  last  part  of  the  tril- 
ogy had  taken  stronger  hold  of  him  than  either  of  its  predecessors ; 
Mr.  James  wrote  with  boundless  enthusiasm  of  all  the  three  ;  Julius 
Hare,  more  temperately  describing  his  delight  at  receiving  such  a 
visitor  "  through  the  snow  "  to  cheer  him  with  visions  of  Neapolitan 
warmth  and  beauty,  said  to  Landor  that  it  now  rested  with  him, 
Henry  Ta}7lor,  and  George  Darley,  to  "  preserve  the  life  of  tragedy  in 
England  "  ;  and  George  Darley  himself,  whose  fine  dramatic  genius 
well  deserved  that  compliment,  asking  him  where  he  got  the  power 
that  gave  to  his  commonest  words  an  effect  so  magical,  singled  out, 
amid  infinite  praise  of  the  last  of  the  tragedies,  those  very  portions  * 
referred  to  by  Landor  as  "  light,"  but  it  was  hoped  not  farcical,  in  his 

*  The  scene  especially  delighted  Darley,  where  the  wily  friar  wins  to  his  black  pur- 
pose Stephen  the  farmer.     Stephen  is  fond  of  the  subtantial: — 

"  Pleasant,  too,  are  farms 
When  harvest-moons  hang  over  them,  and  wains 
Jolt  in  the  iron-tin ged  rut,  and  the  white  ox 
Is  called  by  name, 'and  patted  ere  pulled  on." 

But  as  to  the  uses,  or  quid  pro  quo,  of  money,  the  farmer  differs  from  the  friar  rather  in 
seeming  than  reality :  — 

"  Rupert.     Don't  squander  all  away.     Few  know 
Its  power,  its  privilege.     It  dubs  the  noble, 
It  raises  from  the  dust  the  man  as  light, 
It  turns  frowns  into  smiles,  it  makes  the  breath 
Of  sore  decrepitude  breathe  fresh  as  morn 
Into  maternal  ear  and  virgin  breast. 

Stephen.     Is  that  all  it  can  do  ?     I  see  much  farther. 
I  see  full  twenty  hens  upon  the  perch, 
I  see  fat  cheese  moist  as  a  charnel-house, 
I  see  hogs'  snouts  under  the  door,  I  see 
Flitches  of  bacon  in  the  rack  above. 

Rupert.     Rational  sights !  fair  hopes !  unguilty  wishes !  " 


534  TWEXTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  [B°°K  ,v"- 

1030-57. 

betters  to  me.  I  should  perhaps  add,  with  deference  to  so  great  an 
authority,  that  my  old  friend  appears  to  have  been  in  error  in  sup- 
posing that  the  third  drama  in  a  Greek  trilogy  was  ever  farcical.  He 
probably  confounded  with  it  the  satirical  play  subjoined  to  the  trilo- 
gy, for  the  most  part  by  way  of  contrast,  though  it  might  sometimes 
be  connected  with  it  in  subject.  The  only  remaining  example  of  a 
part  of  a  trilogy  belonging  to  a  continuous  theme  is  the  Eumenides ; 
but,  as  it  is  plain  that  the  Prometheus,  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  and 
Suppliants  of  iEschylus  must  all  have  been  the  middle  dramas  in 
trilogies,  we  may  fairly  derive  from  them  what  must  have  been  the 
subjects  of  the  third  plays,  and  that  they  must  all  have  been  grave, 
solemn,  and  reconciling. 

"What  I  have  to  add,  in  quitting  the  subject  of  Landor's  tragedies, 
concerns  his  brother  Robert  equally  with  him  ;  but  the  facts  to  be 
stated  have  a  curious  interest  apart  from  their  illustration  of  charac- 
ter, and  may  be  related  by  Mr.  Robert  Landor  himself  without  c<  >m- 
ment  from  me.  I  will  merely  premise  that  to  his  above-quoted  letter 
of  thanks  for  Fra  Rujiert,  it  was  added,  as  what  people  call  a  strange 
coincidence,  that  he  should  have  heard  of  dramas  printed  by  his 
brother  while  printing  some  of  his  own.  "  Two  of  them  have  been 
written  many  years,  and  were  the  amusement  of  hours  which  I  could 
not  employ  more  usefully,  for  I  can  sometimes  write  when  I  cannot 
read.  This  indeed  is  no  reason  for  publishing  them  ;  but  a  book  may 
serve  as  a  small  legacy,  better  adapted  than  any  other  to  remind 
those  whom  you  have  known  in  early  life  of  your  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings. I  will  direct  that  a  copy  shall  be  sent  to  you  without  requiring 
that  you  should  read  one  half  of  it.  Nevertheless  I  am  vain  enough 
to  think  that,  as  tragedies  generally  are  now,  the  first  of  them  may 
prove  worth  the  trouble."  What  Landor  thought  of  them  will  be 
seen  hereafter.  Not  in  the  first  only,  The  Earl  of  Brecon,  but  in  the 
last,  The  Ferri/man,  there  is  enough  to  give  the  writer  distinguished 
place  among  the  poets  who  have  written  in  this  form  ;  and  a  volume 
altogether  of  purer  English  or  loftier  purpose,  "  high  passions  and 
high  actions  "  more  worthily  describing,  has  seldom  issued  from  the 
press  in  England  than  The  Earl  of  Brecon,  Faith's  Fraud,  and  the 
Ferri/man  :  "  Tragedies  by  Robert  E.  Landor."  But  the  writer's  first 
dramatic  attempt  had  been  of  earlier  date,  and  the  anecdotes  now  to 
be  related  have  no  reference  to  the  publication  of  1841. 

"  There  is  a  strange  history,"  wrote  Mr.  Landor  to  me  (26th  Janu- 
ary, 1865),  "of  which  you  have  heard  nothing,  and  for  which  I  am 
unable  to  account.  Among  Walter's  later  publications,  perhaps  the 
most  original  and  powerful,  certainly  the  most  characteristic  as  a 
specimen  of  his  genius,  his  poetical  genius,  are  the  three  tragedies 
published  in  1839-40;  and,  however  unsuited  to  the  drama  for 
representation,  very  admirable  .as  poems.  When  wo  first  met  after 
their  publication,  at  Birlingham,  I  asked  whether  he  was  aware 
that    a   tragedy    had    been    published,   without    preface   or  author's 


.ET.  6l-82.]  WRITING    PLAYS.  535 

name,  the  plot  of  which  must  seem  to  have  been  borrowed  in  many  of 
its  scenes  from  his  Andrea  of  Hungary.  However  different  in  all  other 
respects,  however  poor  and  feeble  the  apparent  imitation,  yet,  besides 
many  of  the  scenes,  some  of  the  events  and  some  even  of  the  names 
corresponded.  Both  tragedies  were  dated  at  Naples,  and  both  in  the 
royal  palace.  The  characters  were  principally  the  royal  family. 
There  was  a  conspiracy  in  both,  and  the  conspirators  were  monks. 
The  catastrophe  was  in  the  palace,  at  a  masked  ball ;  and  in  both, 
though  language  was  never  copied,  there  were  many  of  the  same  pas- 
sions, emotions,  and  other  smaller  correspondences  of  description, 
especially  in  this  masked  ball.  My  brother  was  much  surprised  : 
supposing  that  some  audacious  imitator  had  borrowed  the  only  part 
within  his  reach ;  much  of  the  plot,  some  of  the  characters,  but  none 
of  the  power  ;  many  of  the  incidents  and  contrivances,  but  none  of  the 
genius.  His  astonishment  was  still  greater  when  I  referred  him  to 
the  title-pages  of  both  tragedies:  his  publication  being  dated  1839, 
and  the  supposed  copy  1824,  just  forty  years  from  this  now  present 
time.  Greater  yet  was  his  wonder,  when  I  told  him  that  I  was  the 
author  of  this  supposed  imitation,  written  almost  twenty  years  before 
the  original,  and  published  sixteen.  It  happened  that  we  were  inter- 
rupted by  some  visitors  before  he  had  time  to  finish  my  work,  or 
there  could  be  any  explanation  on  the  subject ;  and  he  never  after- 
wards referred  to  it,  nor  did  I.  Southey  had  noticed,  in  his  Doctor, 
what  he  called  a  family  likeness ;  and  my  brother  has  been  often 
mortified  by  the  mistake  of  one  for  the  other.  Infinite  as  the  differ- 
ence may  be  in  ability,  there  may  be  some  resemblance  in  feeling 
and  the  mode  of  expressing  it ;  but  this  would  not  account  for  the 
mechanism,  the  plot,  the  many  correspondences  of  the  two  tragedies. 
My  brother  indeed  would  never  have  borrowed  consciously  from  any 
man  and  least  of  all  from  me  ;  but  I  know  that  he  continually  forgot 
what  he  had  written,  and  denied  (till  they  were  produced)  that  he 
had  ever  seen  various  passages  in  his  printed  books.  Possibly  he 
may  have  read  this  tragedy  of  mine,  without  any  remembrance  after- 
wards that  he  had  seen  it ;  or  met  with  a  review  of  it  without  know- 
ing who  had  written  either  the  tragedy  or  the  criticism,  for  at  that 
time  we  had  no  correspondence  or  communication ;  and  so,  many 
years  after,  he  may  have  mistaken  memory  for  invention. 

"  Thus  much  has  been  said  by  me  to  account  for  his  denial,  on 
many  occasions,  of  what  he  had  himself  written.  A  lady,  with 
whom  he  had  become  acquainted  through  me,  used  to  prepare  for  his 
visits  by  reading  such  of  his  publications,  verse  and  prose,  as  con- 
tained moral  and  philosophical  maxims,  or  thoughts  beautifully  and 
pointedly  expressed.  Mingling  them  with  other  quotations,  she  recited 
very  correctly  on  one  occasion  what  he  had  so  written  ;  and  in  return, 
he  complimented  the  lady  by  supposing  that  she  had  composed  them, 
declaring  that  no  one  else  could  have  equalled  them  !  and  at  the 
last,  while  he  avowed  that  he  had  utterly  forgotten  them,  protesting 


536  TWENTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^30*5™' 

that  even  still  he  could  hardly  believe  he  had  himself  written  them,  — 
which  I  believe  to  be  true.  I  have  as  good  a  memory  as  most  people 
who  have  lived  eighty-four  years,  and  I  am  not  cureless  about  the 
truth  ;  but  I  am  often  reminded  by  my  servants,  not  only  of  things 
forgotten  by  me,  but  of  intended  directions  which  T  had  neglected  to 
give.  Add  to  this  confusion  of  memory  my  brother's  activity  of 
imagination,  and  much  will  be  accounted  for.  Fact  and  fancy  become 
also  easily  confounded  ;  and  there  are  infirmities,  apart  from  those 
of  old  age,  for  which  none  of  Walter's  friends  could  otherwise  ac- 
count, but  by  wanderings  permitted  to  the  imagination." 

"You  ask,"  Mr.  Robert  Landor  wrote  again  to  me  (12th  February, 
18G5),  "whether  the  tragedy  to  which  I  had  referred  in  proof  of  my 
brother's  imperfect  memory  was  the  Count  Arezzi  ?  As  there  is  an 
introduction  to  this  curious  history  which  may  help  in  explaining  it, 
1  will  venUire  on  your  patience  once  more.  I  had  written  the  trage- 
dy two  years  earlier  than  the  date  in  the  title-page  (1824),  not 
knowing  who  would  undertake  its  publication.  At  last  it  was  in- 
trusted to  Mr.  Booth  of  Duke  Street,  Portland  Place.  Mr.  Booth 
had  a  relative  connected  with  one  of  the  theatres,  to  wdiom  he  showed 
the  manuscript  ;  and  this  gentleman  was  on  familiar  terms  with  Mr. 
Young,  a  tragic  actor  of  high  reputation,  contemporary  with  Kean,  I 
think  :  but  no  one  knows  less  of  the  theatre  than  I  do.  Mr.  Young 
thought  that  the  principal  character,  Arezzi,  might  be  undertaken  by 
himself;  he  wished  that  the  more  comic  part,  Cimbella,  should  be 
committed  to  one  of  the  Kembles,  either  Charles  or  Stephen  ;  and 
he  said  that  if  the  author  would  allow  him  to  make  such  reductions 
and  alterations  as  were  necessary,  he  would  bring  it  on  the  stage. 
Never  having  had  the  slightest  thought  of  its  representation,  I  at 
once  declined  the  offer  ;  and  thereupon  it  was  published,  at  the  close 
of  1823,  without  any  name.  Mr.  Booth  was  as  much  surprised  as 
1  whs  at  its  success,  a  large  part  of  the  edition  being  very  speedily 
sold  ;  it  was  also  favorably  noticed  in  several  critical  papers ;  and 
Mr.  Booth  informed  me  that  if  I  proposed  to  make  any  change  or 
corrections,  I  must  prepare  them  for  a  second  edition.  At  the  same 
time  he  said  that  inquiries  and  rumors  had  i*eached  him,  supposing 
the  tragedy  to  have  been  written  by  Lord  Byron  :  and  I  had  seen,  in 
one  of  the  reviews,  that  probably  it  was  an  experiment  on  the  public 
taste  by  a  distinguished  author,  whose  other  tragedies  were  composed 
with  motives  and  feelings  totally  different,  hut  who  would  soon  reveal 
himself.  All  Lord  Byron's  dramas  had  been  published  before ; 
Werner,  the  last  of  them,  less  than  a  year  before.  At  once,  then, 
my  success  was  accounted  for  !  I  was  so  unjust  as  to  suspect  that 
Mr.  Booth  had  encouraged  the  report,  or  at  least  permitted  it  by  his 
silence.  But  not  wishing  to  partake  in  a  fraud  from  which  both  Lord 
Byron  and  the  public  must  suffer,  I  immediately  directed  that  the 
tragedy  should  be  again  advertised,  with  my  name;  and  also  that 
there  should  be  a  title-page  prefixed  to  all  the  copies  that  were  yet 


JET.  61-82.]  REVIEWING   A   REVIEWER.  537 

unsold.  Mr.  Booth  remonstrated  earnestly,  disclaiming  all  knowl- 
edge ;  but  as  the  copyright  was  mine,  I  prevailed.  I  cannot  tell  how 
many  copies  remained,  but  I  do  not  think  that,  in  the  forty  years 
since  then,  so  many  as  forty  more  have  been  sold.  I  was  extinguished 
at  once.  To  be  sure,  Lord  Byron  survived ;  but  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  he  would  have  forgiven  any  man  who  had  confounded  the 
authorship  of  two  such  dramas,  even  supposing  them  to  have  been 
written  experimentally.  These  of  my  brother  are  as  unlike  mine 
(excepting  in  the  instances  arising  from  a  bad  memory),  and,  I  think, 
as  much  superior  to  Werner  as  Werner  is  to  the  Count  Arezzi.  But  it 
seems  scarcely  possible  to  account  for  so  many  resemblances  in  the 
mechanism,  without  supposing  that  Walter  may  have  read  either  my 
tragedy  or  some  account  of  it ;  and,  many  years  after,  may  have  mis- 
taken memory  for  invention.  Assuredly  he  had  no  knowledge  of  the 
author,  or  suspicion  of  him  ;  but,  after  having  read  most  of  the 
drama,  and  learnt  from  me  its  history,  he  never  said  another  word 
on  the  subject.  It  is  to  free  his  character  from  distressing  imputa- 
tions that  I  have  given  this  long  history.  He  continually  denied 
that  he  had  written  what  was  to  be  found  in  his  own  books,  or  spoken 
what  had  been  heard  by  twenty  people.  He  once  related  to  me  a 
long  conversation  with  a  friend  of  yours,  with  many  minute  particu- 
lars, on  a  very  important  subject ;  and  two  years  after,  when  it  was 
referred  to  by  me  accidentally,  he  declared  that  nothing  of  the  kind 
had  ever  occurred,  and  that  I  must  have  dreamed.  Your  history  of 
him  must  excite  much  attention,  because  it  is  yours  ;  and  perhaps 
some  passing  observation  on  this  infirmity  might  anticipate  what  it 
would  not  be  very  possible  to  disprove,  or  otherwise  to  account  for." 

IV.     REVIEWING  A  REVIEWER. 

Any  remark  upon  the  question  thus  raised  by  Mr.  Robert  Landor  I 
have  not  thought  necessary.  The  likeness  of  the  later  to  the  earlier 
tragedy,  apart  from  that  indefinable  likeness  to  each  other  which  would 
seem  to  have  been  as  inseparable  from  the  poetry  of  the  brothers  as  it 
often  is  from  the  voices  of  sisters  singing,  turns  chiefly  on  the  manage- 
ment of  the  catastrophe  in  each  ;  and,  though  raising  the  strongest 
presumption  that  Landor  had  seen  his  brother's  work,  is  only  of  inter- 
est for  the  illustration  to  which  his  brother  applies  it.  That  is  just, 
unquestionably  ;  and  of  the  fact  that  such  failures  of  memory  involved 
no  wilful  departure  from  truth,  strongly  insisted  on  by  me  in  former 
pages,  there  occurred  soon  after  the  present  date  an  example  as  de- 
cisive as  could  be  given.  ■  Upon  Blackivood  making  some  objections  to 
his  Pericles  and  Aspasia,  he  had  sent  back  to  his  publishers,  as  we 
have  seen,  every  shilling  paid  for  the  copyright ;  yet,  only  three  years 
after  a  proceeding  so  remarkable,  he  had  forgotten,  not  merely  that 
anything  had  ever  been  paid  him  for  the  book,  but,  more  marvellous 
still,  that  he  had  himself  sent  the  money  back.    "  I  published  Pericles 


538  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^is^s?."' 

and  Aspasia  on  my  own  account,"  he  reiterated  ;  and  was  sending  fur- 
ther remittances  in  satisfaction  of  the  supposed  loss,  when  I  stopped 
him  by  a  statement  from  Mr.  Saunders  himself* 

Nor  was  it  his  failing  commonly  to  remember  a  review  that  might 
have  vexed  him,  any  more  than  the  turn  his  vexation  might  have 
taken.  With  a  sharp  violent  word  all  generally  was  over  ;  and  he 
knew  no  comfort  in  life  so  great,  he  would  say,  as  to  get  safely  de- 
livered of  a  curse.  Even  that  he  could  sometimes  spare,  and  lie  con- 
tent, as  when  told  of  the  Quarterly  reviewing  him  soon  after  the  P<  a- 
tamt  ron,  with  wondering  where  they  would  find  their  telescope,  or  with 
declaring,  from  accounts  sent  him  a  little  later,  that  the  glasses  were 
all  it  wanted.  But  he  was  really  anxious  that  his  own  discredit  with 
the  reviews  at  this  time  should  not  extend  to  his  brother's  tragedies. 
"The  literary  congress  have  condemned  me  to  St.  Helena,"  he  wrote 
to  me,  "  but  I  hope  my  name  will  cause  no  prejudice  to  my  brother's. 
For  a  quarter  of  a  century  we  have  had  no  correspondence  until  now  : 
the  last  was  an  angry  one.  However,  he  has  shown  himself  by  far  the 
greatest  dramatic  poet  of  our  time."  It  is  right  to  add  that  whether 
he  thus  quietly  accepted  the  treatment  extended  to  himself,  or  wasted 
anger  on  it,  it  was  the  rarest  of  all  possible  things  with  him  to  venture 
upon  anything  like  reply.  There  are  only  two  instances  known  to  me 
in  which  he  attempted  it;  and,  by  a  remarkable  chance,  though  both 
replies  were  written,  both  were  suppressed,  and  now  for  the  first  time 
both  see  the  light.  I  have  printed  one,  in  a  former  page,  written  sixty- 
eight  years  ago,  after  Gebir  was  noticed  by  the  Monthly  Review ;  and 
am  now  about  to  print  the  other,  written  thirty-one  years  ago,  after 
the  Pentameron  was  reviewed  in  the  British  and  Foreign  Quarterly, 
which,  as  I  was  the  means  of  inducing  him  at  this  time  very  reluc- 
tantly to  lay  aside,  I  have  now  less  scruple  in  publishing.  It  is  an  ad- 
mirable specimen  of  his  manner,  and  is  filled  with  illustrations  of  his 
character  and  opinions. 

His  first  mention  of  the  review  was  in  a  letter  to  me  at  the  close 
of  1838:  — 

"  I  am  told  there  is  an  ill-tempered  and  captious  article  it  the  British  and 
Foreign  Review  on  my  Pentameron.  I  began  to  look  into  it  when  it  came, 
but  I  have  not  had  time  to  go  on  with  it.  They  tell  me  it  is  Hallam's. 
Unless  he  talks  of  poetry,  he  is  not  likely  to  talk  like  a  blockhead.  But  he 
praises  some  lines  of  Milton  as  very  superlative  which  have  little  harmony, 
and,  with  an  ear  that  seems  to  have  been  cut  out  of  the  callus  of  his  heel, 
he  compares  with  Catullus  those  wretched  Latin  versifiers  among  the 
modern  Italians;  fellows  in  whom  is  no  vigor  of  thought,  no  novelty  of 
expression.     He  might  have  acquired  some  information  on  this  matter,  if 

*  "  Never  in  the  course  of  my  life,"  be  wrote  to  me,  "  was  I  so  surprised  as  at  the 
verification  of  my  account  with  launders;  for  such  it  is.  Certain  I  am  that  no  part  of 
the  money  \v:is  ever  spent  by  me,  nor  can  I  possibly  brine  to  mind  either  the  receiving 
or  the  returning  of  it.  But  never  in  my  lifetime  have  I  kept  any  accounts,  and  every 
autumn  I  Bave  something,  because,  in  the  months  of  December  and  January,  I  piye  to 
poor  families  half  the  income  of  those  two  months.  A  person  unerring  in  her  judg- 
ment and  boundless  in  her  goodness  helps  mo  to  find  them  out." 


JET.  61-82.]  REVIEWING    A    REVIEWER.  539 

he  had  read  what  is  printed  at  the  end  of  my  Latin  poems.  He  would  at 
least  have  found  a  pretty  sprinkling  of  their  false  quantities,  puerilities,  and 
tomfooleries  ;  and  that  praise  also  is  given  wherever  a  hand  is  lifted  high 
enough  to  reach  it." 

I  at  once  doubted  the  alleged  authorship.  Not  that  I  differed 
greatly  from  his  estimate  of  the  admirable  critic  of  history  and  some- 
what questionable  critic  of  poetry  to  whom  he  ascribed  the  review,  ex- 
cept that  he  underrated  his  learning ;  but  I  knew*  they  had  met  (I 
think  at  his  friend  Sir  Charles  Elton's),  that  he  had  come  off  second- 
best  in  argument,  as  most  people  did  with  Hallam,  and  that  a  hasty 
judgment  in  the  present  matter  would  be  a  very  natural  consequence. 
Landor  had  laughingly  repeated  to  me  what  Lord  Dudley  told  Francis 
Hare,  of  his  having  dined  with  Hallam  and  his  son  in  Italy,  when  "  it 
did  my  heart  good  to  sit  by,  and  hear  how  the  son  snubbed  the  father, 
remembering  how  often  the  father  had  unmercifully  snubbed  me  " ; 
and  I  perhaps  had  too  much  fear  that  upon  some  such  principle  he 
was  now  doing  his  own  heart  good.  With  great  difficulty  I  kept  back 
what  he  subsequently  sent  me  for  the  printer;  and  I  certainly  after- 
wards had  reason  for  questioning  one  argument  I  had  confidently  em- 
ployed in  proof  that  Hallam  could  not  have  written  the  review.  But 
whether  this  was  so  or  not,  little  matters  now.  The  personal  bitter- 
ness is  passed  away,  and  a  publication  which  now  can  give  pain  to  no 
one  will  probably  give  pleasure  to  many. 

"  Certainly  this  review  of  my  Pentameron  was  not  done  in  the  same 
spirit,  or  with  the  same  judgment,  or  by  the  same  author  as  the  previous 
remarks  on  my  Imaginary  Conversations  in  the  same  periodical,  The  British 
and  Foreign.  Heavy  boys  never  play  well  at  leap-frog ;  and  the  broader 
the  back  is  over  which  they  attempt  to  leap,  the  greater  must  be  their  ex- 
ertion, or  the  greater  will  be  their  failure. 

"  Hear  what  this  heavy  boy  says :  — 

"  '  Mr.  Landor's  entire  sympathies  are  with  the  ancient  rather  than  with  the  modern 
world.' 

If  they  are  entirely  with  the  one,  they  have  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  the 
other :  the  '  rather,'  then,  is  an  impropriety,  an  absurdity.  The  fly  buzzes 
about  Mr.  Landor's  pineapple  just  as  alertly  as  if  it  could  penetrate  its 
bosses,  and  taste  its  flavor. 

Vix  tenuis  pervenerit  aura. 

"  '  Homer  and  Aristotle,  Ovid  and  Cicero,  are  his  divines,  in  spite  of  the  commenda- 
tion he  bestows  on  Hooker  and  Barrow.' 

This  is  false  and  foolish.  I  certainly  do  prefer  Homer  and  Aristoteles  to 
Hooker  and  Barrow,  the  former  in  range  of  intellect,  the  latter  both  in  the 
range  of  intellect  and  in  the  spirit  of  investigation ;  but  neither  in  divinity : 
Ovid  and  Cicero  still  less. 

"  •  The  native  impulse  and  bias  of  his  intellect  is,  in  argumentation,  towards  the 
palpable,  the  practical,  the  orderly,  rather  than  to  questions  of  higher  intellectual  pith 
and  moment.' 

Certainly  :  for  such  is  the  office  and  tendency  of  intellect.  But  what  is 
'  higher  pith '  ?     I  am  willing  to  be  carped  at  by  such  empty  mouths  for  pre- 


540  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^a^-a^" 

ferring  what  Baron  preferred,  '  the  palpable,  the  practical,  the  orderly,'  to 
this  indigestible  ' pith,'  and  this  intractable  'moment ' ;  while  as  to  Aristoteles 
and  Homer,  never  were  two  ampler  minds  or  stored  with  better  things,  and 
how  palpable,  how  practical,  how  orderly  are  both  !  Ovid  is  scoffed  at  here, 
as  schoolmasters  and  reviewers  have  scoffed  at  him  from  time  immemorial. 
Shall  1  tell  them  a  secret?  There  are  four  pieces  of  epic  poetry  far  tran- 
sient above  all  others;  and  I  will  mention  them  in  the  order  of  dates: 
the  colloquy  of  Achilles  and  Priam  in  the  Iliad,  the  contention  of  Ulysses 
and  Ajax  in  the  Metamorphoses,  the  first  book  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  the 
battle  in  Marmion.  But  there  are  single  acts  in  Shakespeare  worth  all 
these  put  together. 

•  "  '  Mr.  Landor  believes  himself  to  be,  and  is  frequently  represented  as,  an  uncompro- 
mising Democrat ! ' 

False  again,  at  least  in  the  first  position.  Mr.  Landor  entertains  as  much 
contempt  for  the  Democrats  as  for  the  Whigs,  but  he  loves  all  liberal 
opinions,  all  liberal  institutions,  all  liberal  men.  His  few  friends  are  chiefly 
Tories,  and  he  would  be  loath  to  change  the  least  valuable  of  them  for  a  dozen 
of  those  ring-droppers  who  stand  opposite.  There  are  indeed  some  in 
power  who  have  been  friendly  and  even  familiar,  but  his  only  wish  in  re- 
gard to  them  is  that  they  may  retain  their  integrity,  which  is  easier  lost 
than  place.  He  cannot  but  remember  that  among  the  Whigs  there  was  a 
Rockingham,  a  Charlemont,  and  a  Grattan  ;  and  he  will  not  close  his  eyes 
on  those  benches  on  which  are  yet  sitting  a  Clarendon,  a  Fitzwilliam,  and  a 
Newport.  Nor  are  these  the  only  disinterested,  the  only  judicious  men  of 
the  party.  But  there  are  too  many  far  different,  too  many  who  cry  out  to 
the  people,  You  wanted  a  movement :  so  did  we :  shuffling  is  our  natural 
gait ;  and  is  not  shuffling  a  movement  ?  ' 

"'  Plato  is  the  cynosure  of  Mr.  Landor's  dislikes!'1  [strange  expression!]  'and  the 
philosopher  who  1ms  exhausted  the  admiration  and  taxed  the  powers  ot'  the  nuwt  sulitle 
thinkers  in  every  age  is  represented  in  the  Imaginary  Conversations  as  an  inexact  rea- 
eoner,  inconsistent  in  his  doctrines,  and  luxuriant  and  rank  in  his  diction.' 

One  passing  remark  on  the  word  tax.  It  often  means  imposition.  The 
passages  in  which  the  powers  of  the  philosopher  are  thus  'represented'  are 
quoted  by  me  in  the  original  Greek:  is  there  a  single  instance  in  which 
they  are  misrepresented?  It  would  be  easy  to  adduce  at  least  fifty  more, 
beside  those  in  the  Chesterfield  and  Chatham,  in  the  Plato  and  Diogenes. 
No  injury  is  done  to  the  greatest  writer,  or  the  best  man,  by  showing  his 
defects  and  inaccuracies.  I  have  shown  very  many  in  Bacon  himself,  even 
in  the  small  volume  of  his  Essays,  and  I  have  detected  a  vast  number  more, 
equally  indefensible,  in  his  other  and  larger  works.  In  the  Barrow  ana 
Newton  1  passed  over  several  objections,  mindful  in  what  character  I  was 
standing.  Enough  had  also  been  done,  regarding  Plato,  to  urge  the  loiterer 
to  plunge  into  deep  water  for  wholesome  exercise  instead  of  staying  to  catch 
cold  and  fever  among  the  dank  luxuriance  on  that  slippery  brink.  Such 
men  as  myelitic  should  reverence  Plato,  and  do  no  more  :  but  there  are 
others,  Bacon  for  instance,  and  Newton,  who  are  permitted  to  weigh  him; 
and  these  may  praise  him  where  praise  is  due,  which  itself  is  no  light  privi- 
lege, and  where  censure  is  due  may  reprehend  him.  Rising  from  this  task 
and  going  away  again,  I  just  pointed  with  my  forefinger  to  that  obscurity 
which  appeared  so  mysterious  and  so  sacred,  where  are  deposited  in  disorder 
and  dismemberment  the  spiced  abortions  of  an  illusory  meretricious  philoso- 
phy.  The  spell  of  tradition  must  be  very  strong  on  that  man  who  believes 
in  the  Phcedo,  and  in  all  that  is  said  of  it.     Its  arguments  arc  sophistry,  and 


yET.  61-82.]  KEVIEWING    A    REVIEWER.  541 

its  eloquence  is  dithyrambic.  But  this  the  English  reader  now  enjoys  an 
opportunity  of  judging  for  himself,  since  Shelley  has  translated  that  dia- 
logue, who  knew  the  Greek,  who  loved  his  author,  and  who  alone,  of  all  our 
writers,  comes  up  to  him  in  the  suavity  of  his  language. 

"  When  Bacon  was  declared  in  the  college  halls  to  have  subverted  the 
Aristotelian  mode  of  philosophizing,  he  was  strangely  misrepresented. 
Aristoteles,  as  well  as  himself,  subjected  the  immaterial  to  demonstration, 
the  material  to  experiment ;  the  main  difference  between  them  being  that 
the  Greek  was  the  wiser  man  of  the  two,  in  not  projecting  all  his  wisdom 
out  of  himself,  but  reserving  a  good  part  of  it  to  employ  in  the  guidance  of 
his  own  life  and  actions.  He  and  Bacon  were  both  aware  that  light  in 
some  matters  touches  only  the  'surface,  and  in  none  goes  far  beyond ;  and 
that  the  same  may  be  said  of  philosophy.  But  light,  according  to  the  sub- 
stance it  penetrates,  hath  its  fixt  and  certain  boundaries ;  and  philosophy 
its  imaginary  lines,  which  future  discoveries  may  extend.  For  the  attain- 
ment of  this  purpose,  we  must  walk  on  along  paths  both  beaten  and  un- 
beaten ;  we  must  stop  often,  examine  closely,  discuss  freely  ;  and  we  must 
not  lie  upon  our  backs  with  our  mouths  agape  for  dreams,  nor  believe  we 
are  pious  because  we  are  puerile,  nor  be  confident  and  certain  we  imbibe 
the  freshest  wisdom  because  we  catch  it  out  of  the  deepest  shade. 

"  '  In  the  Pentameron  Dante,  though  upon  the  whole  less  an  object  of  distaste,  being 
saved  from  rough  treatment  not,  as  in  the  Inferno,  by  getting  upon  Virgil's  back,  but 
by  the  transcendent  beauty  of  particular  passages  of  his  Vision,  is  equally  misappre- 
hended in  the  connection,  the  transitions,  and  the  scope  of  his  immortal  work." 

Now  to  ask  the  simplest  question  in  the  gentlest  tone :  Is  not  this  rather 
impudent  ?  And  who,  pray,  is  the  author  of  such  remarks  ?  Some  Shelley, 
best  and  most  congenial  interpreter  of  Plato's  dreams?  some  Coleridge, 
poet,  metaphysician,  dialectician,  and  critic?  some  Southey,  to  whom  nearly 
all  European  languages  are  open,  all  poetical  secrets  known  ?  some  Carey, 
long  conversant  both  with  Plato  and  with  Dante,  and  profound  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  schoolmen  ? 

Velim  pol !  inquis,  at  pol  ecce  rusticus ! 

" '  Acute  and  comprehensive  as  Mr.  Landor's  intellect  unquestionably  is,  and  nur- 
tured and  instructed  with 

Soul-sustaining  songs  of  ancient  lore, 
And  philosophic  wisdom  clear  and  mild, 
it  is  nevertheless  potent  within  a  certain  circle  only.' 

Really !  and  pretty  well  too  !  for  no  human  intellect,  not  even  Bacon's,  rose 
up  to  and  penetrated  all  circles  ! 

" '  It  flags  and  falls  whenever  the  idea  of  the  infinite,  whether  as  a  postulate  in 
philosophy  or  as  a  fact  in  theology,  is  presented  to  it." 

No  such  thing :  it  neither  flags  nor  falls,  but  turns  its  back  upon  it,  well 
knowing  the  folly  of  pursuing  what  cannot  be  reached,  and  grasping  at 
what  cannot  be  comprehended.  Mr.  Landor  was  never  such  a  mischievous 
idler  as  to  set  folks  about  searches  in  dark  places  for  vain  and  useless  ob- 
jects, telling  them  that  the  wind,  which  he  knows  must  blow  their  candle 
out,  will  direct  them.  People  like  our  critic  sing  out  the  school-boy's  can- 
ticle, to  which  Aristophanes  seems  to  have  set  the  music  :  — 

Open  your  mouth  and  shut  your  eyes,  and  see  what  God  will  send  you. 

We  remember  what  the  godsend  in  such  cases  was  usually  composed  of; 
and  Plato's  is  often  but  little  more.     Shelley  praises  him  for  being  the  first 


542  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^Z?  YJ1, 

who  laid  down  the  doctrine  that  states  ought  to  be  governed,  not  by  the 
Strongest  or  the  wealthiest,  but  the  wisest.  Do  we  not,  however,  collect 
this  doctrine  from  Eomer,  both  in  the  I  Had  and  Odysamt    And  Homer's 

temperate  wisdom  would  also  have  shown  him  clearly  that  snch  rulers  are 
rarely  to  be  found  in  elective  governments,  where  eloquence,  wealth,  and 
valor  will  usually  captivate,  and  often  mislead  the  ignorant;  of  which 
description  the  great  body  of  voters  always  has  been  and  always»will  be 
composed.  These  never  can  know  the  most  virtuous,  whom  they  seldom 
have  any  opportunity  of  conversing  with,  and  whom  they  would  dislike  the 
more  for  it.  The  great  body  of  mankind  wants  and  will  find  excitement, 
and  either  will  avoid,  or  trample  down,  those  enclosures  of  wisdom  and  vir- 
tue in  which  are  cultivated  only  sedatives. 

"  '  IFe  suspect  however,'  &c. 

1  Figaro  li.  Figaro  Ik,  Figaro  qui,  Figaro  qua.  We  here,  we  there,  we  every- 
where.    What  a  wee  ligure  do  all  these  ive's  make ! 

"  '  We  suspect,  however,  that  Petrarca,  or  rather  his  present  mover  and  mouthpiece. 
the  author  or  the  Pentameron,  has  not  considered  with  sufficient  accuracy  the  iJivina 
Commedia  in  reference  to  its  position  in  the  scale  of  imaginative  ami  initiatory  works,  Hie 
time  of  its  composition,  the  life  and  education  of  its  author,  and  its  different  effects  upon 
contemporaries  and  posterity.' 

Strange  confused  language  I  this  position  in  the  scale/  and  scale  of  what? 

'Imaginative  and  initiatory  works.'  What  works  are  those?  Petrarca, 
whom  1  represent  speaking  of  Dante,  must  have  known  what  effect  he  had 
on  his  contemporaries  pretty  nearly  as  well  as  a  Marybone  critic  in  the  year 
of  Victoria's  coronation,  but  certainly  he  knew  somewhat  less  about  the 
effect  he  was  to  produce  on  remote  posterity.  In  fact,  his  business  was  only 
with  the  positive  and  demonstrable  faults  of  the  poem,  on  which  his  friend 
Boccaccio  was  going  to  deliver  a  course  of  lectures  in  the  city  of  Florence. 

" '  vEschylus  went  into  banishment  because  he  could  not  endure  a  rival.' 

ITe  never  went  into  banishment  at  all:  and  this  accusation  of  jealousy  is 
grossly  injurious,  against  one  of  the  most  honorable  of  men,  and.  with  a  sole 
exception,  the  most  animated  and  sublime  of  ancient  poets.  Undoubtedly 
he  was  pained  at  being  thrust  down  from  the  eminence  he  first  had  occupied 
and  had  held  for  many  years.  He  left  a  country  where  his  merits  were  less 
acknowledged  for  one  where  nobody  could  contest  them.  But  his  nature 
Was  ever  averse  from  envy,  and  he  probably  Was  as  tolerant,  of  Sophocles 
and  of  Euripides  in  poetry  as  he  was  of  Miltiades  and  of  Themistocles  in 
war.  Sophocles  was  fortunate  in  coming  forth  when  his  countrymen  were 
in  the  enjoymenl  of  victory  and  peace,  and  fully  at  leisure  to  admire  the 
equable  polish  and  commodious  structure  of  his  dramas.  He  may  be  said 
figuratively  to  have  lived  under  Jupiter;  JSschyhis  under  the  Titans. 
Sophocles    is   the   only  Athenian   who  worthily   describes   the   character  of 

women.     His  Antigone  and  Deianira  are  such  as  Shakespeare  himself  would 

never  have  repented  of  creating;  yet  it  is  in  his  female  characters  that 
Shakespeare's  might  ard  dominion  is  the  most  especially  displayed,  and 
where  bis  predecessors  and  his  contemporaries  (deficient  in  all  essentials) 
are  most  deficient.  If  you  collected  all  the  poets  of  the  world  together,  with 
all  tii"  men  they  ever  produced,  you  might  perhaps  raise  a  showy  and 
i  nposi  ig,  not  however  a  formidable,  coalition  against  Shakespeare;  but  his 
wow  ii  would  heat  them  instantly  from  the  field. 

''It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  Dante  considered   the  Inferno  and  Purgatorio  as  a 
igof  BAtires,  pari  in  narrative,  part  in  action.     The  satire  that  is  found  in  the  Corn- 
media  has  more  the  sound  of  the  scourge  and  letters  than  of  the  whip'.' 


MT.  61-82.]  REVIEWING    A    REVIEWER.  543 

Faith !  a  curious  kind  of  satire  to  sound  like  fetters  !  And  it  requires  a 
better  ear  than  either  of  those  the  critic's  nightcap  covers  to  distinguish  the 
sound  of  a  scourge  from  the  sound  of  a  whip. 

"  '  Considering  the  vast  and  varied  ground  of  the  llsion,  there  is  not  enough  of  either 
national  or  individual  satire  —  ' 

Evidently  he  means  'of  satire  on  nations  or  individuals';  but  the  expression 
is  not  English  or  sense  — 

'  to  render  it  likely  that  Daute  intended  to  compose  a  succession  of  invectives.' 

Dante  has  done  it,  however,  and  to  a  greater  extent  than  ever  was  done 
before  or  since  in  any  one  serious  poem :  and  Dante  was  not  a  man  likely 
to  do  what  he  never  intended,  to  miss  his  aim,  to  fall  short  of  it,  or  to  over- 
shoot it.  He  wished  to  be  a  satirist,  and  a  satirist  he  was,  but  by  no  means 
of  the  best  description.  Of  satire  there  are  two  kinds,  assuming  various 
forms.  Comedy  takes  the  higher  of  these;  in  which  Aristophanes  is  the 
most  poetical,  Shakespeare  the  most  humorous,  and  Moliere  the  most  face- 
tious and  witty.  Among  the  Romans  are  Plautus  and  Terence,  clever  copy- 
ists of  tame  originals,  but  holding  the  keys  which  open  the  storehouse  of  all 
that  is  sound  and  precious  in  latinity.  Of  another  species  are  Catullus  and 
Horace ;  of  whom  the  first  has  the  stronger  wing,  the  last  the  oilier  feather. 
But  among  the  same  people  are  two  far  different  from  these,  Lucretius  and 
Juvenal.  Juvenal  is  coarse  and  obscene,  but  always  masculine,  sometimes 
poetical.  Lucretius  is  much  loftier,  and  not  only  than  Juvenal,  but  than  all 
other  of  the  Roman  poets.  He  points  alike  to  the  crowd  of  the  puny  and 
pusillanimous,  and  to  the  smaller  and  more  contemptible  of  the  turbulent 
and  ambitious,  not  with  the  painted  stick  of  a  constable,  but  with  the  laure- 
ate truncheon  of  a  commander.  Take,  for  instance,  the  commencement  of  the 
second  book,  and  the  termination  of  the  third,  resounding  like  the  brazen 
portals  of  some  vast  temple  solemnly  closed  behind  us. 

'"Ovid  is  an  established  favorite  with  Mr.  Landor.  He  puts  into  Boccaccio's  mouth 
somewhat  extravagant  praise,  when  he  is  made  to  sav,  "  I  do  not  think  Ovid  the  best 
poet  that  ever  lived,  but  I  think  he  wrote  the  most  of  good  poetry,  and,  in  proportion  to 
its  quantity,  the  least  of  bad  and  indifferent."  Our  own  experience  would  lead  us  to 
invert  this  sentence,  and  to  say  that,  considering  how  much  tedious  and  vapid  verse 
Ovid  wrote,  it  is  marvellous  he  should  have  produced  so?)ie  so  very  good.' 

Has  Ovid  written  so  much  '  tedious  verse '  as  the  great  Lucretius  ?  and  yet 
no  reader  ever  found  it  marvellous  that  he  should  have  produced  some  so 
very  good.  Has  Ovid  written  so  much  both  tedious  and  vapid  as  the  glori- 
ous Dante?  Certainly  not;  and  yet  nobody  wonders  that  Dante  has 
written  some,  and  much,  superlatively  excellent.  The  experience  of  the 
reviewer  can  help  him  on  but  a  little  way  in  correcting  his  judgment  of 
poetry.  Experientia  docet  is  an  ancient  adage :  Experientia  debuit  docere  ! 
is  quite  as  ancient  an  ejaculation  and  interjection.  The  experience  of  dull 
scholars,  which  at  best  is  tradition,  can  but  imperfectly  warm  the  heart  that 
nature  never  formed  for  eloquence  and  enthusiasm.  There  is  much  in  the 
character  and  style  of  Ovid  which  his  imitator  Ariosto  has  attained,  but 
there  is  also  much  which  lies  beyond  him.  The  faults  are  easier  and  more 
seductive.  There  is  in  both  the  same  lax  facility  of  verse,  the  same  indul- 
gence in  loose  description ;  but  Ovid  is  more  pathetic  and  more  sublime. 
In  regard  to  Ariosto,  he  is  what  Titian  is  in  regard  to  Albano.  His  Epistles 
of  the  Heroines,  always  much  underrated,  show  a  diversity,  a  distinctness 
of  character,  a  vigor  of  thought,  a  play  of  imagination,  which,  had  he 
written  no  other  work,  would  have  entitled  him  to  take  his  seat  very  near 


544:  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  H     m:  vir. 

the  highest  of  the  Roman  poets.  In  all  his  pieces,  in  these  particularly,  he 
has  displayed  a  species  of  dramatic  power  to  which  no  other  of  them  (now 
extant)  has  attained;  for  Livy,  who  is  both  more  epic  and  more  dramatic. 
and  of  a  loftier  genius  than  any  of  them,  wrote  in  prose.  Has  Ovid,  has 
Lucan,  has  any  one  manipulated  such  balderdash  and  bombast  as  the  nine- 
teen verses  at  the  close  of  that  invocation  which  Virgil  in  his  Georyics 
tagged  to  the  plain  and  modest  but  solemn  prayer  of  Yarro?  The  invoca- 
tion was  already  much  too  long  without  them,  and  together  it  resembles 
a  Corinthian  portico  before  the  thatched  habitation  of  a  goatherd.  Yet, 
with  defects  that  place  him  below  the  other  two  great  poets  of  Rome, 
Virgil  has  that  which  within  his  range  is  unrivalled.  In  much  of  his  pro- 
duce Lucretius  is  austere  and  crude  :  Ovid  is  over-ripe  :  Virgil  is  neither,  but 
seasonable  and  mature.  But,  again,  to  drop  the  metaphor,  Lucretius  is 
more  vigorous  and  more  elevated  than  he,  Ovid  is  more  versatile  and  inven- 
tive. Such  at  least  is  my  opinion  of  them ;  and  Milton,  a  higher  authority, 
gave  (in  respect  to  Ovid)  a  similar  award. 

" '  We  have  only  the  rough  draught  of  his  best  poem.' 

This  is  untrue  of  the  Metamorphoses.  He  would  have  corrected  it,  he  tells 
us,  si  licuisset,  but  it  bears  no  resemblance  to  a  '  rough  draught ' ;  and  only  a 
very  unpractised  eye,  a  very  unpoetical  heart,  could  have  thus  grossly  mis- 
taken it.  What  a  gallery  of  pictures  is  here!  what  a  floor  of  mosaic!  what 
a  ceiling  of  arabesques!  Is  there  any  poem,  excepting  the  Odyssea,  that 
presents  so  many  figures,  so  many  attitudes,  such  beauty  in  such  variety  ? 
Yet  we  hear  nothing  of  Ovid  but  his  want  of  judgment!  0  that  his  critics 
hail  the  thousandth  part  of  it !  the  millionth  of  his  genius !  I  cannot  but 
believe  that  the  depreciation  of  this  great  unfortunate  began  with  his  sen- 
tence of  exile.  It  was  then  thought  unsafe  to  praise  him ;  it  is  now 
thought  unsound.  Such  is  the  hold  of  authority  and  tradition  on  the  servile 
sprinklers  and  the  superstitious  catechumens  of  criticism! 

"  We  have  heard  enough,  but  the  dogmatical  and  stupid  think  we  never 
can  hear  enough,  about  the  conceits  of  Ovid.  On  this  subject  I  have  spoken 
already,  both  in  the  Imayinary  Conversations  and  in  the  Dissertation  ap- 
pended  to  my  Latin  poems  printed  in  Italy,  in  which  I  have  pointed  out 
worse  faults  in  Virgil,  and  more  of  them.  If  the  gentlemen  who  amuse 
themselves  and  the  public  by  their  criticisms  would  take  the  trouble  to 
peruse  this  J  dissertation,  it  would  show  them  that  what  some  have  said  is 
not  always  what  others  should  say,  and  that  old  opinions,  like  many  old 
things,  are  sometimes  of  little  value,  and  nowise  the  better  for  wearing.  A 
playful  and  somewhat  petulant  and  obtrusive  puerility,  much  as  it  may  be 
reprehended,  is  less  unwelcome  in  most  departments  of  poetry,  indeed  in 
most  other  places,  than  a  heavy  pedantry  or  an  inane  bombast;  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  in  Ovid  a  dozen  blemishes  of  the  kind  imputed  to 
him.  I  have  detected  in  Virgil  at  least  thirty  much  graver,  and  rather  more 
than  a  just  proportion  in  his  elaborate  work  the  Georyics ;  and  is  that  great 
poet — for  great  poet  he  is,  whatever  the  Germans  and  the  germanized  may 
oppose  to  the  assertion  of  his  dignity  —  is  he  to  be  thrust  under  the  mon- 
sters that  romp  in  all  their  wildness  on  the  uncleanly  straw  now  scattered 
over  the  Continent?     What  heart  has  not  been  softened  by  his  tenderness? 

what  ear  has  not   1 n  captivated  by  bis  harmony?     Yet  the  Virgilian 

.scheme  of  versification  is  scanty  in  tinal  sounds,  in  which  the  English  seems 
to  be  richer  than  any  luit  the  Greek.  In  truth,  it  began  to  be  the  fashion 
in  Virgil's  day  to  contract  and  impoverish  -what  was  already  too  poor  and 
contracted,  and  to  terminate  every  heroic  verse  with  a  dissyllable  or  trisyl- 


JET.  6l-S2.]  REVIEWING    A   REVIEWER.  545 

lablc.  Ennius  and  Lucretius  have  left  behind  them  memorable  proofs  what 
variety,  what  richness,  is  given  by  polysyllabic  terminations :  but  Ovid  com- 
mitted the  Virgilian  fault  in  the  hexameter,  and,  pursuing  a  similar  scheme, 
extended  the  system  to  the  pentameter.  With  Catullus  and  Propertius 
before  his  eyes,  he  yet  snipped  all  the  skirts  of  his  five-feet  brigade  to  the 
same  measure ;  dissyllables  closed  every  alternate  line ;  and  with  what  re- 
sult we  know.  We  are  instructed  at  our  schools  that  an  offence  against 
this  law  is  a  capital  one ;  and  we  retain  throughout  life  nearly  all  the  wrong 
impressions  we  receive  there.  Hence  the  false  estimation  in  which  the 
classics  are  relatively  holden.  Hence,  forever  recorded  and  repeated,  the 
1  puerility '  of  Ovid's  Epistles.  Hence  the  '  sublimity '  of  the  Pollio,  and 
the  '  majesty  '  of  the  Georgics,  not  only  in  the  storm,  which  is  grand  indeed, 
but  in  its  Augustus  between  the  Scales  and  the  Scorpion,  in  its  head  of 
Orpheus  cut  clean  off  and  singing  down  the  Hebrus,  and  in  its  Proteus,  an 
intractable  monster  grown  suddenly  tender-hearted  and  gracefully  poetical, 
concerning  a  woman  of  a  country  he  never  in  all  probability  could  have 
heard  of,  and  while  he  was  sorely  inthralled  by  a  stout  fellow  who  came  to 
inquire  about  a  beehive.  Hence,  in  short,  the  judgment  of  Virgil  proclaimed 
to  be  superior  even  to  Homer's,  whom  no  poet  ever  equalled  in  it !  And 
judgment  is  after  all  the  truest  criterion  of  a  great  poet.  For  if  imagination 
knows  not  where  to  settle,  it  may  almost  as  well  be  away ;  and  if  characters 
are  inconsistent,  they  can  ill  conciliate  our  interest,  and  may  be  at  once  dis- 
missed. The  structure  of  the  Iliad  is  perfect,  and  the  hero  is  endued  with 
all  those  qualities  which  the  poem  required.  The  JEneid,  on  the  contrary, 
is  '  without  form  and  void,'  an  epic  of  episodes,  a  faded  tissue  of  loose  im- 
probabilities ;  and  the  hero  is  more  fitted  to  invade  a  hencoop  than  to  win 
a  kingdom  or  a  woman.  Even  Napoleon  Buonaparte,  whose  eyes  were 
seared  with  conflagrations  and  besmeared  with  blood,  could  discern  how 
Virgil  totters  at  Tenedos  and  at  Troy.  His  Proteus,  his  wooden  horse,  his 
more  Avooden  hero,  are  such  lumber  as  never  came  from  the  blockhouse  of 
Ovid  on  the  snows  of  Tomi.  How  inferior  is  his  Winter  to  Hesiod's !  his 
Dido  to  the  Medea  of  Apollonius !  Yet  gravity  and  stateliness  make  men 
look  up  to  him ;  and  the  exquisite  harmony  of  his  versification  deludes  the 
ear  and  leads  astray  the  judgment.  It  is  not  by  single  verses  that  we  can 
learn  the  scale  of  our  great  composer.  For  the  sake  of  informing  my  critic 
how  the  most  harmonious  sentence  may  be  constructed  of  verses  in  them- 
selves and  singly  by  no  means  melodious,  I  will  transcribe  the  most  eloquent 
and  thrilling  one  in  all  the  compositions  of  this  admirable  musician. 

Mene  fugis?     Per  ego  has  lacrimas  dextramque  tuam  te, 
Qnando  aliud  mihi  jam  misera  nihil  ipsa  reliqui, 
Per  connubia  nostra,  per  ineeptos  hymenasos, 
Si  bene  quid  de  te  merui,  fuit  aut  tibi  quidquam 
Dulce  meum,  miserere  domiis  labentis,  et  istam, 
Oro,  si  quis  adhuc  precibus  locus,  exue  mentem. 

" '  We  believe  F.  Schlegel  is  correct  in  saying  that  naturally  Horace  had  a  much 
deeper  and  more  generous  vein  of  poetry  in  him  than  Virgil,  and  that,  had  he  not 
strayed  early  into  a  wrong  path,  he  might  have  produced  a  great  national  poem.' 

No  poet  capable  of  producing  a  great  national  poem  ever  strayed  inextri- 
cably into  a  'wrong  path.'  But  what  wrong  path  did  Horace  stray  into? 
And  what  indication  has  he  ever  displayed  of  such  a  power  and  tendency 
as  M.  Schlegel  would  exhibit  in  him  ?  Not  the  slightest  of  the  kind  in  all  his 
writings.  Yet  there  are  beautiful  things  in  them,  of  many  species.  But  he 
wanted  power  and  energy:  he  was  unable  to  carry  shield  and  buckler 
tlnoughout  a  long  march ;  and  it  was  not  only  on  the  field  of  Pharsalia  that 

35 


54G  TWEXTY-ONE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  [b-okvii. 

1=30-37. 

he  cast  them  down  in  lassitude  and  exhaustion.  Even  in  the  compass  of  an 
ode  he  grows  impatient  of  labor,  feels  it  too  much  for  him,  and  tells  us 
it  ill  suits  the  lightness  of  his  lyre.  His  most  heroic  one,  Cceh  tonantem, 
&c,  is  no 'proof  whatever  of  his  epic  qualifications:  and  nothing  can  be 
imagined  less  pathetic  than  another  which  has  been  often  much  admired  for 
its  pathos :  — 

Quis  desiderio  sit  purfor  nut  modus 

Tarn  cari  capitis?     Praecipe  lugubres 
Cantus,  Mtlpomtnt !  '  &c. 

He  loses  a  friend  and  appeals  to  Melpomene  for  help  to  make  him  cry ! 
The  eyes  of  the  true  mourner  want  only  their  own  tears.  How  greatly 
more  tender  and  affecting  are  the  verses  of  Catullus  on  his  brother !  "which 
h<  iwever  I  am  certain  will  not  escape  the  reprehension  of  my  fine-eared 
critic  for  their  clumsiness  and  harshness  :  — 

Multas  per  genteis  et  multa  per  jequora  vectus, 

Adveni  has  miseras,  frater,  ad  inferias, 
Ut  te  postremo  donarem  munere  mortis, 

Et  mutura  nequidquam  adloquerer  cinerem, 
Quandoquidem  lbrtuna  mihi  tete  abstulit  ipsum: 

Heu  minis  indigne  frater  ademte  mihi ! 
Nunc  tamen  interea,  prisco  qua?  more  parenrum 

Tradita  sunt  (tristeis  munera  ad  inferias) 
Accipe,  fraterno  multuin  manantia  fletu, 

Atque  in  perpetuum,  frater,  ave  atque  vale ! 

These  verses,  in  the  sixth  of  which  I  have  written  nimis  for  miser,  as  I  think 
the  author  did,  we  carry  with  us  in  the  throbbing  heaviness  of  our  hearts : 
the  others  we  reject  as  importunate  and  fictitious.  In  vain  would  you  look 
in  these  inferioe  for  anything  ornamental  or  novel.  The  verses  are  slow, 
solemn,  sad :  there  is  only  one  movement  in  them ;  a  movement  from  the 
salt  cake  and  warm  milk  in  its  black  patera,  to  the  urn  containing  the  ashes 
of  the  departed  brother.  If  ever  sighs  and  sobs  were  heard  in  the  cham- 
bers of  death,  surely  we  hear  them  throughout  those  incondite  and  incon- 
trollable  words, 

Et  mutum  nequidquam  adloquerer  cinerem. 
"  Warton,  if  I  remember,  in  his  essay  on  the  genius  and  writings  of  Pope, 
extols  the  G-alliambic  of  Catullus  above  all  Roman  poetry  whatsoever.  The 
praise  is  a  little  extravagant,  although  the  Galliambic  has  indeed  a  grave 
and  severe  majesty  about  it,  such  as  haunted  the  forests  of  Ida  and  be- 
fitted the  sanctuary  of  the  great  goddess.  It  is  grand  and  awful,  and  ap- 
proaches nearer  to  the  pure  ideal  of  poetry  than  perhaps  any  other  in  any 
language.  But  marbles  of  one  cubit  in  height  are  never  to  be  compared 
with  the  Pallas  of  the  Parthenon,  or  with  the  Olympian  Jove.  The  G-alli- 
ambic, and  ten  more  poems  of  Catullus,  place  him  nevertheless  upon  a 
higher  level  than  Horace,  out  of  whose  Odes,  at  the  same  time,  a  far 
greater  number  than  ten  of  delightful  beauty  could  be  selected.  Vet  there 
IS  nothing  in  them  whereon  to  ground  a  supposition  that  lie  was  capable  of 
constructing  '  a  great  national' or  other  great  poem:  whereas  in  Catullus 
there  are  ample  and  satisfactory  indications  of  this  ability;  for  instance, 
more  especially  in  the  description  of  Ariadne.  What  is  more  striking  than 
her  first  appearance  ?  what  is  more  terrific  than  her  adjuration, 

Eumenides,  quibus  nnguineo  redimita  capillo 
Front  erpirnntes  prwportat  pectoris  iras, 
Hue,  hue  adventate! 

"What  is  more  tender  and  pathetic  than  the  fifteen  verses  beginning  with 

Certe  ego  te  in  medio  versantem  turbine  lethi  r 


JET.  61-82.]  REVIEWING    A    REVIEWER.  547 

All  this  labor  of  the  poet  was  expended  on  a  piece  of  tapestry :  but  for  a 
piece  of  tapestry  were  designed  those  cartoons  of  RafFael,  which,  together 
with  the  Elgin  marbles,  are  the  greatest  wealth  the  arts  have  bequeathed  to 
England,  placing  her  on  an  equality,  inasmuch  as  possession  can  confer  it, 
with  Italy  herself.     But  I  must  return  to  my  reviewer. 

" '  If  we  are  right  in  ascribing  profoundness  rather  than  sublimity,  and  pictorial 
power  rather  than  ideal  beauty,  to  the  Divina  Commedia  as  a  whole,  nwst  if  not  all  of 
Mr.  Landor's  objections  to  particular  sections  and  passages  will  fall  to  the  ground.' 

Not  one  :  and  how  should  they  ?  Mr.  Landor  has  no  more  questioned  the 
sublimity  or  the  profoundness  of  Dante,  than  his  readers  will  question 
whether  he  or  his  critic  is  the  more  competent  to  measure  them.  To  judge 
properly  and  comprehensively  of  Dante,  first  the  poetical  mind  is  requisite ; 
then,  patient  industry  in  exploring  the  works  of  his  contemporaries,  and  in 
going  back  occasionally  to  those  volumes  of  the  schoolmen  which  lie  dor- 
mant in  the  libraries  of  his  native  city.  Profitable  too  are  excursions  in 
Val  d'  Arno  and  Val  d'  Elsa,  and  in  those  deep  recesses  of  the  Apennines, 
where  the  elder  language  is  yet  abiding  in  its  rigid  strength  and  fresh 
austerity.  Twenty  years  and  unbroken  leisure  have  afforded  to  Mr,  Landor 
a  small  portion  of  such  advantages,  at  least  of  the  latter ;  a  thousand  could 
pour  none  effectually  into  this  pertusum  vas. 

" '  On  these  grounds  and  on  no  other  are  some  of  the  dooms  in  the  Inferno  intelligi- 
ble ;  for  that  these  punishments  are  in  any  considerable  proportion  allegorical  we  quite 
disallow.' 

Who  said  they  were?  in  any  proportion,  considerable  or  inconsiderable. 
The  dooms,  G-od  knows,  are  intelligible  enough,  and  require  none  of  '  these 
grounds '  to  render  them  plainer.  In  the  Pentameron  the  frequency  of  them, 
and  the  nature  of  many,  are  represented  as  blemishes  to  the  poem  and  to 
the  poet.  So  they  are.  We  know  whence  they  sprang :  we  know,  and  we 
lament,  that  the  breast  of  Dante  was  ulcerated  by  his  wrongs  and  inflamed 
by  his  passions :  but  ulcers  are  ugly  things  to  expose,  particularly  in  the 
walks  of  poetry:  and  loud  curses  at  all  who  pass  by  are  but  indifferent 
charms  for  healing  them,  even  after  copious  applications  from  the  pitch-pot. 
My  critic  would  represent  me  as  derogating  from  Dante.  I  hope  he  will 
understand  me,  when  I  tell  him  in  my  plainest  mother-tongue,  that  although 
I  do  not  find  the  glorious  Ghibelline  arm  in  arm  with  Milton,  nor  close  to 
Homer,  nor  within  sight  of  Shakespeare,  yet  Virgil  seems  to  me  a  stripling 
by  the  side  of  him.  Nevertheless  I  cannot  help  crying  out,  both  in  his  Hell 
and  in  his  Purgatory, 

Quis  me  gelidis  in  vallibus  Hremi 
Sistat,  et  ingenti  ramorum  protegat  umbra ! 

Poetry  should  delight  throughout,  never  weary,  never  disgust.  Even  pangs 
and  sorrows  are  blessings  from  her  hand,  the  visible  hand  of  a  true  Divinity. 
The  great  poets  we  have  brought  together  are  all  different,  though  Dante 
calls  Virgil  his  master,  as  Virgil  might  have  called  Homer  his.  Everywhere 
in  Homer  there  is  plenty  of  bone  and  sinew,  but  flesh  only  in  the  right 
place.  So  much  is  not  to  be  said  of  Virgil ;  and  of  Dante  it  is  to  be  re- 
marked that  in  many  places  his  ill-covered  tendons  cut  through  his  clothes, 
and  we. wish  him  better  fare  and  a  bath.  But  Avith  what  sentiments  do  we 
part  from  him?  We  embrace,  and  we  will  not  be  shaken  off,  the  hard  un- 
pitying  man  who  swooned  at  last  with  pity  for  Francesca. 

" '  We  doubt  whether  Petrarca,  if  tried  on  the  whole  count  of  his  poetry  and  his  doc- 
trines in  an  Imaginary  Conversation,  would  fare  much  better.' 


548  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  CBi8#*w"' 

Certainly  not,  if  treated  with  rigor,  or  with  strict  justice.  Petrarca  had  not 
in  him  the  thousandth  par.t  of  Dante's  poetry;  and  I  was  inclined  to  repre- 
sent only  that  which  is  most  amiable  in  his  character.  It  is  glorious  to  be 
the  willing  and  disinterested  friend  of  a  glorious  man,  as  Petrarca  was  of 
Boccaccio,  at  that  time  indeed  less  celebrated  than  himself,  but  surpassing  in 
the  variety  of  his  invention  all  the  writers  that  had  existed  in  the  world. 
He  was  more  independent  than  Petrarca,  he  was  more  manly,  he  was  more 
affectionate.  Besides,  he  was  poor,  and  he  was  abandoned  by  those  who 
once  had  cherished  him.  Petrarca  then,  in  the  midst  of  those  misfortunes, 
deserves  my  esteem  for  loving  best  the  best  man  of  his  acquaintance.  He 
was  not  exempt  from  vanity,  or  from  its  concomitant,  selfishness:  but, 
rather  than  exhibit  him  in  his  'foibles,'  I  chose  to  bring  him  forward  in  his 
friendship,  and  in  the  company  of  the  friend  who  most  deserved  it.  Jn 
their  conversation  I  was  willing  also  to  correct  a  false  estimate  of  Latin  authors. 
Boccaccio  is  not,  as  he  appears  to  our  critic,  'hypercritical'  on  Horace's 
verse,  but  correct  and  just.  Our  critic  may  have  been  taught  at  sixteen 
what,  in  less-confused  and  complicated  language,  I  was  taught  at  thirteen, 
that  '  obliquo  laborat  lympha  fugax  trepidare  rivo'  meant  'to  mark  the 
sinuous  and  reactive  flow  of  a  river  between  curved  and  winding  banks.' 
But  why  laborat  trepidare  f  Trepidation  is  incompatible  with  effort,  and 
labor  is  incompatible  with  fugacity. 

"  '  Whatsoever  Mr.  Landor  does  well,  he  does  excellently  ...  in  his  proper  and 
peculiar  path  he  is  second  to  no  living  writer.' 

That  is  to  say,  Mr.  Landor  does  excellently  what  pleases  the  taste  of  a  man 
without  a  palate.  We  all  do  excellently  just  as  much  as  coincides  with  the 
preconceived  opinions  of  the  most  ignorant.  What  is  the  proper  and  pecu- 
liar 'path  '  in  which  he  is  second  to  no  living  writer?  That,  no  doubt,  in 
which  a  cripple  on  crutches  can  follow  him.  If  my  worthy  man  thinks  of 
me  as  of  one  excellent  in  anything,  decency  ought  to  warn  him  of  the  differ- 
ence between  us ;  and,  instead  of  such  a  flippant  buzz  in  my  ear,  even  in 
flattery,  he  should  approach  with  the  slowness  of  humility,  and  the  taciturn- 
ity of  respect.  Alas !  it  was  on  the  fertile  Egypt,  and  not  on  her  neighbor 
the  barren  Arabia,  that  the  seven  plagues  descended,  of  which  the  most 
odious  were  small  creeping  things. 

" '  The  following  passage  we  give  as  a  specimen  of  graceful  composition  not  unworthy 
to  stand  by  some  of  the  descriptions  in  the  Decameron.'1         . 

There  is  nothing  (except  what  is  good)  which  is  unworthy  to  stand  by  some 
of  those  descriptions.  A  writer  by  no  means  eidogistical  acknowledged 
some  years  ago  in  the  Quarterly  that  a  story  in  the  Imaginary  Conversa- 
tions, attributed  by  me  to  the  person  of  Boccaccio,  is  better  than  Boccaccio 
could  have  written.  I  doubt  the  justice  of  the  compliment.  But  my  writ- 
ings have  long  been  at  every  author's  discretion  and  disposal,  as  much  as 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  and  few  have  taken  any  more  trouble  to  utter  a 
word  of  acknowledgment  about  it.  They  all  are  heartily  welcome ;  and 
never  diil  any  man  say  with  greater  sincerity  in  the  full  force  of  the  expres- 
sion, Much  good  may  it  do  them  !  Critics  have  about  them  a  knot  of  friends 
and  confederates,  whom  they  think  it  their  duty  to  exalt  above  all  compet- 
itors. Hut  why  should  warm-heartedness  swell  and  degenerate  into  ani- 
mosity? why  should  weaker  men  be  pushed  against  me,  when  the  shove 
must  hurt  them?  A  great  Athenian  of  antiquity  was  required  to  give  evi- 
dence before  a  court  of  justice  in  favor  of  a  friend  ;  which  evidence,  to  be 
effectual,  must  have  been  false:  he  replied.  'I  will  go  with  my  friend  as  far 
as  the  altar.'  lie  would  not  forswear  his  conscience.  Friendships  are 
stronger  now :  we  are  not  pagans." 


.ST.  6l-82.]  VISITS    AND    VISITORS.  549 


V.     VISITS  AND  VISITORS. 

As  long  as  Charles  Armitage  Brown  remained  in  England,  Landor 
visited  him  from  time  to  time  at  his  house  near  Plymouth  :  where, 
in  1837,  he  found  him  lecturing  the  neighborhood  on  Keats  and  his 
treatment  by  the  Reviews  ;  and  on  Shakespeai-e  and  his  Sonnets,  and 
the  probability  of  his  having  visited  Italy ;  as  well  as  otherwise 
busying  himself  in  writing  for  newspapers.  He  does  not  seem  to 
have  made  much  impression  with  these  lectures,  until,  with  the  view 
of  proving  that  Shakespeare  must  have  had  ample  means  for  visiting 
Italy,  he  undertook  to  show  that  at  the  age  of  forty-three  the  great 
poet  was  worth  nearly  seven  thousand  pounds  :  when  a  burst  of  glad 
applause,  sudden  as  a  pistol-shot,  shook  the  lecture-hall.  Brown 
mentioned  this  to  Landor  as  quite  a  good  anecdote  in  the  history  of 
human  nature,  showing  the  delight  of  those  west-country  folk  at  the 
rewards  bestowed,  even  in  his  lifetime,  on  the  author  of  Othello  ;  but 
Landor  declared  with  his  hearty  laugh  that  it  showed  only  how  much 
better  than  a  wilderness  of  Othellos  they  comprehended  seven  thou- 
sand pounds.  The  friends  agreed  however  in  most  things  :  and 
Brown  said  to  Landor,  after  one  of  his  visits,  that  all  his  woman- 
kind who  had  seen  him  had  fallen  in  love  with  him  ;  that  the  daugh- 
ters of  his  friend  Colonel  Hamilton  Smith  openly  declared  their  craze  ; 
that  it  would  have  to  be  said  of  him,  as  of  the  other  great  Warwick- 
shire poet,  that  no  woman  could  safely  go  nigh  him ;  and  that  for 
his  own  part  he  had  not  been  happier  when  twenty  years  younger, 
and  with  Keats  for  his  companion  in  that  same  western  county,  than 
Landor  had  made  him  in  those  late  "  white  days  "  in  their  walks  by 
the  Laira  and  the  Tamar.  In  the  same  letter  (27th  April,  1838),  he 
said  he  was  coming  to  London  shortly,  like  parson  Adams  with  his 
sermons,  to  try  and  find  a  publisher  for  a  volume  about  Shakespeare  ; 
and  before  that  year  the  volume  also  was  out,  with  dedication  to 
Landor  as  the  best  lover  of  the  poet  and  the  best  living  writer  of  the 
English  language.  Two  years  later,  family  hopes  took  Brown  to  New 
Zealand  ;  and  not  long  after  his  arrival,  in  the  streets  of  New 
Plymouth,  one  of  the  sudden  fits  to  which  he  had  become  subject 
after  leaving  Italy  closed  the  life  of  this  kindly  original  man,  whose 
name  cannot  be  forgotten  as  long  as  a  reader  remains  for  the  most 
sorrowful  story  in  our  language,*  the  brief  life  and  pitiable  death 
of  the  author  of  Endymion. 

All  who  remember  Landor  at  this  time  will  understand,  if  they 
have  not  shared,  the  delight  his  visits  gave.  Brown  has  only  ex- 
pressed what  every  one  felt.  His  fine  presence,  manly  voice,  and 
cordial  smile,  the  amusing  exaggerations  of  his  speech,  the  irresist- 
ible contagion  of  his  laugh,   and  the  subtle   charm  of  his  genius 

*  Milne's  Life  and  Letters  of  Keats:  a  book  that  one  reads  with  the  same  mi«ornlile 
anamish  of  foolish  impatience  at  the  decrees  of  providence,  with  which  such  tragedies 
as  Romeo  and  Othello  are  read. 


550  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  [B,836K-5^"' 

diffused  over  all,  made  him  quite  irresistible.  Xor  was  it  possible  to 
have  him  more  at  his  best  than  under  the  hospitable  roof  of  Kenyon, 
whether  at  Torquay,  where  he  frequently  went  at  this  time,  or  in 
London,  or  in  later  years  at  Wimbledon  or  Cowes.  Of  this  excellent 
man  Southey  wrote  in  1827  that  everybody  liked  him  at  first  sight, 
and  liked  him  1  letter  the  longer  he  was  known  ;  that  he  had  then 
himself  known  him  three-and-twenty  years ;  that  he  was  of  all  his 
friends  one  of  the  very  best  and  pleasantest ;  and  that  he  reckoned  as 
one  of  his  whitest  days  the  day  he  first  fell  in  with  him.  Not  with- 
out strong  opinions  himself,  Kenyon  had  that  about  him  which  repelled 
no  opinion  whatever ;  and  to  this  rare  quality  Southey  hardly  did 
justice  on  another  occasion,  when,  rallying  him  on  his  regret  at  hav- 
ing no  occupation,  he  told  him  he  was  far  happier  than  if  sitting  on 
the  bench  all  berobed  and  bewigged,  or  flitting  like  the  bat  in  the 
fable  between  the  two  contending  parties  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
not  knowing  to  which  he  properly  belonged.  It  was  the  fact  of  Ken- 
yon's  knowing  well  to  which  he  belonged  that  gave  peculiar  charm  to 
the  catholicity  of  his  tastes  and  tolerance ;  nor  could  his  love  of 
pleasure,  or  his  frank  confession  of  the  pursuit  of  it,  have  other  effect 
than  to  raise  him  in  the  respect  of  all  who  knew  how  much  of  this 
consisted  in  doing  good  and  giving  pleasure  to  others.  It  is  material 
to  add  besides,  that  Kenyon  had  accomplishments  of  no  ordinary 
kind,  and  could  give  and  take  with  the  best  who  assembled  at  his 
table.  He  wrote  manly  English  verse,  was  a  fair  scholar,  a  good 
critic  of  books  and  art,  an  observer  on  whom  unusual  opportunities 
of  seeing  much  of  the  world  had  not  been  thrown  away  ;  and,  in  a 
familiar  friendship  with  him  of  a  quarter  of  a  century,  I  never  saw 
him  use  for  mere  personal  display  any  one  advantage  he  thus  pos- 
sessed. He  was  always  thinking  of  others,  always  planning  to  get 
his  own  pleasure  out  of  theirs  ;  and  Landor  in  this  respect  was  an 
untiring  satisfaction  to  him.  He  displayed  his  enjoyment  so  thorough- 
ly. The  laugh  was  encouraged  till  the  room  shook  again  ;  and,  while 
Landor  would  defend  to  the  death  some  indefensible  position,  assail 
with  prodigious  vigor  an  imaginary  enemy,  or  blow  himself  and  his 
adversary  together  into  the  air  with  the  explosion  of  a  joke,  the 
radiant  glee  of  Kenyon  was  a  thing  not  to  be  forgotten.  I  have  seen 
it  shared  at  the  same  moment,  in  an  equal  degree,  by  Archdeacon 
Hare  and  Sir  Robert  Harry  Inglis. 

Another  friend  to  win  mi  regular  visits  were  made  at  this  time,  who 
had  married,  during  his  absence  in  Italy,  an  old  school  and  college 
companion's  sister,  remembered  as  long  ago  as  her  childhood  during 
happy  days  at  her  father's  house,*  should  not  be  omitted  from  my 
narrative.  "  Mr.  Rosenhagen  was  of  a  Danish  family,"  writes  Mr. 
Robert  Landor  to  me  (19th  May,  1865),  "and  the  son  of  a  clergy- 
man intimately  connected,  I  cannot  tell  how,  with  statesmen  high  in 
office  and  influence  about  the  time  of  Lord  Chatham.     One  son  died 

*  See  ante,  p.  15 ;  also  p.  29. 


JET.  6l-82.]  VISITS    AND    VISITORS.  551 

young,  but  he  had  gained  the  rank  of  post-captain  in  the  navy.  Our 
friend  rose  still  more  rapidly  in  the  Treasury,  of  which  he  became 
first  clerk  ;  and  was  often  mentioned  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
though  he  never  sat  there.  From  the  Treasury  he  was  transferred 
as  private  secretary  to  Mr.  Perceval ;  and  he  was  joined,  after  the 
Battle  of  Waterloo,  in  the  same  commission  with  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington and  Lord  Castlereagh  to  negotiate  the  peace  at  Paris.  His 
part  was  especially  financial,  and  he  seems  to  have  acquired  the 
Duke's  esteem  in  no  common  degree.  But  his  attention  to  business 
almost  entirely  destroyed  a  sight  which  was  always  weak,  and  on  his 
return  to  England  he  retired  on  a  pension  of  twelve  hundred  a  year  ; 
having  married,  as  his  second  wife,  the  daughter  of  an  old  Worcester- 
shire family  connected  with  the  Fortescues  and  Dormers,  Miss  Park- 
hurst,  whose  eldest  brother  was  Walter's  school-fellow  at  Rugby,  and 
went  up  to»  the  same  college  at  Oxford.  Though  they  were  very  dis- 
cordant, they  were  much  together  some  years  later,  visiting  each 
other's  friends  and  travelling  together  ;  but  with  old  Mr.  Parkhurst, 
Walter  was  much  the  greater  favorite,  and  he  had  been  always  very 
happy  at  Ripple,  on  the  banks  of  the  Severn.  Many  years  had  passed 
away  from  that  time,  during  which  there  was  no  intercourse  between 
the  school-fellows.  My  brother  Henry  had  been  often  at  Ripple,  but 
until  the  marriage  of  Miss  Parkhurst  none  of  us  had  seen  Mr.  Rosen- 
hagen. She  reunited  the  two  families  while  Walter  was  still  at  Flor- 
ence.  She  and  Mr.  Rosenhagen  had  established  themselves  at  Chel- 
tenham, shortly  before  my  removal  to  Birlingham  thirty-six  years  ago. 
Till  then  I  had  not  seen  either  of  them  ;  but,  living  then  at  the  dis- 
tance of  only  fourteen  miles,  every  possible  kindness  was  shown  to 
me.  My  sisters  and  nieces  were  often  their  guests  ;  and  on  Walter's 
arrival  from  Florence,  when  you  became  acquainted  with  him,  he 
visited  both  me  and  them.  Mr.  Rosenhagen  was  almost  blind  and 
very  deaf,  but  a  delightful  companion  nevertheless.  There  was  no 
danger  of  any  disagreement  between  the  high  Tory  and  the  black 
Jacobin,  between  the  high  churchman  and  the  disbeliever  in  all 
churches,  for  they  eschewed  controversy,  and  it  would  have  been  very 
difficult  indeed  to  irritate  a  man  so  courteous,  so  forbearing,  and  of 
such  easy  politeness.  Besides  a  fine  person,  he  had  much  unassum- 
ing dignity,  treating  with  an  impressive  kindness,  even  as  more  than 
friends  and  equals,  such  of  his  guests  as  he  liked  :  and  he  liked 
Walter  greatly.  My  brother  spoke  of  him  in  his  Last  Fruit  as  the 
best  and  wisest  man  whom  he  had  ever  known.  I  think  that  it  was 
I  who  suggested  this  character  by  saying  that  Walter  may  have 
known  some  few  men  of  equal  ability,  some  few  of  equal  virtue,  but 
I  doubted  whether  he  had  seen  one  man  who  equalled  our  friend  in 
both.  Very  highly  and  sincerely,  on  the  other  hand,  did  Mr.  Rosen- 
hagen value  Walter's  better  qualities ;  and  of  the  worse  he  would 
neither  speak  nor  hear.  When  quite  blind,  he  lost  the  best  of  wives, 
suddenly  (1844).     I  was  with  him  a  few  days  after  her  death.     '  I  have 


552  TWENTY-ONE   YEARS   AT   BATH.  [Bi8™w"' 

lost,  or  am  losing,  all  my  senses,'  he  said,  '  but  all  amounted  to  very 
little  indeed  compared  with  this  loss.'  It  is  now  fifteen  years  since  he 
died,  leaving  me  some  very  valuable  books.  He  always  believed  that 
the  Letters  of  Junius  were  written  by  his  father,  but  felt  no  wish  to 
prove  the  fact."  Few  names  for  praise  and  liking  were  oftcner  in 
Landor's  mouth  :  and  in  the  same  year  (18-10)  in  which  he  wrote  to 
me  that  the  Fanny  Parkhurst,  whom  he  remembered  as  an  infant, 
was  become  the  providence  of  her  husband,  and  that  old  Parkhurst 
and  his  son-in-law  Rosenhagen  were  the  men  who  united  most  of 
virtue  and  most  of  politeness  that  he  had  ever  met  with,  I  find  a 
letter  from  her,  acknowledging  the  gift  of  his  Fra  Rupert  and  allud- 
ing to  some  lines  in  one  of  its  scenes,  in  which  she  tells  Landor  that 
he  had  made  the  "  blind  but  cheerful "  old  man  very  grateful  for  em- 
balming a  thought  of  his  in  verse  so  beautiful ;  that  he  had  received 
no  honor  equal  to  this  since  the  great  Duke  named  him  in  his  de- 
spatches ;  that  he  had  directed  her  to  place  the  three  tragedies  on  the 
same  shelf  with  Shakespeare  and  the  Greek  tragedians  ;  and  that  he 
had  long  felt  his  adoption  into  the  friendship  of  the  Landor  family  as 
among  the  happiest  consequences  of  his  marriage. 

Mention  also  should  be  made,  among  those  with  whom  Landor  had 
frequent  intercourse  in  the  earlier  years  after  his  return,  of  Mr. 
James,  who  at  this  time  dedicated  one  of  his  romances  to  him,  and 
to  whom  in  Hampshire  and  on  the  Dorsetshire  coast  he  made  some 
joyous  visits.  The  kind-hearted  and  not  too  vigorous  novelist  com- 
pared himself  on  such  occasions  to  a  still,  calm  lake  brushed  by  the 
wing  of  the  whirlwind  ;  and  boundless  was  his  enjoyment  of  the  unac- 
customed pleasure.  "  I  stagnate  when  I  do  not  see  you,"  is  the  cry 
of  his  letters,  which  promise  Landor  wild-flowers  and  wood-walks  in 
Hampshire,  with  hills  to  ring  back  his  joyous  laugh,  and,  at  Lyme 
Regis,  cliffs  that  will  remind  him  of  Italy  though  of  different  color. 
The  joyous  laugh  attracted  Thomas  Moore  too  in  these  days,  and  he 
tells  us  in  his  Diary  what  a  different  sort  of  person  Landor  was  from 
what  he  had  expected  to  find  him  ;  that  he  had  all  the  air  and  laugh  of 
a  hearty  country  gentleman,  a  gros  rejoui ;  and  that  whereas  his  writ- 
ings formerly  had  not  given  him  a  relish  for  the  man,  the  man  now 
has  given  him  a  relish  for  his  writings.  To  another  and  finer  artist, 
dear  to  both  of  us  alike,  my  old  friend  had  also  at  this  time  to  sit  for 
a  picture  which  I  shall  be  pardoned  for  transferring  to  these  pages, 
since  it  has  added  even  to  Landor's  chances  of  being  remembered 
hereafter.  "  We  all  conceived,  before  seeing  him,  a  prepossession  in 
his  favor  ;  for  there  was  a  sterling  quality  in  his  laugh,  and  in  his 
vigorous  healthy  voice,  and  in  the  roundness  and  fulness  with  which 
he  uttered  every  word  he  spoke,  and  in  the  very  fury  of  his  superla- 
tives, which  seemed  to  go  off  like  blank  cannons  and  hurt  nothing. 
But  we  were  hardly  prepared  to  have  it  so  confirmed  by  his  appear- 
ance. .  .  .  He  was  not  only  a  very  handsome  old  gentleman,  upright 
and   stalwart  as   he  had  been  described  to  us,  with  a  massive  gray 


JET.  61-82.]  VISITS   AND   VISITORS.  553 

head,  a  fine  composure  of  face  when  silent,  a  figure  that  might  have 
become  corpulent  but  for  his  being  so  continually  in  earnest  that  he 
gave  it  no  rest,  and  a  chin  that  might  have  subsided  into  a  double- 
chin  but  for  the  vehement  emphasis  in  which  it  was  constantly  re- 
quired to  assist ;  but  he  was  such  a  true  gentleman  in  his  manner, 
so  chivalrously  polite,  his  face  was  lighted  up  by  a  smile  of  so  much 
sweetness  and  tenderness,  and  it  seemed  so  plain  that  he  had  nothing 
to  hide,  but  showed  himself  exactly  as  he  was,  incapable  of  anything 
on  a  limited  scale,  and  firing  away  with  those  blank  great  guns  be- 
cause he  carried  no  small-arms  whatever ;  that  really  I  could  not  help 
looking  at, him  with  equal  pleasure  as  he  sat  at  dinner,  whether  he 
smilingly  conversed,  or  was  led  into  some  great  volley  of  superlatives, 
or  threw  up  his  head  like  a  bloodhound,  and  gave  out  that  tremen- 
dous Ha  !  ha  !  ha  !  "  The  world  did  not  make  this  pleasant  acquaint- 
ance till  some  years  later  ;  but  the  Boy  thorn  of  Bleak  House  was 
the  Landor  of  this  earlier  time,  from  whose  many  attractive  and 
original  qualities  our  great  master  of  fiction  drew  that  new  and 
delightful  creature  of  his  fancy.  In  the  letter  thanking  me  for  my 
Life  of  Cromivell  (April,  1839)  Landor  had  sent  his  first  message  to 
Dickens.  "  Tell  him  he  has  drawn  from  me  more  tears  and  more  smiles 
than  are  remaining  to  me  for  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  real  or  ideal." 
It  cannot  be  always  the  Boythorn  laugh,  in  the  world  either  of  fact 
or  fancy ;  Landor  in  both  had  his  ample  share  at  all  times  of  the 
tears  as  well  as  of  the  smiles  ;  and  neither  few  nor  transient  were  the 
shadows  that  fell  across  his  present  enjoyments,  as  well  in  summer  as 
winter  days,  from  remembrances  of  Italy. 

The  change  from  Fiesole  had  of  course  tried  him  the  most  in  winter. 
With  amusing  heat  he  wrote  to  me  of  one  of  his  Bath  Novembers  : 
"  We  have  had  only  four  hours  of  sun  in  six  weeks  ;  never  since  the 
creation  of  the  world  has  this  happened  before."  And  this  had 
befallen  him  after  a  July  which  he  had  thus  described  to  me  :  "I 
could  not  get  salt-bathing  quite  so  near  at  hand  as  yours  "  (I  was 
then  at  Brighton) ;  "  but  I  can  get  a  fine  fresh  bath,  or  even  swim, 
every  day  before  my  window.  Never  had  we  such  continued  rain. 
I  doubt  whether  there  are  any  trout  in  the  grand  canal  before  my 
hou'se,  but  its  ripples  would  tempt  any  stranger  to  look  over  his  col- 
lection of  flies  and  try  his  tackle."  Nor  was  his  trouble  always  from 
the  climate  merely,  but  sometimes  from  the  ill  provision  made  against 
it.  When  Francis  Hare  came  over  to  England  the  year  before  his 
death,  and  Landor  visited  him  (January,  1839)  for  the  last  time 
at  Westwood  Way  House  in  Berkshire,  he  described  it  as  a  house 
that  would  have  done  passably  well  for  Naples,  but  better  for  Tim- 
buctoo.  Everything  around  him  but  his  friend's  cheerful  greeting 
was  congealed  ;  and  into  so  enormous  a  bed  was  he  put  to  sleep,  such 
a  frozen  sea  of  sheets  stretching  out  on  every  side  of  him,  that  for 
once  he  envied  the  bed  of  Procrustes.  These  were  country  inconven- 
iences, and  town  streets  were  worse.     "  In  this  weather,"  he  wrote  to 


554  TWEN'TY-ONE    YEAKS    AT    BATH.  ^SgsiwJ1 

me  on  another  occasion  (21st  December,  1840),  "  nobody  can  be  quite 
well  I  myself,  an  oddly  mixt  metal  with  a  pretty  large  portion  of 
iii m  in  it,  am  sensible  to  the  curse  of  climate.  The  chief  reason  is, 
I  cannot  walk  through  the  snow  and  slop.  My  body,  and  my  mind 
more  especially,  requires  strong  exercise.  Nothing  can  tire  either, 
excepting  dull  people,  and  they  weary  both  at  once.  The  snow  fell 
in  Italy  at  the  end  of  November,  and  the  weather  was  severe  at 
Florence.  Lately,  from  the  want  of  sun  and  all  things  cheerful,  my 
saddened  and  wearied  mind  has  often  roosted  on  the  acacias  and 
cypresses  1  planted.  Thoughts  when  they  're  weakest  take  the  long- 
est flights,  and  tempt  the  wintry  seas  in  darkest  nights.  How  is  it 
that  when  I  am  a  little  melancholy  my  words  are  apt  to  fall  into 
verse  1  Joy  has  never  such  an  effect  on  me.  In  fact,  we  hardly 
speak  when  we  meet,  and  are  at  best  but  bowing  acquaintance."  It 
was  always  so  when  he  thought  of  Fiesole. 

A  few  months  later,  after  many  disappointments  in  that  direction, 
he  heard  from  Fiesole  of  a  proposed  visit  to  him,  and  at  once  eagerly 
went  over  to  Paris  to  meet  and  bring  back  his  second  son  ;  when 
occasion  was  taken  there  to  show  him  some  civilities  that  pleased 
him.  "Imagine  my  surprise,"  he  wrote  to  me  (Gth  May,  1841), 
"  that  any  among  the  literary  men  knew  even  of  my  existence. 
Nothing  can  exceed  the  attention  I  receive  from  them.  If  their 
civilities  are  sufficient  to  make  a  place  agreeable,  I  ought  to  be  quite 
contented  at  Paris.  Mignet  has  invited  me  this  evening  to  a  sitting 
of  the  Institut."  Victor  Cousin  was  in  the  chair,  Mignet  delivered 
the  oration,  and  Thiers  was  among  those  who  attended.  It  was  soon 
after  Darmes  had  fired  at  Louis  Philippe  ;  and  Lanclor  mentions  his 
introduction  to  "  Ledru  the  advocate,"  whom  he  describes  as  having 
taken  the  defence  of  the  "  wretched  fools  "  who  conspired  against  the 
king.  He  was  also  present  at  the  trial  in  the  house  of  peers,  when 
he  heard  "  the  maddest  of  all  mad  regicides,  and  surely  the  most 
impudent,"  make  reply  to  the  chancellor's  question  if  he  had  any  ac- 
complices :  "  I  tell  you  again,  sir,  that  when  I  fired  at  the  Duke  of 
( nleans  I  was  quite  alone."  He  called  afterwards  on  Ledru,  with 
whom  he  found  a  client  that  interested  him  not  a  little,  the  celebrated 
Vidocq  ;  "  about  sixty  years  of  age,  wonderfully  strong,  and  of  a 
physiognomy  mild  and  intelligent  :  Ledru  told  me  he  was  so,  and 
very  trustworthy  \  having  on  a  former  occasion  undertaken  his  de- 
fence on  condition  of  his  giving  a  thousand  francs  to  the  poor,  when 
he  performed  his  engagement  honorably."  Landor's  interest  was  the 
greater  in  this  new  acquaintance  from  a  parallel  into  which  he  had 
been  led  in  one  of  his  letters  just  before,  on  reading  the  Vidocq 
Memoirs,  between  "  the  great  thief"  the  master  and  "the  great  thief- 
taker  "  the  man  :  one  of  them  frightening  all  the  good,  the  other  all 
the  bad  ;  one  betraying  all  his  employers,  the  other  all  his  accom- 
plices ;  one  sacrificing  the  hopeful  to  ambition,  the  other  the  des- 
perate to  justice  :  a  comparison  or  corollary  to  be  as  easily  made  in 


JET.  6l  -  82.]  VISITS    AND    VISITORS.  555 

the  seventh  of  a  minute  as  in  seven  years,  but  requiring  another 
century  of  honesty  and  wisdom  for  discovery  of  which  was  best 
of  the  two.  The  whole  race  of  moral  swindlers  and  ring-droppers 
would  have  to  be  taken  up  first. 

Beyond  all  others  in  the  great  city,  however,  one  visit  gave  him 
the  greatest  satisfaction.  Playfully  replying  to  a  remonstrance  of 
kind  Bath  friends  against  the  old  hat  he  had  taken  with  him  on  his 
journey,  he  thus  mentioned  this  visit  to  Miss  Rose  Paynter.  "  Being 
somewhat  hot-headed,  is  not  an  old  hat  likely  to  fit  me  better  than  a 
new  one  1  I  wish  you  had  seen  it  in  all  its  glory.  What  think  you 
of  my  talking  with  a  king  and  queen,  and  displaying  it  before  them  1 
Such,  in  the  most  legitimate  sense,  are  the  Prince  and  Princess  Czar- 
toryski,  he  having  been  proclaimed  King  of  Poland  by  the  depu- 
ties of  the  nobility  and  people.  Knowing  my  devotion  to  royalty, 
but  probably  more  attracted  by  my  hat  than  by  me,  he  conversed 
with  me  the  greater  part  of  the  evening."  On  his  return  from  Paris 
with  his  son,  who,  upon  arrival  in  London,  paid  a  promised  visit  to 
his  aunts  at  Richmond,  Landor  passed  some  days  with  me,  while  the 
Whigs  were  making  their  last  unsuccessful  resistance  to  Peel ;  and  it 
was  in  my  library,  as  he  always  afterwards  said,  he  composed  the 
shortest  of  all  his  Conversations.  It  was  sent  to  Kenyon.*  This 
was  the  time  also,  he  would  amusingly  protest,  when  he  failed  in  the 
only  attempt  he  ever  made  on  ministerial  patronage.  He  had  written 
to  tell  Lady  Blessington  that,  now  the  Tories  were  coming  in  and 
he  was  growing  old,  he  should  like  the  appointment  of  road-sweeper 
from  Gore  House  across  to  Hyde  Park  :  nobody  could  dispute  his 
claims,  because  he  had  in  print  avowed  himself  a  conservative  ;  he 
knew  however  there  must  be  many  names  down,  and  he  could  wait ; 
only  she  was  to  be  particular  in  saying  that  the  place  he  wanted  was 
for  removing  dirt,  or  else  there  might  be  some  mistake.  The  mistake 
must  have  occurred  after  all,  he  said,  for  the  thing  was  not  given  to 
him. 

He  visited,  before  his  return  to  Bath,  the  mother  and  sisters  of  his 
wife  at  Richmond.  "  I  might  have  expected  some  degree  of  shyness, 
at  the  least  on  her  mother's  part.  However,  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Neither  she  nor  any  one  of  her  daughters  was  less  cordial  with  me 
than  they  had  been  formerly.  Not  a  single  word  on  those  matters 
which  rendered  my  stay  in  Italy  quite  impossible,  and  equally  so  my 
return  to  the  only  habitation  in  which  my  heart  ever  delighted." 
"  Excellent  creatures  !  "  he  wrrote  to  Kenyon.     "  They  received  me 

*  Landor.     Kenyon,  I  've  written  for  your  delectation 
A  short  Imaginary  Conversation. 
Kenyon.     Landor,  I  much  rejoice  at  the  report; 

But  only  keep  your  promise  — be  it  short. 

FATHER    AND    CHILD. 

Father.     What,  my  boy,  is  the  rhyme  to  whig? 
Child.       Can  it,  papa,  be  whirligig '? 


55G  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  lBS&-*"' 

with  indescribable  kindness,  and  gave  me  a  couple  of  dormice. 
These  are  great  blessings."  The  reader  will  remember  Mr.  Boythorn's 
canary. 

VI.     DEATH   OF   SOUTHEY. 

Southey's  last  letter  to  Landor  was  dated  at  the  close  of  March, 
1839.  It  told  his  friend  that  the  portrait  of  Savonarola  which  he 
had  sent  was  safely  lodged  at  Keswick  :  spoke  of  an  epitaph  for  a 
proposed  monument  to  Chatterton  ;  and  made  another  announcement, 
for  which  the  proper  place  will  shortly  present  itself.  His  wife  Edith 
had  died  two  years  before,  having  been  for  many  previous  years  dead 
to  him  ;  but,  long  as  the  event  had  been  looked  for,  it  fell  heavily  at 
last,  and  it  was  to  help  in  bringing  back  some  shadow  of  his  wonted 
cheerfulness  that  a  little  excursion  had  been  projected  in  the  autumn 
of  1838  ;  when  his  old  friends,  Kenyon,  Senhouse,  and  Crabb  Rob- 
inson, accompanied  him  and  his  son  to  Paris,  through  Normandy, 
Brittany,  and  a  part  of  Louvaine.  "  We  made  a  prosperous  journey," 
wrote  Kenyon  to  Landor ;  "  good  weather,  good  roads,  good  temper 
throughout.  We  travelled  five  weeks,  did  all  we  had  intended,  and 
reached  Paris  on  the  day  we  proposed.  The  only  drawback  on  our 
journey  was  that  Southey's  spirits  were  not  up  to  the  mark,  except 
occasionally,  when  we  passed  through  the  country  of  Joan  of  Arc ; 
and  that,  not  having  cultivated  catholic  tastes,  pictures,  statues, 
and  streets  have  not  much  charm  for  him.  We  separated  at  Paris, 
which  Southey  declares  he  will  never  enter  again,  and  which  I  had 
hardly  the  heart  to  quit  after  a  month's  stay."  Kenyon's  letter 
closed  with  a  whisper  of  an  expected  marriage  of  one  of  the  travelling 
party,  neither  himself,  nor  Crabb,  nor  Cuthbert,  nor  Senhouse  ;  but 
it  was  not  a  thing  to  talk  about  till  more  assured.  "  Though  a  very 
rational  match,  you  heretic  !  " 

The  news  being  at  first  not  a  little  startling  to  Landor,  the  same 
kind-hearted  correspondent  hastened  to  reconcile  his  thoughts  to  his 
friend.  It  was  no  foolish  doting,  he  assured  him,  no  probable  or  even 
possible  intrusion  of  a  second  family  among  the  first ;  but  rather  an 
act  in  its  nature  considerate  to  those  around  him.  "  I  know  no  man 
so  nobly  and  honorably  helpless  as  to  all  transactions  of  this  world, 
all  its  butcherings  and  bakings  and  bankings  and  fendings  for  him- 
self (out  of  a  library),  as  Southey;  and  his  daughters,  I  am  sure, 
could  never  quit  him  if  the  consequence  were  a  solitary  life  for  him. 
Alone,  no  man  woidd  be  so  pitiable  ;  and  altogether,  if  a  man  is  to 
marry  again,  I  should  think  this  a  wise  match.  Never  suspecting 
that  he  would  ever  do  such  a  thing  however,  I  asked  him  the  other 
day  whether  he  had  approved  or  disapproved  the  marriage  of  his  uncle 
Hill,  who  took  a  wife  at  sixty.  He  said,  /  approved  it."  Kenyon 
added  something  as  to  the  lady  ;  naming  her  age,  her  frail  health,  and 
her  unconquerable  spirit.  He  had  himself  been  able  to  judge  of  her 
courage  and  high-mindedness  by  a  truly  Spartan  letter  of  hers  which 


JET.  6I-S2.1  DEATH    OF    SOUTHEY.  557 

Southey  had  shown  him  many  years  ago.  "  It  was  in  the  time  of  the 
stack-burnings,  and  never  was  bitter  contempt  for  what  she  esteemed 
a  cowardly  generation  of  magistrates  more  strongly  expressed  than 
by  Caroline  Bowles.  Southey  told  me  too  that  in  her  district  they 
had  nominated  her  for  constable,  hoping  that  she  would  draw  off. 
No  such  thing.  She  offered  to  serve,  but  they  could  not  for  shame 
swear  in  a  woman.  Yet  her  writings  (for,  although  you  and  I  in  our 
ignorance  do  not  know  her  works,  she  is  an  authoress)  are  full  of 
beauty,  tenderness,  and  feminine  feeling ;  as  her  life,  I  doubt  not,  has 
also  been.  She  has  for  years  been  a  great  friend  of  Southey's,  and 
he  has  rarely  come  south  without  paying  her  a  visit."  The  impres- 
sion thus  conveyed  to  Landor  determined  the  course  taken  by  him  in 
some  painful  disputes  that  followed  ;  and,  sharing  his  high  opinion  of 
some  friends  of  his  friend  to  whom  it  placed  him  for  a  time  in  an- 
tagonism, I  thought  then,  and  think  still,  that  he  was  right.  Caro- 
line Bowles  deserved  all  that  the  good  Kenyon  says  of  her,  and  she 
forfeited  none  of  her  titles  to  admiration  or  esteem  when  she  became 
Caroline  Southey.  In  genius  and  character  she  was  worthy  to  have 
inspired  an  affection  for  which  she  sacrificed  far  more  that  it  was  pos- 
sible she  could  ever  receive. 

Between  the  time  of  his  return  from  abroad  and  the  incident  of  his 
marriage,  Southey  wrote  to  a  friend  that  he  had  heard  of  Landor  during 
his  last  transit  through  London,  and  had  seen  at  Kenyon's  an  excel- 
lent portrait  of  him  by  a  young  artist  named  Fisher.  As  a  picture 
too  he  thought  it  not  less  good  than  as  a  likeness ;  though  the  same 
artist  had  also  painted  Kenyon,  and  made  him  exactly  like  the  Duke 
of  York.  This  Landor  portrait  became  the  property  of  Crabb  Rob- 
inson, by  whom  it  was  bequeathed  to  the  National  Portrait  Gallery ; 
and  characteristic  as  in  some  respects  it  is,  nor  undeserving  of 
Southey's  praise,  its  expression  is  too  fiercely  aggressive,  and,  as  Landor 
himself  used  to  say,  its  color  too  like  a  dragon's  belly,  to  be  entirely 
agreeable  or  satisfactory.  It  certainly  had  more  in  it  of  the  opening 
than  of  the  closing  lines  of  the  little  poem  which  Landor,  during  a 
visit  at  this  time  made  to  me,  addressed  to  its  painter. 

"  Conceal  not  Time's  misdeeds,  but  on  my  brow 

Retrace  his  mark : 
Let  the  retiring  hair  be  silvery  now 

That  once  was  dark : 
Eyes  that  reflected  images  too  bright 

Let  clouds  o'ercast, 
And  from  the  tablet  be  abolisht  quite 

The  cheerful  past. 
Yet  Care's  deep  lines  should  one  from  wakened  Mirth 

Steal  softly  o'er, 
Perhaps  on  me  the  fairest  of  the  earth 

May  glance  once  more." 

Not  many  days  later,  in  March,  1839,  he  received  the  letter  written 
by  Southey  from  the  house  of  Caroline  Bowles  at  Buckland,  already 
adverted  to,  and  for  which  Kenyon  had  prepared  him.     "  Southey 


558  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATII.  ^is^s?"' 

has  written,"  he  said.  "  He  tells  me  of  his  intended  marriage  :  that 
he  has  known  the  lady  for  twenty  years  ;  that  there  is  a  just  propor- 
tion between  their  ages;  and  that  having  but  one  daughter  single, 
and  being  obliged  to  leave  her  frequently,  she  wants  a  friend  and 
guide  at  home.  Nothing  is  more  reasonable,  nothing  more  consider- 
ate and  kind.  Love  has  often  made  other  wise  men  less  wise,  and 
sometimes  other  good  men  less  good  :  but  never  Southey."  The 
marriage  followed  within  a  few  days  ;  then,  a  brief  interval  before 
the  return  to  Keswick  ;  and  then,  the  mournful  close.  Of  the  wisest 
of  our  human  plans  and  designings  the  issues  are  not  ours.  The 
very  day  that  joined  newly  wedded  wife  and  husband  on  the  thresh- 
old of  their  Cumberland  home,  witnessed  the  close  on  earth  of  all 
that  was  happy  in  their  loving  intercourse.  The  tragedy  is  to  be 
written  in  other  words  than  mine.* 

"  Come,  friend!  true  friend!  join  hands  with  me,  he  said. 
Join  hand  and  heart  for  this  life's  latest  stage, 
And  that  to  come  unending.     I  engage, 
God  being  gracious  to  me,  as  we  tread 
The  dim  descent,  to  lie  to  thee  instead 
Of  all  thou  leav'st  for  my  sake !     On  our  way, 
If  not  with  flowers  and  summer  sunshine  gay, 
Soft  light  yet  lingers,  and  the  fadeless  hue 
Of  the  Green  Holly.     Be  of  courage !     Come ! 
Thou  shalt  find  friends,  fear  not:  warm,  loving,  true, 
All  who  love  me.  —  He  said,  and  to  his  home 
Brought  me.     Then  sank,  a  stricken  man.  .  .  . 

Before  his  consciousness  departed,  he  had  received  and  read  Lan- 
der's last  letter  to  him,  assuring  him  of  gratitude  and  affection  unal- 
terable. "  God,  who  has  bestowed  on  you  so  many  blessings,  and 
now  the  greatest  of  all  in  that  admirable  woman  who  watches  over 
ymi  like  a  guardian  angel,  will  never  let  you  be  forgotten  even  by  the 
least  worthy  of  your  friends;  and  will  vouchsafe  to  you  at  last,  I 
hope  and  trust,  such  blessings  as  neither  friendship  nor  health  itself 
is  sufficient  to  afford.  If  any  man  living  is  ardent  in  his  wishes  for 
your  welfare,  I  am  :  whose  few  and  almost  worthless  merits  your  gen- 
erous heart  has  always  overvalued,  and  whose  infinite  and  great 
faults  it  has  been  too  ready  to  overlook.  I  will  write  to  you  often, 
now  I  learn  that  I  may  do  it  inoffensively  ;  well  remembering  that 
among  the  names  you  have  exalted  is  Walter  Landob."  But,  for  a 
little  while,  still  the  mind  was  to  shine  and  be  visible  above  the  mists 
and  dimness  creeping  over  it.  "My  and  your  dear  friend,"  wrote 
Mrs.  Southey,  "thanks  you  for  your  letter.  But,  alas  !  he  no  longer 
says,  I  will  write  soon  to  Landor  ;  for  when  I  proposed  to  answer  in 
his  stead,  he  said,  Yes,  yes,  do  so,  pray  do.  Landor  has  indeed  a 
true  regard  for  me."  "  You  are  often  with  him  still  in  spirit,"  she 
resumed  after  a  few  days  ;  "his  affectionate  remembrance  of  you  is 

*  The  lines  that  follow  are  incomplete,  hut  all  that  ran  here  he  used;  and  are  onlv 
so  used  in  compliance  with  the  injunction  of  Landor,  from  whose  handwriting,  though 
not  of  his  composition,  I  print  them.  The  original,  in  the  writer's  own  hand,  had  fee- 
fore  been  sent  to  me. 


MT.  61-82.]  DEATH    OF    SOUTHEY.  559 

unfading.  The  volume  of  poetry  still  oftenest  in  his  hands  is  Gehir. 
It  lived  upon  the  sofa  with  us  all  last  week  ;  and  he  often  exclaimed 
in  delight,  struck  as  by  a  first  reading  with  something  that  charmed 
him,  Why,  what  a  poem  this  is  !  If  at  such  times  you  could  see 
him,  you  would  still  see  the  glorious  mind  all  undimmed  in  .those 
lustrous  eyes  of  his.  He  took  up  his  Book  of  the  Church  to-day,  and, 
turning  its  leaves  over  and  over,  looked  up  at  me  and  said,  Well, 
thank  God,  I  have  written  a  book  that  may  do  good  to  somebody." 
Not  for  long  were  even  such  fitful  glimpses  of  the  fast-fading  intelli- 
gence discernible  ;  but  for  so  long  the  recollection  of  his  friend  Wal- 
ter Landor  remained.  "  It  is  very  seldom  now,"  wrote  Mrs.  Southey 
on  the  24th  of  December,  1841,  "that  he  ever  names  any  person: 
but  this  morning,  before  he  left  his  bed,  I  heard  him  repeating  softly 
to  himself,  Landor,  ay,  Landor."  For  many  months  beyond  that 
Christmas  eve  life  remained,  but  without  that  which  alone  makes  it 
precious ;  and  it  was  not  until  the  22d  of  March,  1843,  Landor  heard 
that  at  8  o'clock  on  the  previous  morning  his  friend  had  passed  away. 
On  that  day  he  wrote  to  me.  "  Southey's  death  is  announced  to  me 
this  morning.  My  reverence  for  his  purity  of  soul,  my  grateful  esti- 
mation of  his  affection  towards  me,  are  not  to  be  expressed  in  words. 
But  it  would  grieve  me  to  think  that  any  other  man  should  have 
testified  to  the  world  regret  at  losing  him,  before  I  had  done  it." 
These  lines  accompanied  the  letter. 

Not  the  last  struggles  of  the  Sun, 
Precipitated  from  his  golden  throne, 
Hold  darkling  mortals  in  sublime  suspense; 

But  the  calm  exod  of  a  man 

Nearer,  though  high  above,  who  ran 
The  race  we  run,  —  now  Heaven  recalls  him  hence. 

Thus,  0  thou  pure  of  earthly  taint! 
Thus,  0  my  Southey !  poet,  sage,  and  saint ! 
Thou,  after  saddest  silence,  art  removed. 

What  voice  in  anguish  can  we  raise  ? 

Thee  would  we,  need  we,  dare  we,  praise  ? 
God  now  does  that  .  .  .  the  God  thy  whole  heart  loved. 

It  only  remains  to  mention  the  course  and  character  of  the  efforts 
that  followed  to  raise  a  fitting  memorial  of  this  famous  man.  With 
characteristic  feeling  he  had  himself  desired  a  simple  marble  slab  in 
Redefine  Church,  bearing  upon  it  his  favorite  Daniell's  proud  yet 
modest  lines  :  — 

"  I  know  I  shall  be  read  among  the  rest 
So  long  as  men  speak  English;  and  so  long 
As  verse  and  virtue  shall  be  in  request, 
Or  grace  to  honest  industry  belong." 

But  many  difficxilties  were  presented  to  this  ;  and,  in  the  end,  a  me- 
morial was  proposed  that  should  take  the  form  of  a  bust  by  Baily, 
with  an  inscription  underneath,  to  which  Landor  at  once  sent  twenty 


5 GO  TWEXTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  lB?£*  X"' 

pounds  and  the  inscription.     The  first  was  taken,  but  not  the  last ;  * 
which  may  therefore  find  a  place  here. 

ROBERT   SOL'THEY,    BORN   IN    BRISTOL,   OCTOBER  4,    1774; 
DIED   IN    KESWICK,    MARCH   21,  1S43. 

IN   MAINTAINING   THE   INSTITUTIONS   OF   HIS   COUNTRY 

HE   WAS   CONSTANT,    ZEALOUS,   AND    DISINTERESTED. 

IN    DOMESTIC    LITE    HE    WAS    LOVING    AND   BELOVED. 

HIS    FRIENDSHIPS    WERE   FOB   LIKE,    AND   LONGER. 

IN   CRITICISM,    IN    DIALOGUE,    IN    BIOGRAPHY,   IN    HISTORY, 

HE    WAS   THE   PUREST   WRITER   OF   HIS   AGE; 

IN  THALABA,    KEHAMA,    AND   RODERICK,   THE   MOST   INVENTIVE  POET: 

IN   LIGHTER   COMPOSITIONS   THE    MOST   DIVERSIFIED. 

RARELY    HATH   ANY    AUTHOR   BEEN    SO    EXEMPT 

FROM    THE   MALADIES   OF    EMULATION; 

RARELY   ANY    STUDIOUS   MAN    SO    READY    TO  ASSIST   THE   STUDIOUS, 

TO    RAISE   THEIR   REPUTATION   AND   TO   PROMOTE   THEIR   FORTUNES. 

WONDER    NOT  THEN,    O   STRANGER,   THAT   OUR   FELLOW-CITIZEN 

HATH    LEFT   AMONG   US  THE    RESOLUTION   TO   COMMEMORATE, 

AND,    UNDER   THE   SAME   GOOD    PROVIDENCE   WHICH    GUIDED   HIM, 

THE   EARNEST    WISH    TO   IMITATE   HIS   VIRTUES. 

Other  marl >le  memorials  there  were  too ;  but  one  less  perishable 
remained  to  be  erected,  which  led  to  divisions  among  those  who  had 
most  loved  and  been  beloved  by  South ey.  Perhaps  there  never  ex- 
isted, for  a  suitable  and  enduring  as  well  as  a  delightful  monument 
to  the  memory  of  a  great  author,  such  materials  as  in  this  case  were 
afforded  by  his  own  letters ;  but,  upon  the  question  to  whom  they 
should  be  intrusted  so  much  dispute  arose,  that  the  writer  of  the 
noble  poem  of  Philip  van  Artevelde,  whom  all  should  have  desired  to 
select,  and  whom  Southey  during  life  had  not  only  chosen  to  be  his 
executor  with  his  brother,  but  had  singled  out  as  the  one  man  living 
of  a  vounger  generation  whom  he  had  taken  into  his  heart  of  hearts, 
had  no  alternative  but  to  impose  silence  on  himself,  and  leave  the 
task  to  others.  Then  was  lost  to  us  a  book  that  might  worthily  have 
banded  down  to  later  generations  a  conspicuous  example  of  some  of 
the  highest  qualities  that  have  adorned  the  profession  of  literature  in 
England.  No  one  more  than  Landor  deplored  this,  though  in  the 
objections  which  mainly  brought  it  about  he  had  taken  unavoidable 
part  ;  and  he  had  certainly  no  cause  to  regret  that  an  opinion  which 
he  shared  with  the  brother  of  Southey  should  have  brought  him  also 
to  the  side  of  Southey's  son-in-law,  Mr.  Wood  Warter,  the  accom- 
plished man  by  whose  careful  editorship  of  his  father-in-law's  unpub- 
lished writings  a  part  at  least  of  the  literary  debt  due  to  his  memory 
was  very  shortly  to  be  discharged.  To  Southey's  son  was  at  last  in- 
trusted bis  father's  "  life  and  letters." 

One  of  the  letters,  written  upon  Marmion,  which  had  passed  into 
the  exclusive  possession  of  Lockhart,  has  been  brought  into  promi- 

*  "Whether  it  is  placed  under  the  host,"  he  wrote  to  the  Bristol  committee,  "  is  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  me.  .  .  .  They  who  care  so  little  for  the  most  illustrious  of 
their  townsmen  would  be  worse  fools  than  theyare  if  they  cared  for  me.  Inscriptionem 
civi  optimo  meritam  atque  dignam  cives  ignavissimi  abdendam  censuerunt." 


JET.  61-82.]  DEATH    OF    SOUTHEY.  561 

nence  in  the  Life  of  Scott.  Towards  its  close,  says  Lockhart,  "  im- 
mediately after  mentioning  a  princely  act  of  generosity,  on  the  part 
of  the  writer's  friend  Mr.  Landor,  to  a  brother  poet,  he  has  a  noble 
sentence  which  I  hope  to  be  pardoned  for  extracting,  as  equally  appli- 
cable to  his  own  character  and  that  of  the  man  he  was  addressing. 
'  Great  poets  have  no  envy.  Little  ones  are  full  of  it.  I  doubt 
whether  any  man  ever  criticised  a  good  poem  maliciously  who  had 
not  written  a  bad  one  himself.' "  The  reference  was  to  Jeffrey  :  but 
death  is  a  great  reconciler ;  and,  in  the  letter  which  old  Cottle  had 
written  to  Landor  while  the  subscription  for  the  Bristol  monument 
was  in  progress,  after  mentioning  that  the  bishop  of  the  diocese 
would  give  when  he  saw  what  others  gave,  that  the  dean  meant 
politely  to  remit  the  cathedral  charges,  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  thought 
the  concern  too  local  but  meant  to  subscribe,  and  that  Lord  Brougham 
was  only  too  eager  to  do  honor  to  his  "  old  friend,"  —  he  had  taken 
pains  to  add  that  Lord  Jeffrey,  above  all  the  rest,  had  behaved  admir- 
ably. He  had  at  once  requested  his  name  to  be  inserted  for  ten 
pounds,  and  had  characterized  Southey  as  one  of  the  best  writers 
and  most  amiable  and  estimable  men  of  our  generation  :  "  I  do  not 
know,"  he  also  wrote  at  the  time  to  another  promoter  of  the  sub- 
scription, "  into  whose  keeping  the  representative  dignity  of  litera- 
ture, and  the  jealous  care  for  its  interests,  are  now  to  go." 

Jeffrey  there  struck  the  right  chord.  Not  more  by  the  astonish- 
ing variety  of  the  studies  which  were  to  him  the  business,  exercise^ 
and  recreation  of  a  long  and  blameless  life,  than  by  excellence  of 
achievement  in  all,  Southey  was  the  representative  man  of  letters 
of  his  day ;  and  the  subject  to  which  Jeffrey  refers,  the  position  and 
the  claims  of  writers  by  profession,  had  engaged  his  earliest  thoughts, 
as  it  was  among  those  that  occupied  his  latest.  One  of  the  last  to 
which  he  gave  expression,  for  example,  was  his  bitter  dislike  and  con- 
tempt for  that  sort  of  support  which  the  Literary  Fund  bestowed 
upon  such  men,  "  relieving  them  like  paupers,  and  waiting  till  they 
become  paupers  before  any  relief  is  bestowed."  One  of  his  latest 
public  appeals,  in  a  like  spirit,  was  to  claim  the  only  true  help  for 
the  writer,  which  consists  in  obtaining  for  him  his  own,  by  juster 
legislative  arrangements  as  to  copyright ;  and  on  the  very  eve  of  the 
refusal  of  the  baronetcy  which  Peel  would  have  bestowed  upon  him- 
self, he  declared  that  the  State  had  no  such  efficient  servants  as  men 
of  genius,  and  none  who  had  higher  or  better  title  to  all  its  honors 
and  rewards. 

Two  more  subjects  connected  with  his  last  years,  hardly  known  in 
connection  with  him,  but  which  many  personal  associations  make 
memorable  to  me,  will  further  show  how  strongly  and  steadily  the 
fire  that  lighted  his  youth  had  survived  to  sustain  and  inspire  his 
age.  The  social  reforms  which  have  endeared  to*  the  working  millions 
of  England  the  name  of  Lord  Shaftesbury,  were  the  subject  of  his 
last,  almost  daily,  correspondence  with  Lord  Ashley  during  the  days 

36 


5G2  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  *B?a$-]£1' 

of  the  agitation  of  political  reform  ;  and  the  last  great  book  pub- 
lished in  his  lifetime,  wherein  he  recognized  at  once  the  presence  of  a 
new  literary  potentate,  was  Carlyle's  French  Revolution.  Never  had 
he  read  a  history,  he  declared,  which  interested  him  so  much ;  and 
doubtless  all  the  more  because  of  the  emotion  which  the  tremendous 
course  of  events  it  describes  had  excited  in  him,  when,  in  his  own 
and  Landor's  youth,  he  read  of  them  day  by  day.  Not  a  few  opin- 
ions, indeed,  he  found  rising  to  the  surface  in  that  book  to  which  he 
hardly  knew  what  reception  to  give ;  but  with  wisdom  and  with  feel- 
ing he  found  it  to  be  full  to  overflowing,  nor  could  he  rest  satisfied 
till  he  had  seen  and  spoken  with  the  author. 

Let  me  not  close  without  a  brief  record  of  some  yet  unpublished 
correspondence  of  this  delightful  letter-writer  :  — 

MRS.    SOUTHEY    TO    LANDOR  :    10TH    APRIL,    1844. 

"  I  have  had  occasion  lately,  with  a  view  to  set  at  rest  some  uncertainty 
about  a  date,  to  venture  on  a  task  hardly  less  trying  than  the  opening  of  a 
sepulchre.  With  a  desperate  hand  I  opened  the  receptacle  of  his  letters,  — 
of  our  twenty  years'  correspondence  !  wherein  '  he  being  dead  yet  speaketh.' 
Once  having  plunged  into  it,  there  was  no  withdrawing;  but  neither  is  it  a 
thing  to  talk  of.  My  sole  motive  for  thus  naming  it  is,  that  having  hit  upon 
one  passage  (among  many  others)  that  I  thought  could  not  fail  to  touch  and 
please  you,  I  selected  and  will  transcribe  it  for  you.  The  letter  from  which 
I  transcribe  bears  date  November  13,  1824. 

"  '  Lander  lias  sent  over  another  volume  of  Conversations  to  the  press.  Differing  as  I 
do  from  him  in  constitutional  temper  and  in  some  serious  opinions,  he  is  yet  of  all  men 
living  the  one  with  whom  I  feel  the  most  entire  and  cordial  sympathy  of  heart 
and  mind.  Were  I  a  single  man,  I  should  think  the  pleasure  of  a  week's  abode  with 
him  cheaply  purchased  by  a  journey  to  Florence,  though  pilgrim-like  the  whole  way 
were  to  be  performed  on  foot.' 

"  If  you  survive  me,  dear  Mr.  Landor,  you  will  probably  see  the  whole 
of  this  precious  series,  in  which  (I  do  not  fear  to  say  it)  there  will  be 
more  of  deep  and  touching  interest,  for  all  but  the  learned  and  political 
reader,  than  in  any  other  portions  of  his  correspondence.  His  sensitive 
nature  eould  never  have  poured  out  its  feelings  so  freely  to  any  but  a 
woman,  and  that  woman  one  whom  he  esteemed  enough  to  make  her  the 
companion  of  those  latter  days  which  he  humbly  hoped  would  have  been 
bright  with  sunset  glory." 

In  the  same  letter  there  is  mention  of  a  bust  executed  for  Doctor 
Soutney  by  Mr.  Lough,  which  had  deeply  affected  her;  as  it  will, 
when  seen,  probably  affect  all  to  whom  the  living  face  was  known. 
The  soul  is  there  ;  and,  of  the  three  marble  faces  which  I  have  my- 
self examined,  in  Crossthwaite  Church  by  the  same  artist,  and  by 
others  in  Westminster  Abbey  and  in  Bristol  Cathedral,  it  seems  to  me 
incomparably  the  best.  In  Crossthwaite,  Lough's  full-length  recum- 
bent marble  figure  almost  fills  the  little  church  it  lies  in  ;  but  I  was 
more  interested  by  the  modest  grave  in  the  churchyard  facing  Skid- 
daw  and  Saddleback,  with  the  Glaramara  range  behind  forming  a 
glorious  belt  round  the  lake.     A  worthy  resting-place,  I  thought,  for 


yET.  61-82.]  LAST    SERIES    OP    CONVERSATIONS.  563 

a  great  and  good  man.  Nor  less  interesting  to  me  was  Wordsworth's 
grave  at  Grasmere,  which  I  visited  later  in  the  day,  overshadowed  by 
yews,  and  with  the  Rothay  gushing  past.  And  so  they  lie,  two  men 
whom  true  Englishmen  should  never  cease  to  honor,  by  Derwent 
Lake  and  Grasmere  Springs, 

Serene  creators  of  immortal  things, 
now  themselves  immortal. 

VII.    LAST   SERIES   OF   CONVERSATIONS,  AND  SOME  LETTERS. 

The  entire  number  of  new  Conversations  added  to  the  old  during  the 
twenty-one  years  now  under  description,  written  before  Landor's  return 
to  Italy,  and  excluding  only  the  five  which  belong  to  the  last  six  years 
of  his  life,  were  thirty-nine  ;  and  the  additional  subjects  may  here  be 
named.  Eighteen  belonged  to  the  domain  of  modern  foreign  politics, 
and  of  these  I  will  give  little  more  than  the  titles.  They  were  Bugeaud 
and  an  Arab  chieftain  on  the  eve  of  the  marshal's  massacre  in  Algeria  ; 
—  Talleyrand  at  his  last  confession  to  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  ;  —  the 
Queen  of  Tahiti,  the  English  consul  Pritchard,  Louis  Philippe's  envoy 
de  Mitrailles,  and  the  French  officers  and  sailors  who  were  present 
when  the  envoy  struck  the  Queen  in  the  face  ; — Louis  XVIII.  and 
Talleyrand  conversing  on  the  genius  of  Wellington,  as  to  whom  it  is 
finely  said  that  his  loftiest  lines  of  Torres  Vedras,  which  no  enemy 
dared  assail  throughout  their  whole  extent,  were  his  firmness,  his 
moderation,  and  his  probity ;  that  these  placed  him  more  opposite  to 
Napoleon  than  he  stood  in  the  field  of  Waterloo  ;  that  no  man  so  little 
beloved  was  ever  so  well  obeyed ;  and  that  there  was  not  a  man  in 
England  of  either  party,  citizen  or  soldier,  who  would  not  rather  die 
than  see  him  disgraced  ;  —  Thiers  talking  to  Lamartine  of  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  House  of  Orleans ;  —  Louis  Philippe  expounding  to 
Guizot  the  moral  of  the  Spanish  marriages  ;  —  Antonelli  and  Gemeau 
conversing  twice  on  the  Occupation  of  Rome  ;  —  President  Louis  Na- 
poleon Characterizing  to  M.  de  Mole  the  policy  of  his  uncle  ;  —  King 
Carlo-Alberto  discussing  with  the  Duchess  Belgioiso  the  prospects  of 
Italy,  and  local  jealousies  in  the  way  of  unity  ;  —  Larochejaquelin  re- 
ceiving Beranger  before  the  second  Empire  ;  —  Garibaldi  giving  honor 
to  Mazzini  for  the  defence  of  Rome  ;  —  three  dialogues  of  Nicholas  and 
Nesselrode  on  the  policy  of  the  Crimean  War ;  —  the  Archbishop  of 
Florence  sentencing  for  heresy  the  Bible-reading  family  of  Francesco 
Madiai ;  —  and  two  final  dialogues  on  the  contentions  of  religion,  con- 
tributed by  Antonelli  and  Pio  Nono,  and  by  brothers  Martin  and  Jack 
of  the  family  of  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick.  "  Both  parties,"  says  Martin, 
"  call  themselves  catholic,  which  neither  is  ;  nor  indeed,  my  dear  Jack, 
is  it  desirable  that  either  should  be.  Every  sect  is  a  moral  check  on 
its  neighbor.  Competition  is  as  wholesome  in  religion  as  in  commerce. 
We  must  bid  high  for  heaven  ;  we  must  surrender  much,  we  must 
strive  much,  we  must  suffer  much ;  we  must  make  way  for  others,  in 


5G4  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^8™  57"' 

order  that  in  our  turn  we  may  succeed.  There  is  but  One  Guide.  "We 
know  him  by  the  gentleness  of  his  voice,  by  the  serenity  of  his  coun- 
tenance, by  the  wounded  in  spirit  who  are  clinging  to  his  knees,  by 
the  children  whom  he  hath  called  to  him,  and  by  the  disciples  in 
whose  poverty  he  hath  shared." 

Of  subjects  more  strictly  biographical  there  were  four.  The  speakers 
were,  Eldon  and  his  grandson  Encombe,  played  off  against  each  other 
with  exquisite  fooling  ;  Wellington  and  Inglis  after  the  Somnauth  proc- 
lamation of  Lord  Ellenborough,  where  it  is  shown  how  small  was  the 
fear  of  Juggernaut  coming  down  St.  James's  Street :  Rom  illy  *  and  Wil- 
berforce  talking  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave-trade ;  and  Wyndham 
and  Sheridan  in  discussion  about  the  Irish  Church,  Sheridan  maintain- 
ing that  the  only  reform  of  her  feasible  was  to  abolish  her  bishops  and 
endowments,  sell  the  whole  of  her  lands,  and  devote  all  the  proceeds 
in  a  just  proportion  between  Papal  and  Protestant  communicants,  to 
the  religious  and  moral  education  of  the  people.  With  these  may  be 
named  the  imaginary  talk  of  two  others  of  the  most  illustrious  of  Eng- 
lishmen :  Blake  on  his  quarter-deck  passing  judgment  on  his  delin- 
quent brother  Humphrey ;  and  Oliver  Cromwell  with  his  Ironsides  at 
his  uncle  Sir  Oliver's  in  Hinchinbrook.  On  the  old  knight's  noteworthy 
career  perhaps  a  word  is  worth  adding  at  Landor's  suggestion.  It  did 
not  close  until  Sir  Oliver  had  reached  his  ninety -third  year,  and  it  had 
by  that  time  covered  a  space  which  included  all  the  men  of  great  genius, 
excepting  Chaucer  and  Roger  Bacon,  whom  England  up  to  this  date 
had  produced  :  not  the  Bacons  and  Shakespeares  only,  but  the  prodi- 
gious shoal  that  attended  these  leviathans  through  the  intellectual 
deep.  Raleigh,  Spenser,  Marlowe,  and  all  the  dramatists  of  Elizabeth 
and  James ;  Cromwell,  Eliot,  Milton,  Selden,  Hampden,  and  Pym  ; 
Hooker,  Taylor,  Barrow,  and  Newton ;  Hobbes,  Sidney,  Locke,  and 
Shaftesbury  ;  all  had  lived  in  some  part  or  other  of  that  single  life. 

The  Italian  subjects  were  four  :  Macchiavelli  and  Michael- Angelo  on 
the  suitability  of  Federal  Republics  for  the  government  of  Italy  ;  Titian 
and  Cornaro  on  the  glories  of  Venetian  art;  Leonora,  in  her  last  con- 
fession to  Father  Panigarola,  avowing  her  love  for  Tasso  ;  Alfieri'a  ex- 
periences of  English  literature  and  manners,  in  a  conversation  with 
Mctastasio  of  delightful  wit  and  eloquence,  which  has  elicited  on  a 
former  page  the  admiration  and  sympathy  of  Carlyle ;  and  Michael- 
Angelo  and  Vittoria  Colonna  on  the  poets  and  artists  of  elder  and  later 
Italy.  Besides  these,  there  were  two  brief  prose  poems  on  the  affect- 
ing double  marriage  of  Count  Gleichem,  and  on  the  unrewarded  ser- 
vices to  humanity  of  the  noble  English  soldier  by  whom  infanticide  in 
India  was  abolished  :  there  were  four,  to  be  named  below,  in  which 

*  Again  let  me  show  Landor's  love  for  TJomilly.  "  He  wont  into  public  life  with 
temperate  and  healthy  aspirations.  Providence,  having  blessed  him  with  domestic 
peace,  withheld  him  from  political  animosities.  He  knew  that  the  soundest  fruits  grow 
nearest  the  ground,  and  he  waited  for  the  higher  to  fall  into  his  bosom,  without  an 
effort  or  a  wish  to  seize  on  them.  Xo  man  whosoever  in  our  parliamentary  history  has 
united,  in  more  perfect  accordance  and  constancy,  pure  virtue  and  lofty  wisdom." 


MT.  6l-82.]  LAST    SERIES    OF    CONVERSATIONS.  565 

Landor  takes  personal  part,  with  Southey,  Porson,  and  Julius  Hare : 
and  four  Greek  and  Roman  conversations  completed  the  extraordinary 
catalogue.  The  speakers  in  these  last  were  Menander  and  Epicurus, 
in  two  dialogues  composed  after  the  writer's  eightieth  year,  and  not 
unworthy  of  the  exquisite  Epicurus  and  Leontion  to  which  they  are 
the  sequel ;  Epicurus  and  Metrodorus  on  the  writers  and  the  gods  of 
Greece ;  and  Asinius  Pollio  and  Licinius  Calvus  on  the  heroes  and 
histories  of  Rome.  If  to  this  list  I  were  to  add  the  subjects  also  of 
the  dialogues  written  in  verse  by  Landor,  some  already  named  and 
more  to  be  named  hereafter,  it  would  bring  up  the  number  of  his  com- 
positions-exclusively  of  this  class  to  no  less  than  one  hundred  and 
ninety  ;  in  their  mere  number  wonderful,  and  in  their  variety  as  well 
as  unity  of  treatment  still  more  memorable. 

Of  the  four  to  which  Landor  contributes  notices  of  personal  opin- 
ion I  am  now  to  speak ;  and  first  of  that  in  which  Southey  and  Por- 
son are  interlocutors.  Landor's  faith  in  Wordsworth  had  again  been 
rudely  shaken  by  his  unyielding  attitude  in  the  Southey  family  dis- 
pute, and  he  had  probably  never  felt  less  kindly  to  the  great  poet 
than  during  the  final  illness  of  their  common  friend.  Hence,  there- 
fore, taking  him  for  the  subject  of  a  second  dialogue  between  Porson 
and  Southey  which  was  to  comprise  what  he  thought  of  the  later 
English  poets,  he  is  led  to  dwell  less  on  the  merits  than  on  the  de- 
fects of  the  author  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  Even  from  Southey  is 
drawn  the  admission  of  his  friend's  weakness  for  reciting  his  own 
poetry,  which  yet  his  friend  himself  might  have  forgiven  for  the  ex- 
quisite truth  of  the  description  of  it.  "  He  delivers  them  with  such 
a  summer  murmur  of  fostering  modulation  as  would  perfectly  delight 
you."  But  he  is  not  the  more  inclined  to  spare  his  critics.  In  this, 
as  in  the  first  Porson  dialogue,  the  critics  of  poetry  are  sharply 
handled ;  and  as  true  in  its  application  now,  as  it  was  then,  is  what 
is  said  of  their  fashion  of  dandling  their  favorite  for  the  time,  and 
never  letting  him  off  their  knee,  feeding  him  to  bursting  with  their 
curds-and-whey,  while  any  other  "  they  warn  off  the  premises,  and 
will  give  him  neither  a  crust  nor  a  crumb,  until  they  hear  he  has 
succeeded  to  a  large  estate  in  popularity,  with  plenty  of  dependants." 
Against  all  that  is  thus  grudging  and  ungenerous,  there  is  eloquent 
protest ;  from  which  as  earnestly,  but  whether  as  truly  may  be 
doubted,  Southey  puts  in  a  claim  of  exemption  for  genius  itself, 
which  is  at  least  in  keeping  with  the  speaker's  character.  "  The 
curse  of  quarrelsomeness,  of  hand  against  every  man,  wras  inflicted 
on  the  children  of  the  desert,  not  on  those  who  pastured  their  flocks 
on  the  fertile  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  or  contemplated  the  heavens 
from  the  elevated  ranges  of  Chaldsea."  Alas  that  experience  should 
ever  seem  adverse  to  this  !  but  it  is  only  too  certain  that  the  large 
estate  in  popularity,  long  and  wearily  expected,  does  not  therefore 
bring  content  to  its  inheritor ;  and  that  poets  of  the  highest  rank 
will  not  be  found  readier  to  do  justice  to  others  because  they  have 
had  to  wait  long  for  justice  to  themselves. 


56G  TWEXTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  tB%#-™ 

There  is  much  besides  very  truly  said  in  this  dialogue  as  to  Eng- 
lish poets  of  the  second  class.  Delightful  praise  is  given  to  Cowper  ; 
Ryron  and  Scott  are  well  discriminated,  the  last  with  a  hearty  cor- 
diality ;  and,  where  the  greater  masters  are  incidentally  named,  lan- 
guage not  inferior  to  their  own  arises  to  do  them  homage.  "  A  great 
poet  represents  a  great  portion  of  the  human  race.  Nature  delegated 
to  Shakespeare  the  interests  and  direction  of  the  whole.  To  Milton 
was  given  a  smaller  part,  but  with  plenary  power  over  it ;  and  such 
fervor  and  majesty  of  eloquence  was  bestowed  on  him  as  on  no  other 
mortal  in  any  age."  At  this  point,  by  an  easy  suggestion  of  kindred 
topics,  the  talk  is  drawn  off  by  Person  to  Demosthenes  in  that  natural 
way  which  is  the  charm  of  all  the  dialogues,  and  which  relieves  with 
the  freedom  of  conversation  their  most  elaborate  passages.  But 
when  the  greatness  of  the  old  Greek  orator,  as  well  as  its  limit,  has 
been  expressed  after  its  kind,  Southey  has  an  illustration  at  hand  to 
avouch  the  yet  superior  greatness  of  the  English  poet  and  Puritan. 
"  Hercules  killed  robbers  and  ravishers  with  his  knotted  club  ;  he 
cleansed  also  royal  stables  by  turning  whole  rivers  into  them  :  Apollo, 
with  no  labor  or  effort,  overcame  the  Python  ;  brought  round  him, 
in  the  full  accordance  of  harmony,  all  the  Muses  ;  and  illuminated 
with  his  sole  splendor  the  universal  world."  With  one  more  passage 
I  will  quit  this  dialogue.  It  occurs  where  exaggerated  and  indis- 
criminating  judgments  of  the  classics  are  explained  by  the  tendency 
of  us  all,  more  or  less,  to  value  things  proportionally  to  the  trouble 
they  have  given  us  in  the  acquisition  ;  and  it  is  shown  that  this  re- 
mark has  wider  application. 

"  He  who  has  accumulated  by  a  laborious  life  more  than  a  sufficiency  for 
its  wants  and  comforts,  turns  his  attention  to  the  matter  gamed,  oftentimes 
without  a  speculation  at  the  purposes  to  which  he  might  apply  it.  The 
man  who  early  in  the  day  has  overcome,  by  vigilance  and  restraint,  the 
strong  impulses  of  his  blood  toward  intemperance,  falls  not  into  it  after,  but 
stands  composed  and  complacent  upon  the  cool  clear  eminence,  and  hears 
within  himself,  amid  the  calm  he  has  created,  the  tuneful  pa?an  of  a  godlike 
victory.  Yet  he  loves  the  Virtue  more  because  he  fought  for  her  than  be- 
cause she  crowned  him." 

In  the  three  other  conversations  wherein  Landor,  Southey,  and 
Julius  Hare  were  interlocutors,  Milton  continued  to  receive  critical 
treatment  of  the  most  striking  kind  :  all  his  works,  and  eminently 
bis  Latin  poems,  being  laid  under  contribution  for  subjects  and  illus- 
tration, and  readings  frequently  suggested  that  add  unexpected  beau- 
ties to  even  bis  noblest  verse.  An  instance  has  been  cited  for  admi- 
ration by  De  Quincey,  at  the  line  of  the  Agonistes  which  depicts 
Samson  in  his  fall  :  — 

"  \-k  for  this  groat  deliverer  now,  and  find  him   • 
Eyeless,  in  Gaza,  at  (he  mill,  roith  slaves  "  ; 

where,   by  the  comma   which   Landor  would  thrice  repeat,  Samson's 
agony  is  the  more  vividly  presented  to  us,  under  blindness,  inability 


JET.  6l-82.]  NOTES    OUT    OF    LETTERS.  567 

of  further  triumph  over  enemies,  toil  for  bread,  and  association  with 
slaves,  in  all  the  accumulated  aggravation  of  its  unendurable  misery. 
"  A  rib  of  Shakespeare  would  have  made  a  Milton,"  says  Landor  in 
conclusion  ;  ''the  same  portion  of  Milton,  all  poets  born  ever  since." 

The  talk  with  Julius  Hare  reintroduces  Wordsworth,  from  whom, 
often  and  often  as  Landor  takes  leave,  he  is  but  the  more  and  more 
loath  to  depart ;  and  happily  only  quits  him  at  last  with  wise  and 
reconciling  words.  He  would  have  all  respect,  all  reverence  even, 
short  of  worship,  paid  him  ;  speaks  with  delight  of  the  series  of  en- 
chanting idyls  into  which  the  Excursion  would  subdivide,  with  help 
of  a  judicious  enclosure  act  ;  places  Virgil  and  Theocritus  below  him 
for  everlasting  freshness  of  description  ;  and  admits  that  no  man  has 
ever  had  such  mastery  over  Nature  in  her  profoundest  relations  to 
humanity.  This  includes  more  than  Landor  meant  to  concede,  but 
is  neither  less  nor  more  than  true.  It  puts  Wordsworth,  where  I 
believe  his  just  place  to  be,  above  every  other  poet  of  his  century. 
No  effect  comparable  in  its  kind  to  that  which  his  writings  made  and 
bequeathed,  no  such  fruits  of  spiritual  insight  applicable  not  to  his 
own  time  only,  but  to  coming  times  and  changes  with  which  he  would 
himself  have  had  small  sympathy,  have  attended  those  of  any  poet 
within  living  memory.  The  influence  of  his  genius  on  his  immediate 
contemporaries  has  been  surpassed  by  its  authority  over  their  suc- 
cessors, whose  ways  of  thought,  not  in  poetry  alone,  have  been  mainly 
fashioned  by  his,  and  who  seem  but  the  precursors  of  other  genera- 
tions who  will  confirm  and  extend  his  sway. 

Other  views  of  Landor's  as  to  books  and  men,  which  find  expres- 
sion in  letters  written  at  this  date  to  me,  may  properly  be  inserted 
here.  Wordsworth  and  other  kindred  subjects  will  reappear  ;  and 
the  reader  will  not  judge  hardly  in  them,  or  in  similar  detached  say- 
ings that  may  be  given  hereafter,  such  small  contradictions  or  incon- 
sistencies as  are  incident  to  the  freedom  of  friendly  correspondence. 
The  animating  spirit  is  always  the  same,  and  there  is  no  mistaking 
Landor's  voice  in  any. 

ON    A   PASSAGE    IN    COLERIDGE'S    LAY    SERMON. 

"  I  agree  with  you  that  few  men  in  our  days  have  written  more  elo- 
quently than  Coleridge  :  but  to  say  things  well  is  not  enough  for  wisdom. 
He  recommends  (and  in  a  sermon  too)  '  the  ancient  feeling  of  rank  and 
ancestry  as  a  counterbalance  to  the  commercial  spirit  now  prevalent.'  Can 
anything  be  imagined  more  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  which  all 
Sermons  ought  to  inculcate  on  the  Gospel  only ;  or  indeed  more  absurd  in 
itself?  For,  how  extremely  small  a  number  can  possibly  be  actuated  by 
'  the  ancient  feeling  of  rank  and  ancestry ' !  At  the  decease  of  Mr.  William 
Pitt,  who  ferreted  out  from  among  bales  and  brokerages,  rather  than  from 
iron  chests  and  curled-up  inventories,  whatever,  tarnisht  or  untarnisht,  had 
a  metallic  odor  and  was  heavy  in  the  hand,  there  existed  not  in  the  whole 
English  peerage  twenty-five  families  of  knightly  dignity  at  the  accession  of 
the  Tudors.  Would  Coleridge  wish  these  new  people  to  put  on  _'  ancient 
feelings,'  and  to  confound  in  their  persons  the  very  different  predicaments 
of  rank  and  ancestry  ?  " 


568  TWENTY-ONE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  ^sXw"- 


A  RENEGADE. 


"  There  is  nothing  in  the  man's  life  that  should  surprise  us.  Is  it  not 
only  too  usual  that  the  career  both  of  bar  and  Parliament  should  be  opened 
by  petulant  Sedition  and  closed  by  decorous  Fraud  ?  Barristers  have  at 
first  a  tinge  of  the  tricolor,  but  at  last  rise  with  plethoric  dignity  from  in- 
cendiaries into  judges,  and  scowl  heavily  on  the  culprits  they  have  excited 
and  led  astray." 

VULGAR   MISTAKES. 

"Coarse  manners  are  oftentimes  an  effectual  veil  to  worthless  characters. 
Nothing  is  more  commonly  mistaken  for  manliness  than  brutality.  They 
are  upright  who  are  unswayed  by  the  affections;  the  sordid  are  the  worthy ; 
chatter  is  kindness ;  lowmindedness  is  condescension.  The  French  are 
admirers  of  cruel  princes,  the  English  of  clownish.  We  all  have  our  sym- 
pathies." 

A   JUDGMENT    OF    THREE    ORATORS. 

"  I  have  often  heard  them,  Grattan  as  well  as  Pitt  and  Fox ;  and,  though 
I  might  otherwise  be  angry  with  him,  I  preferred  always  the  plain-spoken- 
ness  of  Fox,  even  wdien  hammering  repetition  upon  repetition,  to  the  sound- 
ing inanities  of  Pitt  and  the  gaudy  barbarism  of  Grattan." 

NAPOLEON. 

"  I  say  that  there  is  no  example  in  history  of  a  man  who  made  so  little  of  so 
much :  there  is  no  example  of  one  who  lost  so  many  armies,  alienated  so 
many  adherents,  exasperated  so  many  potentates,  defrauded  so  many  na- 
tions :  there  is  no  example  of  one  who,  capable  of  doing  so  extensive  good, 
did  preferably  so  extensive  evil.  He  opened  the  floodgates  he  was  em- 
ployed to  close;  and  through  them  heaved  back  again  the  stagnant  waters, 
pestilential  to  all  Europe,  which  had  been  excluded  with  so  much  labor." 

EDUCATION. 

"  Education  does  not  control  or  greatly  modify  the  character.  It  brings 
out  wThat  lies  within:  vim  promovet  insitam :  and  that  is  nearly  all  it 
does." 

HAZLITT. 

"  Hazlitt's  books  are  delightful  to  read,  pleasant  always,  often  eloquent 
and  affecting  in  the  extreme.  But  I  don't  get  much  valuable  criticism  out 
of  them.  Coleridge  was  worth  fifty  of  him  in  that  respect.  A  point  may 
be  very  sharp,  and  yet  not  go  very  deep ;  and  the  deficiency  of  pene- 
trating may  be  the  result  of  its  fineness.  A  shoemaker  whose  shoes  are 
always  well  polisht  and  always  neatly  cut  out,  but  rarely  fit,  is  not  of  much 
use  to  us." 

CHARACTERISTIC. 

"  Faults  very  often  drop  from  us  by  thinking  about  them.  I  was  remark- 
ing to  a  friend  one  day  the  common  negligence  of  writing  '  I  never  should 
"have  thought  to  have  seen  you  here,'  when  he  smiled  and  showed  me  that  I 
myself  had  done  it  in  the  Examiner.  I  thought  I  should  have  dropt  at  the 
shock !  " 

A    LOST    THOUGHT    (8TH    NOVEMBER,   1843). 

"It  is  hardly  possible  to  recover  a  lost  thought  without  breaking  its 


MT.  61-82.]  NOTES   OUT   OP   LETTERS.  5G9 

■wings  in  catching  it.  I  got  up  in  the  middle  of  last  night  to  fix  one  on 
paper,  and  fixed  a  rheumatism  instead.  Night  is  not  the  time  for  pinning  a 
butterfly  on  a  blank  leaf." 

NOT    TO    BE    READ    AT    ONCE. 

"  There  are  admirable  poems  which  demand  relays.  You  cannot  lay 
down  Chaucer  or  Shakespeare.  Spenser  falls  out  of  your  hands  in  the  midst 
of  his  enchantments.  The  longest  of  Wordsworth's  poems  I  can  get 
through  without  a  relay  is  Michael ;  and  there  is  not  much  in  the  old  poets 
that  we  call  the  classic  (since  Ovid)  which  is  worth  this." 

FAULTLESS    WRITERS. 

"  La  Fontaine,  Catullus,  and  Sophocles,  are  perhaps  the  writers  who  have 
fewest  faults.  Strange  companions !  But  there  are  pages  in  Shakespeare 
and  Milton  worth  all  the  works  of  all  three." 

TWO-WORD    RHYMES. 

"  How  is  it  possible  that  so  serious  a  writer  as  Miss  Barrett  should  not 
perceive  that  the  two-word  rhyme  is  only  fit  for  ludicrous  subjects :  — 

'  These  rhymes  appear  to  me  but  very  so-so, 
And  fit  but  for  our  Lady  del  Toboso.' 

But  we  are  so  much  in  the  habit  of  seeing  the  common  law  of  the  land  in 
poetry  infringed  and  violated  that  nothing  shocks  us." 

INVITATION    TO    BATH    (1843). 

"  I  have  an  antique  ring,  long  prized  in  our  family,  which  I  want  to  put 
upon  your  finger.  For  this  express  purpose  it  has  been  newly  set  over  the 
ancient  gold,  and  here  are  the  lines  I  have  written  for  it.     It  is  a  mask :  — 

Forster !  though  you  never  wore 
Any  kind  of  mask  before, 
Yet,  by  holy  friendship !  take 
This,  and  wear  it  for  my  sake." 

PROSE    RUNNING    INTO    VERSE. 

"  While  writing  the  Tancredi  dialogue,  I  had  the  greatest  difficulty  to 
prevent  my  prose  running  away  with  me*  Sundry  verses  indeed  I  could 
not  keep  down,  nor  could  I  afterwards  break  them  into  prose.  Here  is  a 
specimen,  not  in  the  Conversation  as  it  stands  at  present,  which  was  written 
while  I  fancied  I  was  writing  prose :  — 

Can  certain  words  pronounced  by  certain  men 

Perform  an  incantation  which  shall  hold 

Two  hearts  together  to  the  end  of  time  ? 

If  these  were  wanting,  yet  instead  of  these, 

There  was  my  father's  word,  and  there  was  God's." 

*  See  ante,  pp.  160, 554,  &c.  I  could  multiply  such  instances  from  his  corre- 
spondence, light  as  well  as  grave,  if  it  were  worth  the  while.  Here  is  one  of  the  lighter 
sort  from  an  invitation  to  me  to  visit  him  in  Bath  in  the  April  of  his  81st  year.  "  What 
weather!  Some  demon  seems  to  shuffle  months  together!  March  came  for  April, 
April  comes  for  March.  Here  are  two  verses  for  you,  with  a  rhyme  to  boot:  no  thanks 
to  me,  for  I  never  intended  it.     And  now,  when  will  you  come?  " 


570  TWENTY-ONE   YEARS   AT   BATH.  [Book  vn. 

1830  -  57. 

PROPERTY    OF    AUTHORS    IN    THEIR    WRITINGS. 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  no  property  is  so  entirely  and  purely  and  religiously 
a  man's  own  as  what  comes  to  him  immediately  from  God,  without  inter- 
vention or  participation.  It  is  the  eternal  gift  of  an  eternal  being.  No 
legislature  has  a  right  to  confine  its  advantages,  or  to  give  them  away  to 
any  person  whatsoever,  to  the  detriment  of  an  author's  heirs.  To  the 
rights  of  another 

'  His  ego  nee  metas  rerum  nee  tempora  pono.'  " 
THE    ELEGY    IN    A    COUNTRY    CHURCHYARD. 

"  Gray's  Elegy  will  be  read  as  long  as  any  work  of  Shakespeare,  despite 
of  its  moping  owl  and  the  tin-kettle  of  an  epitaph  tied  to  its  tail.  It  is  the 
first  poem  that  ever  touched  my  heart,  and  it  strikes  it  now  just  in  the 
same  place.  Homer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Dante,  the  four  giants  who  lived 
before  our  last  Deluge  of  poetry,  have  left  the  ivy  growing  on  the  church- 
yard wall." 

SOUTHEY'S    SMALLER    PIECES. 

"  How  delightful  is  the  humor  that  runs  through  his  smaller  pieces  !  I 
am  quite  astonished  at  the  Gridiron.  It  is  the  only  modern  piece  that  re- 
minds me  heartily  of  Aristophanes,  —  that  admirable  poet  whose  choruses 
have  levity  at  one  end  with  gravity  at  the  other,  like  Apollo's  arrow  and 
indeed  every  arrow  that  can  hit  the  mark.  Are  any  poems  of  our  time 
more  animated  or  fanciful  than  the  smaller  pieces  of  Southey  ?  " 

POETRY    IN    GENERAL    (1843). 

"I  have  rather  a  dislike  to  all  poetry  except  the  very  highest;  nearly  all 
of  it  appears  to  me  impure  and  false :  strong  expressions  on  subjects  that 
cannot  support  them  :  the  maculte  on  the  smaller  stars  that  were  above  the 
horizon  in  Shakespeare's  time.  There  is  so  much  too  that  is  incongruous, 
and  I  require  the  unmixed.  Salt  and  sugar  ought  to  be  kept  separate. 
Coffee  should  not  taste  of  cheese,  nor  tea  of  mustard.  Wordsworth  has 
none  of  this  had  housewifery;  nor  has  Southey,  in  whose  mind  there  are  at 
least  more  mansions  than  in  father  "Wordsworth's.  Tennyson  has  too 
many  summer-houses  and  pavilions  for  the  extent  of  his  grounds;  but 
everything  in  them  is  pleasing  and  suitable.  And  what  fine  poems  are  such 
as  his  Ulysses  and  his  Godiva  I  " 

THE    PRELUDE   OF    WORDSWORTH. 

"  You  have  indeed  given  me  a  noble  passage  from  Wordsworth's 
Prelude:  0  si  sic  omnia  scripsissetf  Higher  it  would  be  dillicult  to  go. 
Here  tin'  wagoner's  frock  shows  the  coat  of  mail  under  it.  Here  is  heart 
and  soul.     Here  is  the  cIku)i>  ftao-iXuct)  of  poetry." 

ASSAILANTS    OF    GENIUS. 

"  Such  creatures  as may  pelt  young  Keats  as  he  climbs  the  tree;  but 

that  Gray  should  lie  insensible  to  the  fervor  of  Rousseau  is  quite  astonish- 
ing, quite  deplorable.  I  wonder  how  people  dare  to  lie  in  the  presence  of 
such  a  train  of  detectives,  reaching  from  their  own  doors  to  the  very  limits 
of  space  and  time." 


JET.  61-82.]  NOTES   OUT   OF   LETTERS.  571 

A    SHAKESPEARE    CELEBRATION    (1844). 

"  A  herd  of  clownish  Warwickshire  squires  of  the  purest  breed,  and  in 
no  county  of  England  is  the  breed  so  pure,  was  resolved  to  celebrate  Shake- 
speare's birthday  at  Stratford-upon-Avon.  I  was  invited  :  I  declined.  I 
told  them  he  was  not  only  the  greatest  glory  of  their  county  but  the  great- 
est work  of  God's  creation,  but  I  should  hardly  testify  my  love  and  venera- 
tion by  eating  and  drinking,  and  I  had  refused  all  such  invitations  when  I 
might  meet  those  who  knew  me,  of  whom  in  Warwickshire  there  is  now 
scarcely  one.  I  could  not  help  doubting  whether  any  of  the  party  ever 
read  a  single  page  of  his  writings ;  but  I  entertain  no  doubt  whatever  that 
if  he  were  living  and  had  come  into  the  party,  they  would  have  butted  him 
out.  As-the  rocks  that  bound  the  sea  are  formed  by  the  smallest  and  most 
inert  insects,  so  celebrity  seems  to  rise  up  from  accretions  equally  vile  and 
worthless.  This  idea  has  occurred  to  me  many  times  before,  and  may  per- 
haps be  found  in  my  writings ;  but  never  did  it  come  forward  with  so  lumi- 
nous a  stare  as  on  the  present  occasion." 

BTRON    AND    WORDSWORTH    (BATH,  1845). 

"  A  lady  here,  a  friend  of  yours,  has  been  lecturing  me  on  my  hostility  to 
Wordsworth.  In  the  course  of  our  conversation  I  said  what  I  turned  into 
verse  half  an  hour  ago,  on  reaching  home.  No  writer,  I  will  again  inter- 
pose before  transcribing  them,  has  praised  Wordsworth  more  copiously  or 
more  warmly  than  I  have  done ;  and  I  said  not  a  syllable  against  him  until  he 
disparaged  his  friend  and  greatest  champion,  Southey.  You  should  be  the 
last  to  blame  me  for  holding  the  heads  of  my  friends  to  be  inviolable. 
Whoever  touches  a  hair  of  them  I  devote  diis  inferis,  sed  rite.  Here  are 
the  lines :  — 

Byron's  sharp  bark  and  Wordsworth's  long-drawn  wheeze 

Issue  alike  from  breasts  that  pant  for  ease. 

One  caught  the  fever  of  the  flowery  marsh. 

The  other's  voice  intemperate  scorn  made  harsh. 

But  each  hath  better  parts :  to  One  belong 

Staffs  for  the  old  and  guide-posts  for  the  young: 

The  Other's  store-room  downcast  eyes  approve, 

Hung  with  bright  feathers  dropt  from  moulting  Love." 

BARRY    CORNWALL    (1840). 

"  Give  the  admirable  Procter  one  [a  copy  of  his  Andrea  and  Giovanna]. 
What  delightful  poetry  he  writes  !  How  fresh  and  sweet  and  pleasant  the 
old-world  flavor  which  he  gives  to  modern  life !  Nobody  writes  with  more 
purity.  As  to  my  own,  jam  satis  terris  nivis.  I  think  it  cold  languid  stuff 
for  the  most  part  beside  his.  I  have  read  XXI.  and  XLIV.  of  his  Songs 
six  or  seven  times ;  and  how  oeautiful  XIII.,  V.,  LXXXIL,  CVIIL,  —  in 
fact  all  of  them  !  " 

ROBERT    BROWNING. 

"You  were  right  as  to  Browning.  He  has  sent  me  some  admirable 
things.  I  only  wish  he  would  atticize  a  little.  Few  of  the  Athenians  had 
such  a  quarry  on  their  property,  but  they  constructed  better  roads  for  the 
conveyance  of  the  material." 

AGAIN  :    SOMEWHAT    LATER    (1845). 

"  I  have  written  to  Browning ;  a  great  poet,  a  very  great  poet  indeed,  as  the 
world  will  have  to  agree  with  us  in  thinking.     I  am  now  deep  in  the  Soul's 


572  TWENTY-ONE   YEARS   AT   BATII.  f^^i  Y}u 

Tragedy.  The  sudden  close  of  Luria  is  very  grand;  but  preceding  it  I  fear 
there  is  rather  too  much  of  argumentation  and  reflection.  It  is  continued 
too  long  after  the  Moor  has  taken  the  poison.  I  may  be  wrong;  but  if  it 
is  so,  you  will  see  it  and  tell  him.  God  grant  he  may  live  to  be  much 
greater  than  he  is,  high  as  he  stands  above  most  of  the  living :  latis  humeris 
et  toto  vertice.  But  now  to  the  SuiiCs  Tragedy,  and  so  adieu  till  we  meet  at 
this  very  table." 

Luria  had  been  dedicated  to  Landor,  who  in  later  years,  as  will  be 
seen  hereafter,  was  to  receive  from  its  writer  a  graver  service  ;  and 
though  the  fame  is  now  Mr.  Browning's  by  rightful  inheritance  which 
but  a  few  claimed  for  him  when  this  letter  was  written,  a  tribute  may 
be  still  matter  of  just  pride  to  him  which  connects,  with  a  man  so 
remarkable  as  Landor,  a  wish  so  earnestly  uttered,  and  a  prediction 
so  well  fulfilled. 


VIII.    A  FRIEND   NOT  LITERARY,  AND   OTHER  FRIENDS. 

Every  autumn,  as  long  as  the  last  of  Landor's  sisters  lived,  took 
him  upon  a  visit  to  her  in  Wai'wick,  at  the  house  in  which  he  was 
born  ;  and  the  only  drawback  from  his  pleasure,  on  these  as  on  all 
occasions  when  he  quitted  Bath,  was  his  inability,  through  fear  of  ac- 
cident or  loss,  to  take  with  him  a  favorite  companion,  who  may  claim 
honorable  mention  in  this  history.  "  Daily,"  he  wrote  to  me  from 
Warwick  in  1844,  "  do  I  think  of  Bath  and  Pomero.  I  fancy  him 
lying  on  the  narrow  window-sill,  and  watching  the  good  people  go  to 
church.  He  has  not  yet  made  up  his  mind  between  the  Anglican 
and  Roman  Catholic  ;  but  I  hope  he  will  continue  in  the  faith  of  his 
forefathers,  if  it  will  make  him  happier."  This  was  a  small  white 
Pomeranian  dog  that  had  been  sent  to  him  from  his  Fiesolan  villa 
the  previous  autumn ;  visiting  by  the  way  myself,  to  whom  he  had 
been  consigned  for  safer  delivery  ;  and  at  first  sight  fairly  dazzling 
me,  as  I  well  remember,  by  the  eager  brightness  of  his  eye  and  the 
feathery  whiteness  of  his  coat,  as  he  pushed  his  nose  through  the  wick- 
er basket  in  which  he  had  travelled  the  last  stage  of  his  journey. 
"  Eighteen  shillings  for  me,  padrone,"  was  the  message  sent  me  in 
Landor's  next  letter,  informing  me  that  already  they  were  on  speak- 
ing terms,  and  that  I  was  to  be  reimbursed  his  fare  from  Florence. 
"  He  places  his  head  between  my  knees  to  hear  that  part  of  the  letter 
which  concerns  him  personally.  He  barks  terribly,  and  listens  to  no 
expostulation  ;  but  replies  that  he  is  a  young  creature,  and  ought  to 
have  his  own  way  in  consideration  of  it ;  finally,  that  his  grandpapa 
kept  up  barking  till  the  advanced  age  of  seven."  For  many  more  years 
than  seven  the  new  friends  were  inseparable  ;  and  Landor's  own  fig- 
ure, as  it  trudged  up  and  down  Bath  streets,  was  not  better  known 
than  his  little  bright-eyed  companion's  became.  They  were  faces, 
both  of  them,  that  most  people  turned  to  look  after  ;  and  Pomero 
certainly  had  the   better  coat.     His  master  was  quite  conscious  of 


^ET.  61-82.]  A    FRIEXD    NOT    LITERAUT.  573 

this  ;  and  not  long  after  his  arrival  told  me,  on  sending  me  his  "  love 
and  a  bite,"  that  the  young  rascal,  not  content  with  the  advantage 
he  already  had,  was  always  trying  to  make  it  greater.  "  He  will 
have  to  pay  at  least  half  my  tailor's  bill,  besides  the  mending  of  my 
new  silk  stockings.  However,  I  do  assure  you  he  is  well  born.  I 
have  been  making  inquiries  about  it.  There  is  not  an  older  family 
in  Bologna,  His  ancestors  preceded  the  Bentivoglios,  and  were  always 
stanch  republicans." 

"  Pomero  was  on  my  knee,"  he  says  on  another  occasion  to  me, 
"  when  yo\ir  letter  came.  He  is  now  looking  out  of  the  window  ;  a 
sad  male  gossip,  as  I  often  tell  him.  I  dare  not  take  him  with  me  to 
London.  He  would  most  certainly  be  stolen,  and  I  would  rather  lose 
Ipsley  or  Llanthony.  The  people  of  the  house  love  him  like  a  child, 
and  declare  he  is  aS5  sensible  as  a  Christian.  He  not  only  is  as  sensi- 
ble, but  much  more  Christian  than  some  of  those  who  have  lately 
brought  strife  and  contention  into  the  Church.  Everybody  knows 
him,  high  and  low,  and  he  makes  me  quite  a  celebrity."  As  time 
went  on,  his  value  to  his  master  went  far  beyond  Ipsley  or  Llan- 
thony ;  for  on  a  lady  asking  whether  he  wras  inclined  to  part  with  him, 
"  No,  madam,"  was  his  answer,  "  not  for  a  million  of  money  !  "  "  Not 
for  a  million  /"  she  exclaimed  ;  whereupon  I  added,  "  that  a  million 
would  not  make  me  at  all  happier,  and  that  the  loss  of  Pomero  would 
make  me  miserable  for  life."  Nor  perhaps  will  the  reader  object  to  an- 
other mention  of  this  little  hero  at  the  house  of  one  of  his  master's 
earliest  heroines  and  deai-est  friends,  as  I  saw  her  myself  in  Bath, 
looking  nearly  as  young  as  her  grandchild.  "  Pomero  is  sitting  in  a 
state  of  contemplation,  with  his  nose  before  the  fire.  He  twinkles  his 
ears  and  his  feathery  tail  at  your  salutation.  He  now  licks  his  lips 
and  turns  round,  which  means  Return  mine.  The  easterly  wind  has 
an  evident  effect  on  his  nerves.  Last  evening  I  took  him  to  hear 
Luisina  de  Sodre  play  and  sing.  She  is  my  friend  the  Countess  do 
Molande  's  granddaughter,  and  daughter  of  De  Sodre,  minister  of  Bra- 
zil to  the  Pope  a  few  years  ago.  Pomero  was  deeply  affected,  and 
lay  close  to  the  pedal  on  her  gown,  singing  in  a  great  variety  of  tones, 
not  always  in  time.  It  is  unfortunate  that  he  always  will  take  a 
part  where  there  is  music,  for  he  sings  even  worse  than  I  do." 

As  his  companion  in  morning  calls,  Landor  took  his  faithful  little 
friend  more  frequently  ;  and  one  of  the  residents  in  Bath,  a  clever  as 
well  as  kindly  observer,  has  described  one  of  his  morning  visits  as  an 
event  to  the  friend  he  visited.  I  have  myself  been  present  at  them, 
and  can  confirm  the  description.  The  favorite  subject  of  conversa- 
tion would  be  rather  politics  than  literature  ;  and  during  all  the  time 
of  the  visit  the  little  animal  would  be  lying  under  his  chair,  with  front 
paws  stretched  out,  sharp  face  flattened  on  them,  and  small  ears  rest- 
lessly moving  to  catch  any  remotest  signal  that  this  wearisome  morning 
call  was  over.  The  glad  intimation  would  come  quite  unexpectedly, 
when,  on  hearing  suddenly  from  Landor,  in  the  very  middle  of  some 


574  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATII.  ^iT^- 57"' 

frantic  outburst  of  wrath  or  some  heresy  of  wild  extravagance,  a  word 
or  two  of  caressing  Italian,  out  from  his  chair  would  dart  Pomero, 
rushing  and  leaping  into  his  master's  lap,  and  barking  madly  in  the 
ecstasy  of  his  joy.  "I  shall  never  survive  thee,  carissimo,"  Landor 
thereupon  would  say  ;  to  which,  as  the  other  barked  a  like  glad  prom- 
ise, he  would  add,  "  I  do  not  intend  to  live  after  him.  If  he  dies, 
I  shall  take  poison."  * 

These  touches  will  suffice,  though  hardly  a  letter  now  came  from 
him  that  did  not  name  the  small  fond  creature  :  but  I  may  add,  that 
whenever  his  more  intimate  friends  visited  Bath  in  his  absence,  they 
were  expected  to  see  and  report  of  Pomero  "  en  pension  "  ;  and  as  the 
reception  given  to  Kcnyon  on  one  of  these  occasions  was  pretty  much 
that  which  all  of  us  had,  a  few  words  from  Landor  shall  describe  it. 
"  Kenyon  tells  me  he  saw  Pomero  at  Bath,  who  turned  his  tail  upon 
him;  proud  as  a  county  candidate  toward  his  constituents  when  he 
has  just  won  his  election.  I  shall  reason  with  him  on  this,  and  tell 
him  that  he  ought  to  know  better,  being  somewhat  more  than  country 
gentleman  or  a  knight  of  a  shire."  The  picture  would  hardly  be 
complete  without  the  contrast  of  how  his  master  was  received.  "  At 
six  last  night,"  wrote  Landor  to  me  the  morning  after  one  of  his  sum- 
mer absences  from  Bath,  "  I  arrived,  and  instantly  visited  Pomero 
en  j a' ns ion.  His  joy  at  seeing  me  amounted  to  madness.  His  bark 
was  a  scream  of  delight.  He  is  now  sitting  on  my  head,  superintend- 
ing all  I  write,  and  telling  me  to  give  his  love." 

This  kindly  impression  of  my  old  friend  will  not  be  weakened  by 
such  brief  notice  as  I  can  afford  to  give  of  his  intercourse  during 
these  early  Bath  years  with  his  oldest  friend,  his  sister  Elizabeth. 
There  is  a  letter  of  his  before  me  in  which  he  describes  the  joy  with 
which  he  had  seen  again  the  house  that  had  been  the  principal  home 
of  his  childhood,  with  its  old  mulberry-trees,  its  grand  cedars,  the 
chestnut  wood  with  the  church  appearing  through  it,  a  cist  us  that 
she  planted  for  him,  and  the  fig-tree  at  the  window  on  whose  leaves 
soft  rain  was  dropping  as  he  wrote,  and  from  which  one  little  bird 
was  chirping  to  tell  another  that  there  was  shelter  under  them. 
"  Turn  away  that  branch,  ■ —  gently,  gently  !  do  not  break  it,  for  the 
little  bird  sat  there."  Nothing  was  such  pleasure  to  him  always  as 
to  have  the  country  in  some  form  near,  in  shape  of  trees,  plants,  or 
flowers  :  and,  through  three  successive  changes  of  lodging  during  his 
first  thirteen  years  in  Bath,  he  clung  to  the  square  in  which  he  first 
lived  mainly  because  of  a  plane-tree  and  a  mountain  ash  in  the  gar- 
den of  which  he  was  extremely  fond.  When  an  accident  happened 
to  one  of  his  sister's  cedars  he  grieved  as  he  would  have  done  for 
some  friend  of  his  youth.  "You  tell  me,"  he  wrote  to  her,  "it  is 
broken  into  splinters.     Surely  about  the  root  there  must  be  some 

*  Mr.  Spender,  the  author  of  the  paper  already  referred  to  (p.  11),  hoard  him  say 
this,  and  adds :  "  Alas,  it  was  Pomero  who  was  poisoned  by  some  malignant  rascal.'' 
This  i<  a  mistake.  The  little  fellow  died  of  old  ape;  having  outlived  the  natural  term 
for  so  small  a  creature  very  nearly  as  long  as  his  master  outlived  his. 


MT.  61-82.]  .   ELIZABETH    LANDOR.  575 

pieces  large  enough  to  make  a  little  box  of.  Pray  keep  them  for  me. 
Here  is  a  man  at  Bath  who  will  contrive  to  form  them  into  something 
which  I  may  keep  in  my  beohoom."  His  sister  had  anticipated  the 
wish  :  a  writing-case  of  cedar,  already  put  in  hand  for  him,  reached 
him  on  his  next  birthday  :  and  I  was  witness  to  the  delight  with 
which  he  received  it.  He  was  seventy  that  day,  and  had  risen  at  his 
usual  hour  of  nine,  though  he  had  stayed  at  the  subscription  ball  the 
previous  night  till  close  upon  the  third  hour  of  morning.  I  rallied 
nim  on  his  dissipation,  and  warned  him,  even  though  Medea's  caldron 
might  still  be  boiling  in  Bath,  that  to  give  such  advantage  to  the 
enemy  might  bring  him  down  some  day  into  the  very  middle  of  the 
brew.  "  I  don't  invite  him,"  was  his  laughing  reply ;  "  but  I  shall 
receive  him  hospitably  when  he  comes." 

In  the  same  year  (1845)  he  described  to  his  sister  his  way  of  life. 
"  I  walk  out  in  all  weathers  six  miles  a  day  at  the  least ;  and  I  gene- 
rally, unless  I  am  engaged  in  the  evening,  read  from  seven  till  twelve  or 
one.  I  sleep  twenty  minutes  after  dinner,  and  nearly  four  hours  at 
night,  or  rather  in  the  morning.  I  rise  at  nine,  breakfast  at  ten,  and 
dine  at  five.  All  winter  I  have  had  some  beautiful,  sweet  daphnes  and 
hyacinths  in  my  windows."  Inquiring  in  another  letter  after  her 
dahlias,  which  he  fears  the  frogs  will  abolish,  he  tells  her  he  never 
sees  or  hears  the  name  without  the  recollection  of  a  story  told  of  a 
countryman  of  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger,  to  whom  a  lady  said,  "  Mr. 
Flanagan,  I  am  quite  certain  you  are  an  admirer  of  dahlias  !  "  "  Why 
then,  faith,  madam,"  was  his  reply,  "  they  accuse  me  very  wrongfully. 
I  know  enough  about  'em  ;  but  sure,  on  my  conscience,  I  have  had 
mighty  little  to  say  to  'em.  The  experience  of  Mr.  Flanagan,  like 
that  of  Sir  Lucius,  had  been  limited  to  Delias,  which  the  Irish  "  pro- 
nounce the  same."  In  another  of  his  letters,  this  1845  beino:  the 
year  of  his  brother  Robert's  publication  of  the  Fawn  of  Sertorius, 
which,  while  everybody  praised,  nearly  all  persisted  in  throwing  into 
the  elder  brother's  lap,  he  had  to  tell  his  sister  that  he  had  declared 
"  to  a  dozen  of  them  at  least "  that  he  neither  wrote  it  nor  was  capa- 
ble of  writing  it,  nor  had  seen  a  single  page  of  it  before  it  was  in 
print.  "  Some  blockhead,"  he  added,  "  says  it  is  what  a  certain  cele- 
brated poet  would  have  written  if  he  wrote  in  prose.  Now  though  a 
goose  or  a  turkey  may  be  the  better  for  having  the  nerves  and  sinews 
drawn  out  of  him,  a  poet  without  them  is  none  the  more  palatable 
or  digestible.  Fifty  such  fellows  are  not  worth  the  Fawn's  foot,  and 
contain  less  juice  and  gelatine." 

But  having  here  anticipated  somewhat,  I  go  back  for  a  few  notices 
of  earlier  days.  In  1841  he  describes  to  his  sister  a  visit  to  the  rec- 
tory at  Birlingham,  of  all  places  seen  by  him  since  his  return  to  Eng- 
land that  which  had  pleased  him  most ;  and  where  he  had  found  their 
brother  Robert  the  owner  of  fine  pictures,  and  of  grounds  laid  out 
with  consummate  taste,  "  living  like  a  prince-bishop."  In  the  same 
year  he  tells  her,  as  already  he  had  told  his  brother,  of  the  delight 


576  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS   AT   BA^TII.  ^(fc6*»"* 

and  wonder  with  which  he  had  read  Robert's  Tragedies*  protesting 
that,  "  in  this  century  or  the  last,"  there  had  been  nothing  like  the 
Ferryman  :  and  he  tells  her,  too,  of  the  singular  grief  and  low  spirits 
he  was  in  at  losing  his  greatest  friend  in  Bath,  with  whom  he  usually 
spent  some  hours  of  every  day,  General  William  Napier,  just  ap- 
pointed governor  of  Guernsey.  In  another  letter  he  expresses  the 
wish  that  there  should  be  a  celebration  of  Robert's  haying  reached 
his  grand  climacteric  and  got  well  into  the  sixties,  by  invitation  from 
her  to  all  the  brothers,  himself  and  Charles,  Henry  and  Robert,  to 
spend  one  more  Christmas  day  together.  It  could  scarcely  be  so 
merry  as  several  of  the  former  ones  had  been,  and  perhaps  the  recol- 
lection of  those  might  a  little  sadden  them  ;  but  was  not  there  some- 
thing of  sadness  in  all  such  clays  %  Not  at  this  latter  part  of  life 
only,  but  at  every  other,  he  had  himself  been  inclined  most  to  melan- 
choly on  days  of  festival.  "  My  birthday,  as  long  as  I  can  remember, 
was  a  day  of  strange  and  unaccountable  emotion  to  me  ;  and  in  all 
my  pleasures  there  has  been  more  of  softness  than  of  serenity." 
But,  enjoyment  may  be  just  as  keen  for  being  shaded  with  a  touch 
of  sadness  ;  and  I  had  too  frequent  and  large  a  part  in  the  grave, 
glad  pleasure  of  that  day  not  to  know  that  he  was  able  to  get  out  of 
it,  even  to  the  last  of  them  enjoyed  by  us  together,  more  mirth  than 
melancholy.  Acknowledging  this  letter,  his  sister  gladly  accepted 
its  proposal,  and  in  further  hospitable  greeting  sent  him  (his  favorite 
dish  at  her  Warwick  breakfasts)  a  dried  salmon.  "  It  has  come,"  he 
replied,  "in  all  its  glory.  At  first  I  doubted  whether  it  might  not  be 
an  alligator,  from  the  size  of  it  ;  and  I  thought  of  opening  my  sash 
and  calling  a  chairman  to  carry  it  to  the  Museum.  But  recollecting 
what  you  had  promised  me  in  a  former  letter,  I  stayed  my  steps." 

In  the  next  year  (1842)  he  sets  her  upon  searching  the  old  War- 
wick house  for  papers  of  his  boyhood,  remembered  still.  "  Anciently 
there  were  some  bits  of  my  Latin  poetry  and  other  such  stuff  in  a 
chest  of  drawers  which  stood  in  my  bedroom,  now  a  dressing-room. 
Most  of  these  were  translations  of  Cowley  into  Latin  verse,  and  cor- 
recting his  extravagance.  This  is  curious  at  so  early  an  age,  for 
I  did  it  at  about  sixteen."  In  the  same  letter  he  speaks  pleasantly 
of  the  marriage  of  his  niece  Teresita  Stopford  to  Lord  Charles  Beau- 
clerc  ;  tells  of  an  expected  visit  of  his  daughter  and  second  son  from 
Fiesole  ;  and  bids  her  inform  his  brother  Henry  that  he  beats  him  in 
flowers,  having  to  boast  in  that  October  month  of  a  tube-rose  five  feet 
high.  "  I  have  also  a  young  kitten  ;  but  she  mews  eternally,  and 
tells  me  in  plain  language  that  old  people  and  young  never  do  well 
together."  The  way  for  Pomero  was  prepared  by  this  failure  of  the 
young  kitten  ;  in  her  place,  after  a  very  few  months,  the  little  hero 
was  installed  ;  and  his  sister  heard  as  much  of  him  in  all  the  later 
years  as  I  did.  "  Let  me  congratulate  you,"  he  wrote  in  the  summer 
of  1844,  "  on  the  accident  that  deprives  you  of  your  carriage-horses. 

*  Ante,  p.  634. 


/ET.  6l-82.]  GENERAL   WILLIAM    NAPIER.        .  577 

Next  to  servants,  horses  are  the  greatest  trouble  in  life.  Dogs  are 
blessings,  true  blessings.  Pomero,  who  sends  his  love,  is  the  comfort 
of  my  solitude  and  the  delight  of  my  life.  He  is  quite  a  public 
character  here  in  Bath.  Everybody  knows  him  and  salutes  him. 
He  barks  aloud  at  all  —  familiarly,  not  fiercely.  He  takes  equal  lib- 
erties with  his  fellow-creatures,  if  indeed  dogs  are  more  his  fellow- 
creatures  than  I  am.  I  think  it  was  Saint  Francis  de  Sales  who 
called  birds  and  quadrupeds  his  sisters  and  brothers.  Few  saints 
have  been  so  good-tempered,  and  not  many  so  wise."  And  in  the 
same  kindly  spirit  to  all  dumb  creatures  he  speaks  in  another  letter 
of  field-sports.  "  Let  men  do  these  things  if  they  will.  Perhaps 
there  is  no  harm  in  it ;  perhaps  it  makes  them  no  crueler  than  they 
would  be  otherwise.  Biit  it  is  hard  to  take  away  what  we  cannot 
give ;  and  life  is  a  pleasant  thing,  at  least  to  birds.  No  doubt  the 
young  ones  say  tender  things  one  to  another,  and  even  the  old  ones 
do  not  dream  of  death." 

The  reader  will  understand  why  I  thus  desire  Landor  to  be  judged 
as  well  by  his  gentler  sayings  in  private  intercourse  as  by  his  louder 
utterances  in  public.  They  in  some  sort  explain  each  other,  and  cer- 
tainly will  help  to  each  other's  better  understanding.  "You  do  not 
know  Landor,"  said  Sir  William  Napier  to  a  friend  offended  by  his 
intemperate  assaults  on  King  Bomba  or  some  other  favorite  aversion. 
"  In  matters  of  that  sort  he  is  reckless  in  expression  only.  What  is 
savage  in  his  speech  does  not  spring  from  anything  savage  in  his 
nature.  Those  wild  cries  of  his  at  seeing  his  fellow-creatures  over- 
ridden by  injustice  or  tyranny  are  but  the  sign  of  an  honest  human 
feeling  and  a  deep  compassion.  He  has  the  lion- heart  that  springs 
forward  to  tear  the  wrong-doer,  and  the  chained  lion's  roar  of  fury 
when  he  finds  that  he  cannot  reach  him.  Yet,  if  he  saw  tyrannicide 
lifting  the  knife,  I  am  well  convinced  he  would  rather  himself  receive 
the  blow  than  let  it  fall  on  the  man  it  was  aimed  at." 

Upon  such  outbreaks,  as  generally  upon  his  vehement  contribu- 
tions to  matters  of  public  controversy  which  distinguished  both  his 
early  and  later  years  in  Bath,  I  do  not  care  to  dwell,  though  I  was 
chiefly  myself  responsible  for  giving  them  to  the  world.  The  Napier 
apology  is  undoubtedly  worth  much  ;  but  the  evidence  and  the  wit- 
ness must  be  taken  together,  and  the  testimony  is  not  without  a  flaw. 
Napier  himself  had  a  good  deal  in  common  with  his  friend,  not  alone 
of  chivalrous  spirit,  disinterested  aims,  and  a  character  incapable  of 
meanness,  but  also  of  an  arrogance  of  temper  obscuring  somewhat 
the  splendor  even  of  his  achievements,  a  resentful  impatience  of  dif- 
ference of  opinion,  and  a  proneness  to  express  with  violence  views 
recklessly  formed.  But  having  said  this,  there  is  nothing  more  to  be 
said.  A  never  ceasing  and  quite  unwearying  hatred  of  oppression 
animated  both  ;  and  whatever  else  was  to  be  remarked  of  Landor's 
comments  on  passing  events,  the  charge  was  not  at  any  time  to  be 
made  against  him  of  siding  with  the  strong  against  the  weak,  or  of 

37 


578  •     TWEXTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  l*%g  J*1, 

passing  over  the  neglected  and  unregarded.  Somebody  at  this  time 
compared  his  weekly  onslaughts  on  what  he  took  to  he  scandals  in 
church  or  state,  to  the  growls  of  an  ancient  cynic  worried  by  the 
sight  of  purple  and  fine  linen  ;  describing  him  as  tunic  and  civil 
before  a  beggar,  nay,  as  even  fawning  on  the  tatters  of  adversity  : 
and  when  that  is  nearly  the  worst  that  can  be  urged,  it  is  hardly 
Worth  while  to  make  an  unpardonable  sin  of  an  ungovernable  temper. 
I  will  only  add,  before  quitting  this  subject,  that  he  wrote  frequently 
on  the  condition  of  Ireland,  and  for  the  most  part  with  a  gravity  and 
impartiality  into  which  faults  of  temper  entered  rarely.  He  remon- 
strated with  O'Conncll,  when  at  the  height  of  his  repeal  agitation, 
for  wasting  upon  a  design  both  foolish  and  impracticable  powers  that 
might  have  forced  upon  attention  the  true  and  attainable  remedies;* 
and  to  Mr.  Thomas  Davis,  the  creator  and  leader  of  the  party  which 
subsequently  broke  down  O'Connell's  influence,  he  addressed  truths 
not  less  unpalatable.  Davis  had,  in  my  judgment,  qualities  that 
would  have  made  him  incomparably  the  ablest  politician  produced  by 
Ireland  in  our  day  ;  and  his  premature  death,  before  what  was  crude 
and  immature  in  his  opinions  had  time  to  ripen,  was  a  great  calamity. 
A  letter  from  him,  found  among  Landor's  papers,  will  be  read  with 
interest  by  very  many  who  cherish  his  memory.  The  allusions  to 
Father  Matthew  were  elicited  by  Landor's  excessive  admiration  for 
him.  I  am  not  sure  that  he  did  not  think  this  reverend  father  to  be 
the  only  true  successor  of  the  apostles  living  in  our  age. 

"  61  Baggot  Street,  17th  December,  1840. 
"  Sir,  —  I  have  just  received  your  kind  note.  When  I  sent  you  my  pam- 
phlet 1  wished  (as  I  had  an  opportunity  even  in  a  trifle)  to  express  my 
respect  for  one  whose  books  I  loved.  I  did  not  expert  a  reply,  but  as  you 
were  good-natured  enough  to  send  one,  the  least  I  can  do  is  to  thank  you 
for  it.     We  are  glad  of  any  intercourse  with  the  parents  of  our  friends,  and 

*  The  beginning  of  O'Connell's  reply,  written  from  Derrynane,  may  still  be  read  with 
a  smile. 

"  You  wrong  me  much  in  supposing  that  I  do  not  know  yon.  '  Not  to  know  you  were 
to  bespeak  myself  unknown.1  Little  do  yon  imagine  bow  many  persons  besides  my- 
Belfbave  been  delighted  with  the  poetic  imaginings  which  inspired  these  lines  on  one 
of  the  wonders  of  my  infancy,  the  varying  sounds  emitted  by  marine  shells, — 
'  And  they  remember  their  august  abodes, 
And  murmur  as  the  ocean  murmurs  there.' 
Would  that  I  had  you  here,  to  show  you  'their  august  abode'  in  its  most  awful  beautv! 
I  could  show  you  at  noontide,  when  the  stern  sonthwester  had  blown  long  and  ruddy, 
the  mountain  waves  coming  in  from  the  illimitable  ocean  in  majestic  succession,  ex- 
pending their  gigantic  force,  and  throwing  up  Stupendous  masses  of  loam  against  the 
more  gigantic  and  more  stupendous  mountain-cliffs  that  fence  not  onlv  this  my  native 
spot,  but  form  that  eternal  harrier  which  prevents  the  wild  Atlantic  from  submerging 
the  cultivated  plains  and  high-Steepled  villages  of  proud  Britain  herself.  Or,  were  you 
with  me  amidst  the  Alpine  scenery  that  surrounds  my  humble  abode,  listening  to  the 
eternal  roar  of  the  mountain  torrent  as  it  hounds  through  the  rocky  defiles  of  my  native 
glens,  I  would  venture  to  tell  you  how  I  was  born  within  the  sound  of  the  everlasting 
wave,  ami  how  my  dreamy  boyhood  dwelt  upon  Imaginary  Intercourse  with  those  who 
are  dead  of  vore,  and  fed  its  fond  fancies  upon  the  ancient  and  long-faded  glories  of 
that  land  which  preserved  literature  and  Christianity  when  the  rest  of  now  civilized 
Europe  was  shrouded  in  the  darkness  of  godless  ignorance." 


JET.  61-82.]  COLLECTED    WORKS,    ETC.  579 

your  books  were  friends  of  mine  and  of  those  whom  I  most  regard.  I  am 
glad  to  find  you  have  hopes  for  Ireland.  You  have  always  had  a  good 
word  and  I  am  sure  good  wishes  for  her.  If  you  knew  Mr.  Matthew,  you 
would  relish  his  simple  and  downright  manners.  He  is  joyous,  friendly,  and 
quite  unassuming.  To  have  taken  away  a  degrading  and  impoverishing 
vice  from  the  hearts  and  habits  of  three  millions  of  people  in  a  couple  of 
years  seems  to  justify  any  praise  to  Mr.  Matthew,  and  also  to  justify  much 
hope  for  this  people.  And  suffer  me  to  say  that  if  you  knew  the  difficulties 
under  which  the  Irish  struggle,  and  the  danger  from  England  and  from  the 
Irish  oligarchy,  you  would  not  regret  the  power  of  the  political  leaders,  or 
rather  leader,  here ;  you  would  forgive  the  exciting  speeches,  and  perchance 
sympathize  with  the  exertions  of  men  who  think  that  a  domestic  govern- 
ment can  alone  unite  and  animate  all  our  people.  Surely  the  desire  of 
nationality  is  not  ungenerous,  nor  is  it  strange  in  the  Irish  (looking  to  their 
history),  nor,  considering  the  population  of  Ireland  and  the  nature  and  sit- 
uation of  their  home,  is  the  expectation  of  it  very  wild.  I  have  taken  the 
liberty  of  saying  this  because  of  the  last  sentence  in  your  note.  And  now, 
praying  your  pardon  for  this  intrusion  on  your  time,  for  I  know  you  will 
forgive  the  freedom  of  what  I  have  said, 

"  I  remain,  sir,  your  most  obedient  servant, 

"  Thomas  Davis. 
"Walter  S.  Landor,  Esq.,  Bath." 

IX.     REVIEWS,    COLLECTED    WORKS,   POEMATA    ET    INSCRIP- 
TIONS,  AND   HELLENICS. 

In  August,  1842,  Robert  Landor  wrote  to  his  brother  that  he  had 
been  reading  with  unusual  satisfaction  two  reviews  lately  written  by 
him,  on  Catullus  and  on  Theocritus  ;  and  that  besides  the  pleasure 
he  had  derived  from  the  completeness  and  refinement  of  the  criticism, 
they  had  given  him  a  pleasure  of  another  kind  which  he  could  hard- 
ly specify  without  implying  something  a  little  disrespectful.  "They 
are  as  remarkable  for  their  candor  and  moderation  as  for  other  quali- 
ties of  which  I  felt  more  certain ;  and,  in  speaking  of  our  own  poets 
now  living,  there  is  the  same  freedom  from  prejudice  as  in  your  ob- 
servations on  those  who  have  been  dead  these  two  thousand  years. 
Nor  can  I  believe  that  there  is  an  idyl  of  Theocritus  more  tender  or 
graceful,  or  even  more  classical,  than  that  of  the  Hamadryad.  The 
conclusion  appears  to  me  more  like  the  sweetest  parts  of  Gebir  than 
anything  you  have  written,  and  much  more  delicate  in  its  pathos  than 
any  other  person  has  written,  since." 

These  essays,  as  well  as  a  later  one  on  Petrarch,  were  written  at 
my  request  for  a  review  which  I  then  conducted,  and  they  well  de- 
serve what  is  thus  said  of  them.  For  two  others,  on  Pindar  and  on 
Horace,  he  also  at  the  time  collected  the  materials,  and  it  was  to  me 
a  special  regret  that  the  latter  was  not  written.  For  I  had  ventured 
to  think  the  tone  of  his  reply  to  the  review  of  the  Pentameron,  print- 
ed on  a  former  page,  not  wholly  just  to  either  Virgil  or  Horace  ;  and 
upon  both,  but  especially  the  last  delightful  writer,  he  threw  out  in- 
dications in  the  first  of  his  essays  that  my  suggestion  had  been  con- 


580  TWENTY-ONE    TEARS    AT    BATII.  PjEF  X11- 

sidered.  "  One  poet  is  not  to  be  raised  by  casting  another  under 
him.  Catullus  is  made  no  richer  by  an  attempt  to  transfer  to  him 
what  belongs  to  Horace,  nor  Horace  by  what  belongs  to  Catullus. 
Catullus  has  greatly  more  than  he  ;  but  he  also  has  much,  and  let 
him  keep  it."  No  injustice  more  gross  is  committed  in  criticism  than 
When  one  writer  is  thus  pitted  against  another.  The  genius  of  Ca- 
tullus you  may  think  supreme,  but  that  Horace  is  more  of  a  favorite 
with  greater  numbers  of  people  is  a  fact  as  little  to  be  doubted.  A 
critic,  if  unable  otherwise  to  account  for  the  fact,  should  consider 
this  power  to  engage  and  delight  many  minds  as  no  small  merit  in  it- 
self; if  nothing  else,  as  at  least  a  proof  that  the  master  of  it  is 
in  sympathy  with  the  world.  Some  writers  have  a  charm  beyond  the 
reach  of  criticism  ;  sometimes  perhaps  opposed  to  its  conclusions, 
and  certainly  often  wanted  by  others  of  superior  excellence.  There 
are  a  hundred  readers  of  Virgil  and  Horace  to  one  of  Catullus. 

From  letters  written  to  me  during  the  composition  of  the  essays, 
some  characteristic  traits  may  be  drawn.  Catullus  was  the  first  sub- 
ject chosen  ;  and  the  necessary  rendering  of  portions  into  English  he 
found  to  be  extremely  difficult,  glibly  as  the  work  has  since  been 
done  by  more  hands  than  one. 
• 

ATTEMPTS   TO   TRANSLATE   CATULLUS. 

"  I  have  attempted  in  vain  to  translate  the  extracts  from  Catullus.  My 
version  of  the  Description  of  Morning,  of  which  the  original  verses,  as  mere 
verses,  are  the  finest  to  be  found  anywhere  out  of  Milton,  is  infamously  bad. 
Pray  correct  mine  thus,  where  the  waves  wakened  by  the  zephyr  are  said 
to  move 

Slowly  and  placidly,  with  gentle  plash 

Against  each  other,  and  liglit  laugh ;  but  soon, 

The  breezes  freshening,  rough  and  huge  they  swell, 

Alar  refulgent  in  the  crimson  east. 

But  no  man  has  ever  been  able  to  translate  this  writer,  and  no  man  ever 
will  be.  The  lighter  things  are  easy,  and  so  are  some  of  the  graver ;  for 
Langhorne,  I  think,  has  given  an  admirable  version  of  '  Miser,  Catulle.' 
But  though  my  Latin  hendecasyllabic  is  better  than  the  greater  part  of  his, 
I  could  not  in  a  lifetime  write  '  Quoi  quam  sit,'  &c,  nor  could  Robert 
Smith  himself,  Dryden,  who  makes  Virgil,  Lucretius,  and  Horace  always 
more  vigorous  than  they  were,  though  he  misses  the  softness  and  pathos, 
could  never  give  the  delicacy  of  'Ac  me,'  nor  'Quoi,'  &c.,  with  its  easy 
simple  force.  The  three  verses,  again,  '  Quae  tibi,'  are  three  pearls,  worth 
more  than  all  the  Billingsgate  oysters  and  all  their  shells  that  were  ever 
thrown  into  the  Thames.  Who  ever  wrote  such  a  good  thing  of  a  fool  as 
'  Ipse  qui  sit,  utrum  sit,'  &c.  Is  it  worth  giving  this  version  of  the  Odi  et 
Amo? 

I  love  and  hate.     Ah,  never  ask  why  so ! 

I  hate  and  l<>ve;  and  that  is  all  I  know. 

I  see  't  is  folly,  but  I  feel  't  is  woe." 

Pindar  he  meant  next  to  have  tried,  but  to  his  surprise  he  found 
the  language,  after  some  years'  abstinence,  so  unfamiliar  as  to  render 
the  undertaking  too  much  of  a  task.     He  wrould  always  say  he  was 


/£T.  6l-82.]  ESSAY    ON    THEOCRITUS.  581 

never  more  than  a  boy  in  Greek,  though  he  grew  up  to  adolescence 
in  Latin,  and  bore  a  strong  beard  in  English.  But  even  while  he  was 
complaining  that  he  must  learn  the  language  over  again,  it  came 
gradually  back  to  him  ;  and  I  remember  well,  when  we  next  met,  his 
likening  that  resumption  of  the  reading  of  Greek  to  the  sensation  of 
entering  a  cathedral,  where  at  first  you  find  it  dark,  until  use  leads 
you  on,  and  at  last  you  become  conscious  of  all  the  grand  magnifi- 
cence to  which  your  eye  dilates.  After  one  day's  reading  he  discarded 
his  lexicon,  and  though  he  did  not  go  on  with  Pindar  he  took  up  with 
another  Greek  favorite. 

AS    TO    PINDAR. 

"  The  edition  you  have  sent  me  I  find  to  be  edited  with  admirable  learn- 
ing. Who  indeed  can  add  anything  to  what  such  men  as  Heyne  and  Her- 
mann have  written  ?  I  happened  to  open  your  volume  at  p.  37.  "lav 
^avQaiui  Ka\  irctfnropcpvpois  aKT~«ri  seems  rather  the  pansy  than  the  gillyflower, 
which  is  nowhere  nafxn6p<Pvpov.  The  Greeks  and  modern  Italians  called 
several  very  different  flowers  by  the  names  of  tov  and  viola.  In  Tuscany 
the  violet  is  called  for  distinction's  sake  viola  mammola." 

The  result  was  the  paper  on  Theocritus,  as  delightful  a  piece  of 
writing  as  any  that  ever  fell  from  him ;  and  the  day  after  the  manu- 
script reached  me  I  had  this  letter  :  — 

"  At  the  account  of  the  first  idyl  where  the  herd  offers  Thyrsis  his  most 
magnificent  goat  for  a  song,  insert  this :  — 

" '  We  often  hear  that  such  or  such  a  thing  is  not  worth  an  old  song.  Alas,  how  few 
things  are !  What  precious  recollections  do  some  of  them  awaken !  what  pleasurable 
tears  do  they  excite!  Not  only  do  they  purify  the  stream  of  life,  but  they  can  delay  it 
on  its  shelves  and  rapids,  they  "can  turn  it  back  again  to  the  soft  moss  amidst  which  its 
sources  issue.' 

I  have  been  trying  a  version  of  the  famous  lines  in  that  idyl,  so  weakly 
imitated  by  Virgil,  so  beautifully  by  Milton,  which  yet  does  not  please  me. 
Fine  as  are  the  verses  of  Theocritus,  the  Greek  language  itself  cannot  bear1 
him  above  Milton  in  his  Lycidas. 

Where  were  ye.  O  ye  nymphs,  when  Daphnis  died? 

For  not  on  Pindus  were  ye,  nor  beside 

Peneus  in  his  softer  glades,  nor  where 

Acis  might  well  expect  you,  once  your  care. 

But  neither  Acis  did  your  steps  detain, 

Nor  strong  Anapus  rushing  forth  amain, 

Nor  high-browed  iEtua  with  her  forest  chain. 

I  shall  also  add  what  I  think  is  somewhat  of  an  idyl ;  but  you  will  judge.  I 
took  the  idea  from  a  note  in  your  Pindar.     I  had  forgotten  the  story." 

The  story  was  the  Hamadryad ;  and  at  no  period  of  his  life  had 
he  written  a  short  poem  in  feeling  belonging  more  intensely  to  the 
antique  world,  in  the  spirit  of  it  more  youthful,  or  of  a  more  enchant- 
ing grace  and  delicacy  of  expression,  than  this  in  his  seventieth  year. 
Its  subject  is  a  wood-nymph's  love  for  a  young  forester  who  has  fore- 
borne  to  fell  the  oak  that  is  her  home  :  and  what  a  poet  who  was  less 
of  a  Greek  would  have  turned  into  sentiment  or  allegory,  is  made  to 


582  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  f  is™-^"" 

interest  us  here  by  an  absolute  simplicity  and  reality.  The  time  of 
light,  clear,  definite  sensation  ;  when,  to  every  man,  the  shapes  of 
nature  were  hut  the  reflection  of  his  own  ;  when  marvels  were 
not  explained  but  helieved,  and  the  supernatural  was  not  higher 
than  the  natural,  or  indeed  other  than  a  different  development 
of  the  attributes  and  powers  of  nature ;  is  reflected  in  every  line. 
Not  human,  yet  not  above  humanity,  the  fairy  doubts  if  her  lover 
will  be  constant ;  perplexed  between  her  natural  heart  and  her 
shadowy  non-natural  ways,  the  mortal  has  his  doubts  as  well  ;  and, 
in  the  way  we  thus  become  conscious  alike  of  the  pains  and  pleasures, 
the  enjoyments  and  the  misgivings,  of  such  unequal  intercourse,  there 
is  a  wonderful  fascination.  A  bee  is  always  sent  to  him  when  she 
specially  desires  his  presence  :  in  long  summer  days,  and  longer  winter 
nights,  still  sent  forth  by  her, 

"  To  bring  that  light  which  never  wintry  blast 
Blows  out,  nor  rain  nor  snow  extinguishes, 
The  light  that  shines  from  loving  eyes  upon 
Eyes  that  love  back  till  they  can  see  no  more  " : 

and  he  has  engaged  himself  never  to  own  that  he  has  tired  of  her,  if 
ever  such  a  calamity  should  befall.  He  is  only  to  drive  the  bee 
away.  "  Then  shall  I  know  my  fate,  and,  for  thou  must  be  wretched, 
weep  at  thine."  Nor  does  he  really  in  any  heartless  fashion  tire  or  * 
cease  to  be  fond  of  her.  But  he  is  a  mortal,  not  a  dryad  ;  and,  mor- 
tal habits  resuming  their  control,  it  happens  one  day  that,  annoyed 
by  a  little  insect  too  importunately  buzzing  in  his  ear  at  an  incon- 
venient time,  he  lifts  his  hand  impatiently,  and  in  the  same  moment 
breaks  the  wing  of  a  bee  and  the  heart  of  the  hamadryad.  Landor 
liked  his  idyl  so  much  that  it  may  be  worth  adding  a  characteristic 
correction  of  it  sent  me  not  long  before  his  death,  in  which  he  re- 
moved a  bit  of  sentiment,  a  reflection,  from  it. 

"  Whenever  vou  revise  mv  poems  do  not  forget  to  strike  out  two  verses 
from  my  Hamadryad,  which  ought  to  have  been  omitted  by  me.  The 
verses  I  mean  are  in  the  dialogue  where  first  she  prays  of  Rhaicos  to  spare 
her  oak.  complains  of  him  and  his  father  slaying  the  innocent  trees,  and  to 
his  inquiry  whether  her  Hock  is  anywhere  near,  replies:  — 

T  have  no  flock:  T  kill 
Nothing  that  breathes,  that  stirs  that  feels  the  air, 
The  sun.  the  dew.     Why  should  the  beautiful 
(And  thou  art  beautiful)  disturb  the  source 
Whence  springs  all  beauty?     Hast  thou  never  heard 
Of  hamadryads? 

Now  these  are  obscure ;  I  had  corrected  them  to 

Whence  springs  all  beauty  .  .  .  Life.     Has   thou  not  heard.  &c. 

But.  I  afterwards  thought  that  the  hamadryad  should  have  cut  across  this 
little  piece  of  reflection,  and  should  have  said  :  — 

I  have  no  flock:  I  kill 
Nothing  that  breathes,  that  stirs,  that  feels  the  air, 
The  sun,  the  dew.     Thou  uever,  then,  hast  heard 
Of  hamadryad." 


JET.  61-82.]  ESSAY    OS    PETRARCA.  583 

The  third  of  these  criticisms,  all  of  them  written  with  more  care 
than  he  ordinarily  bestowed  on  matters  of  the  kind,  had  for  its  sub- 
ject Petrarca  ;  and  it  is  curious  that  precisely  the  remark  made  by 
his  brother  Robert  of  the  Catullus  was  made  to  him  of  this  by  Car- 
lyle.  "  That  piece  on  Petrarca,"  he  said,  "  surprises  me  (I  beg  many 
pardons)  by  its  impartiality  to  that  wearisome  creature  ;  and  looks,  in 
my  mind,  like  a  perfect  steel  engraving  in  the  way  of  portraiture." 
The  biographical  portion  is  indeed  a  little  masterpiece  ;  and  I  cannot 
refrain  from  showing,  by  a  few  brief  touches,  how  delicate  are  the 
strokes  of  the  narrative.  Of  the  proneness  of  tender  hearts  to  be 
moulded  by  localities,  he  says,  that  perhaps  the  purity  and  singleness 
of  Petrarca's,  his  communion  with  it  on  one  only  altar,  his  exclusion 
of  all  images  but  one,  may  have  resulted  from  his  long  visit  in  boy- 
hood to  the  gushing  springs,  the  eddying  torrents,  the  insurmountable 
rocks,  the  profound  and  inviolate  solitudes  of  Vaucluse.  Of  Laura's 
coldness,  he  remarks  that  it  is  well  perhaps  for  those  who  delight  in 
poetry  that  she  should  have  been  inflexible  and  obdurate,  "  for  the 
sweetest  song  ceases  when  the  feathers  have  lined  the  nest."  The 
danger  of  all  "  magical  powers"  to  the  possessor  of  them  he  illustrates 
by  a  fatal  attribute  in  the  "  magic  of  the  poet,"  that  while  he  can 
always  at  will  call  before  him  the  object  of  his  wishes,  her  counte- 
nance and  her  words  remain  beyond  his  influence.  Not  sparing  in 
his  quiet  illustrations  of  Petrarca's  vanity,  he  yet  repels  the  conceit 
ascribed  to  him  in  playing  so  often  on  the  name  of  Laura  :  holding  it 
to  be  a  pardonable  pleasure  to  cherish  the  very  sound  of  what  we 
love,  for  that,  belonging  as  it  does  to  the  heart,  it  belongs  to  poetry, 
and  is  not  to  be  cast  aside.  Of  the  poet's  coronation  it  is  remarked 
that  no  man  can  be  made  greater  than  another,  although  he  may  be 
made  more  conspicuous  by  title,  dress,  position,  and  acclamation  ;  for 
the  powerful  can  be  but  ushers  to  the  truly  great,  "  and  only  in  the 
execution  of  this  office  they  themselves  approach  to  greatness."  Pe- 
trarca's constancy  while  his  mistress  advanced  in  years  is  expressed 
by  the  saying  that  Youth  has  swifter  wings  than  Love.  "  He  had 
loved  her  sixteen  years  ;  but  all  the  beauty  that  had  left  her  features 
had  settled  on  his  heart ;  immovable,  unchangeable,  eternal."  It  is 
nevertheless  as  truly  said,  that  when  his  love  administered  nothing  to 
his  celebrity  it  was  silent ;  that  there  is  a  singular  absence  from  his 
verses  of  all  sympathy  with  Laura's  personal  griefs  ;  that  he  thought 
more  about  her  eyes  than  about  those  tears  which  are  the  inheritance 
of  the  brightest ;  and  that  he  might  well  be  supposed  to  have  said, 
in  some  unedited  canzone,  "  What  care  I  what  tears  there  be,  If  the 
tears  are  not  for  me  ] "  The  conclusion  altogether  is  that  Petrarch 
was  the  very  best  man  that  ever  was  a  very  vain  one,  while  in  him  van- 
ity had  abetter  excuse  for  itself  than  in  any  other,  since  none  was  ever 
more  admired  by  the  world  ;  and  that,  though  Laura  was  sensible  of 
little  or  no  passion  for  him,  she  was  pleased  with  his,  and  stood  like 
a  beautiful  caryatid  of  stainless  marble  at  the  base  of  an  image  on 


584  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^^i™' 

which  the  eyes  of  Italy  were  fixed.  "  He  who  has  loved  truly,  and 
above  all,  he  who  has  loved  unhappily,  approaches,  as  holiest  altars 
are  approached,  the  cenotaph  on  the  little  column  at  Arqua," 

The  letter  accompanying  this  essay,  when  sent  to  me,  told  me  of 
the  progress  of  another  and  more  important  literary  labor  also  under- 
taken at  my  suggestion,  and  to  which  I  gave  such  help  as  he  invited 
from  me  during  the  next  following  years.  This  was  the  Collection 
and  Revision  of  all  his  Writings  ;  a  part  of  the  design  of  which  was 
that  it  should  be  completed  with  the  completion  of  his  seventieth 
year.  But,  by  the  labor  involved  in  the  preparation  of  it,  a  delay  of 
more  than  six  months  after  he  had  seen  his  seventy-first  having  inter- 
vened, he  laughingly  declared  that  this  had  freed  him  from  a  certain 
other  resolution  he  would  else  have  kept.  "  I  have  youth  on  my 
side,"  he  wrote  to  Lady  Blessington  in  November,  1844  :  — 

"  I  shall  not  see  seventy  for  nearly  three  months  to  come.  Once  beyond 
seventy  I  will  never  write  a  line  in  verse  or  prose  for  publication.  I  will  be 
my  own  Gil  Bias.  The  wisest  of  us  are  unconscious  when  our  faculties 
begin  to  decay.  Knowing  this,  I  fixed  my  determination  many  years  ago. 
Meanwhile  I  am  acting  religiously  on  F.'s  advice.  I  pluck  out  my  weeds 
all  over  the  field,  and  leave  only  the  strongest  shoots  of  the  best  plants 
standing." 

To  me  he  wrote  in  another  letter  a  few  weeks  later  :  — 

"  I  am  working  very  hard  at  the  Collection,  and  will  be  mindful  of  your 
warnings.  Old  men  are  apt  to  stumble  and  fall  flat  when  they  totter  into 
poetry.  We  all  are  archbishops  at  a  certain  age;  but  some  can  bear  Gil  Bias 
better  than  the  others  can.  Yet  I  hope  you  Avill  not  have  to  repent  of  your 
wish  to  draw  the  world's  attention  to  my  grave.  People  will  not  read  my 
writings  until  then,  and  then,  if  they  like  to  do  so,  they  may  perhaps  find, 
both  in  prose  and  poetry,  what  may  enlarge  their  minds  and  correct  their 
taste  ;  and  here  I  speak  of  those  whose  minds  are  already  the  largest,  and 
whose  taste  is  the  most  correct.  There  are  some  seeds  that  will  germinate  in 
gravel ;  but  there  are  none  of  that  species  in  my  sack.  I  will  scatter  none 
on  the  roadside.  Throw  me  open  the  garden,  and  I  will  try  to  do  some- 
thing for  the  well-ordered  and  clean  parterre.  Allow  me  one  French  word; 
you  shall  never  have  another  from  me:  border  would  not  do,  nor  bed. 
Cicero  and  Atticus  blow  a  few  Greek  bubbles  across  to  one  another  .  .  . 
not  that  I  am  to  be  swayed  by  the  authority  of  either;  but  when  I  ac- 
knowledge a  fault  I  hope  for  pardon.  I  began  with  self,  and  will  end  with 
self,  as  most  men  do.  The  literary  world  is  a  dram-drinking  world  at 
presenl ;  but  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  next  generation  will  relish  a  cooler 
and  better  flavored  drink.  My  Conversations,  whatever  their  demerits,  will 
exhibit  more  qualities  and  postures  of  the  human  mind  than  any  ether  book 
published  in  my  day.  Above  two  hundred  men  and  women  will  live  again; 
and,  among  the  rest,  neither  Cicero  nor  Solon  will  be  proved  to  have  spoken 
more  eloquently  or  more  wisely  in  his  former  state.  Nee  mens  liir  sermo 
est  But  of  my  poetry  what  shall  I  say?  In  fact  I  care  little  about  it, 
though  I  have  always  been  nursing  it  assiduously.  I  go  on  correcting  and 
correcting,  adding  and  adding,  all  my  life  through,  and  nobody  (as  might  be 
expected)  is  less  satisfied  at  last.  Will  this  answer  do  1'or  our  friend,  and  is 
it  worth  retaining? 


JET.  6l-82.] 


COLLECTED   WORKS. 


585 


Yes :  I  write  verses  now  and  then, 
But  blunt  and  flaccid  is  my  pen, 
No  longer  talkt  of  by  young  men 
As  rather  clever. 

In  the  last  quarter  are  my  eyes, 
You  see  it  by  their  form  and  size; 
Is  it  not  time  then  to  be  wise? 

Or  now  or  never. 

Fairest  that  ever  sprang  from  Eve ! 
While  Time  allows  the  short  reprieve, 
Just  look  at  me !  would  you  believe 
'T  was  once  a  lover? 

I  cannot  clear  the  five-bar  gate ; 
But,  trying  first  its  timber's  state, 
Climb  stiffly  up,  take  breath,  and  wait 
To  trundle  over. 


Through  gallopade  I  cannot  swing 

The  entangling  blooms  of  Beauty's  spring: 

I  cannot  say  the  tender  thing, 

Be  't  true  or  false; 

And  am  beginning  to  opine 
Those  girls  are  only  half  divine 
Whose  waists  yon  wicked  boys  intwine 
In  giddy  waltz. 

I  fear  that  arm  above  that  shoulder; 
I  wish  them  wiser,  graver,  older, 
Sedater,  and  uo  harm  if  colder 

And  panting  less. 

Ah !  people  were  not  half  so  wild 
In  former  days,  when,  starchly  mild, 
Upon  her  high-heeled  Essex  smiled 

The  brave  Queen  Bess." 


Hardly  any  letter  now  reached  me  from  him  without  a  verse  in  it 
of  some  kind,  grave  or  gay,  to  add  to  our  Collection  ;  thrown  off  with 
as  much  ease  as  if  it  were  but  ordinary  speech,  and  seeming  to  prove 
beyond  qtiestion  that  if  he  had  only  given  to  his  poetry  the  same  kind 
and  amount  of  care  bestowed  upon  his  prose,  he  might  in  both  have 
had  few  superiors.  Among  the  verses  that  thus  came  to  me,  struck 
out  amid  the  wearisome  correction  of  proofs,  were  some  that  rank 
with  his  best  in  their  kind.  The  Cymodameia,  a  charming  Greek 
legend  of  two  lovers  who  obtain  by  their  fidelity  the  favor  of  Apollo, 
is  one  of  them  ;  and  several  smaller  pieces  that  owed  their  inspiration 
to  the  before-named  lady  of  the  Aylmer  family,  who,  both  by  her  ac- 
complishments and  by  her  name  of  Rose,  had  brought  back  to  him  a 
dream  of  his  youth,  expressed  delightfully  his  gratitude  for  the  hap- 
piness her  society  had  given  him.  From  a  letter  to  this  lady  dated  a 
few  weeks  subsequent  to  the  publication  of  the  Collected  Works,  in 
which  he  had  written  of  a  harvest-scene  witnessed  with  Kenyon  (or 
rather  with  "  all  that  is  left  of  Kenyon,  —  scarcely  three  quintals  :  a 
mule  now  could  carry  him  up  hill "),  I  take  a  few  words  which  express 
much.  "  Between  the  hay -harvest  and  the  corn-harvest  there  is  a 
lull  of  nature,  a  calm  and  somewhat  dull  quiescence.  Autumn  then 
comes  to  tell  us  of  the  world's  varieties  and  changes.  At  last  the 
white  pall  of  nature  closes  round  us.  In  the  last  seven  or  eight 
years  I  seem  to  myself  to  have  passed  through  all  the  seasons  of  life 
excepting  the  very  earliest  and  the  very  latest.  I  doubt  whether  I 
have  ever  been  so  happy  in  any  other  equal  and  continued  space  of 
time.  Italy  would  sometimes  flash  back  upon  me  ;  but  lightnings 
only  kept  the  memory  awake,  without  disturbing  it.  How  much, 
how  nearly  all,  of  this  contentment  do  I  owe  to  your  friendship,  to 
your  music  and  your  conversation  !  "  (To  Lady  Sawle,  6th  July, 
1846.)  To  the  same  friend  were  addressed  the  lines  "  To  a  Bride," 
which  stand  last  but  one  in  the  collection  ;  with  the  date  of  the  day, 
"  17th  February,  1846,"  on  which  she  had  changed  her  name. 

Something  also  of  a  biographical  interest  may  be  found  hereafter 


58G  TWEXTY-OXE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^SS^"" 

in  other  personal  poems  clustering  thick  at  the  close  of  the  book, 
which  were  mostly  written  while  it  passed  through  the  printer's 
hands.  Among  these  were  the  lines  to  his  daughter  Julia,  to  his 
niece  Teresita  Stopford,  to  Charles  Dickens,  to  Robert  Browning,  to 
John  Kenyon,  and  to  Julius  Hare;  the  latter  name  and  my  own 
standing  together  on  the  dedicatory  page  of  the  first  volume,  and  on 
the  final  page  of  the  second  a  poem  to  myself  concluding  the  work, 
which  reached  me  so  late  that  the  final  sheet  had  to  be  cancelled 
to  admit  of  its  insertion.  I  hope  to  be  forgiven  for  preserving  it 
here,  with  the  letter  in  which  it  came.  Some  allusions  in  it  are  to  be 
explained  by  the  fact  that,  as  the  person  to  whom  he  addressed  it, 
and  who  had,  by  way  of  a  good-humored  Landorian  imitation,  just 
sent  him  some  congratulatory  verses  on  the  completion  of  their  joint 
labor  in  editing,  was  in  those  days  an  Edinburgh  Reviewer,  the  writer 
not  unreasonably  expected  for  his  now  gathered  and  completed  works 
a  little  praise  from  that  cold  quarter  to  set  against  less  genial  talk  in 
former  years. 

"  As  the  volumes  begin  they  must  end  with  you.  A  te  printipium,  tibi 
desinet.  These  verses  must  be  added;  and  here  are  two  or  three  words  to 
enrich  the  index:  red-polled,  siller-grasping  (siller,  Scotch  for  silver).  Now, 
these  I  think  must  be  my  very  last;  for  would  it  not  be  a  scandal,  my  dear 
Forster,  that  a  man  in  his  seventy-second  year  should  be  running  with  his 
tongue  out  after  the  Muses  ? 

Forster!  whose  zeal  hath  seized  each  written  page 

That  fell  from  me,  and  over  many  lands 

Hath  cleared  for  me  a  broad  and  solid  way, 

Whence  one  more  age,  ay,  haply  more  than  one, 

May  be  arrived  at  (a'.l  through  thee),  accept 

No  false  or  faint  or  perishable  thanks. 

From  better  men,  and  greater,  friendship  turned 

Thy  willing  steps  to  me.     From  Eliot's  cell 

Death-dark:  from  Hampden's  sadder  battle-field; 

From  steadfast  Cromwell's  tribimitian  throne, 

Loftier  than  king's  supported  knees  could  mount; 

Hast  thou  departed  with  me,  and  hast  climbed 

Cecropian  heights,  and  ploughed  JEgean  waves. 

Therefore  it  never  grieved  me  when  I  saw 

That  she  who  guards  those  regions  and  those  seas 

Hath  lookt  with  eyes  more  gracious  upon  thee. 

There  are  no  few  like  that  conspirator 

Who,  under  pretext  of  power-wor-diip,  fell 

At  C.ksak's  feet,  only  to  hold  him  down 

While  others  stabbed  him  with  repeated  blows: 

And  there  are  more  who  fling  light  jibes,  immerst 

In  gutter-filth,  against  the  car  that  mounts 

Weighty  with  triumph  up  the  Sacred  Way. 

Protect  in  every  place  my  stranger  guests, 

Born  in  the  lucid  land  of  free  pure  song. 

Now  first  appearing  on  repulsive  shores, 

Bleak,  and  where  safely  none  but  natives  move, 

Red-polled,  red-handed,  siller-grasping  men. 

Ah!   lead  them  far  away,  for  they  are  used 

To  genial  climes  and  gentle  speech;  but  most 

Cymod  \mk.ia  :  warn  the  Tritons  off 

While  she  ascends,  while  through  the  opening  plain 

Of  the  green  sea  (brightened  by  bearing  it) 

Gushes  redundantly  her  golden  hair. 


JET.  6l-82.]  COLLECTED    WORKS.  587 

The  lines,  I  think,  will  conclude  the  book  becomingly  and  ornamentally,  and 
help  us  hand  in  hand  down  to  future  generations.  The  men  of  our  com- 
monwealth indeed  will  never  permit  us  to  be  separated,  if  only  you  remain 
faithful  to  their  fields  and  pastures.  But  take  care,  take  care  you  do  not 
make  me  as  jealous  of  you  in  poetry  as  I  have  often  been  in  prose.  Do  not 
let  me  catch  you  again  among 

Those  trackless  forest  glades,  those  noble  hills, 
And  those  enchanting  but  sequestered  valleys 
Which  broad-browed  Laudor  rules  as  his  domain. 

And  now  come  and  make  your  peace  for  having  invaded  that  country." 

Other  invasions  into  his  territory  there  also  were,  incident  to  the 
help  I  gave  in  preparation  of  the  volumes,  out  of  which  arose  conflicts 
that  ended  sometimes  doubtfully,  but  always  peacefully.  Against  his 
intended  reformation  of  spelling  I  waged  a  successful  war.  If  the 
language  was  ever  in  that  respect  to  be  amended,  it  seemed  to  me  that 
it  must  be  done  by  a  great  work  designed  for  no  other  purpose,  and 
that  what  Johnson  had  seen  to  be  impracticable  was  not  likely  now  to 
succeed.  Books  had  multiplied  too  much  ;  the  literature  had  become 
too  extensive  for  change ;  even  Shakespeare  and  his  successors  had 
submitted  to  the  strength  of  custom  ;  and  any  attempt  to  resist  such 
determination  of  the  language  could  only  avail  to  distract  the  reader's 
attention  and  vex  him  in  vain.  Right  or  wrong,  habit  was  too  strong 
for  us,  and  there  was  nothing  left  us  but  to  abide  by  that  which  was 
least  likely  to  vary  more.  To  this  argument  he  yielded  at  last,  re- 
serving only  a  few  words  defensible  on  Milton's  authority.  But  upon 
another  point  I  was  not  so  fortunate.  I  would  fain  have  omitted  nearly 
all  the  political  dialogues,  and  shortened  some  of  the  others  ;  sufficient 
for  another  man's  reputation,  it  might  be,  but  adding  nothing  to  his ; 
for  I  would  have  had  no  alloy,  even  of  silver,  where  there  was  so  much 
pure  gold.  Here  however  he  was  not  to  be  moved.  If  I  dismiss  my 
Ferdinands  and  Don  John  Marys,  he  would  say,  the  book  ceases  to  rep- 
resent all  the  parts  of  life  which  I  proposed  to  exhibit  in  it.  "  You 
say  that  where  conversations  begin  with  heroes  and  continue  with  men, 
it  is  a  violation  of  the  rules  of  art  that  they  should  terminate  with 
something  lower.  But  that  is  exactly  what  I  intended."  He  had  also 
another  argument. 

"  The  volumes  belong  to  you  and  Hare,  without  whom  they  could  never 
have  appeared,  and  I  shall  omit  all  the  old  dedications,  —  for  Mina  gave 
orders  to  kill  a  woman ;  Bolivar  was  a  coxcomb  and  impostor,  having  been 
two  hundred  miles  distant  from  the  battle  he  pretended  to  have  won  ;  and 
Wilson  is  worse  than  a  Whig.  But  you  failed  to  convince  me  (and  who, 
then,  shall  succeed  in  persuading  me?)  that  I  ought  to  cancel  a  single  one 
of  the  Conversations.  Lord  Dudley  told  Hare  that  out  of  ninety  there  were 
not  nine  which  any  other  man  in  England  could  have  written.  And  he 
spoke  the  truth.  There  is  a  particle  of  salt  in  the  very  poorest  of  them 
which  will  preserve  it  from  decomposition.  Beside,  this  is  to  be  considered, 
which  nobody  has  considered  sufficiently.  If  Shakespeare  had  written  but 
Othello,  the  noblest  of  human  works,  he  would  scarcely  have  been  half  so 
great  as  the  having  written  many  dramas  in  addition,  even  inferior  ones,  has 


588  TWENTY-ONE    TEARS    AT    BATH.  ^Stf-™' 

made  him.  Genius  shows  its  power  by  its  multiformity.  After  the  great 
loet  had  written  half  his  plays,  the  writing  of  the  other  half  would  make 
lim  not  merely  one  half  greater,  but  three  hundred-fold.  This  is  because 
le  has  brought  into  activity  so  many  powers  of  mind,  and  because  there 

are  so  many  systems   all   shining  in   their  greater  or   their   lesser  spheres, 

throughout  his  vast  creation." 

Of  the  book  thus  given  to  the  world  it  will  not  need  that  I  should 
add  anything  to  what  already  has  been  said  of  the  several  parts  com- 
posing it.  Its  reception  by  the  public  was  very  favorable,  and  it  had 
private  greetings  of  unusual  warmth.  It  was  hailed  as  a  double  gift, 
to  the  age  and  to  after  ages,  by  some  whose  good  word  Landor  reckoned 
to  be  fame ;  and  perhaps  he  would  himself  have  singled  out,  as  the 
most  welcome  to  him  of  all,  the  praise  of  William  Napier.  He  wrote 
more  than  once,  as  he  made  his  way  through  the  volumes,  in  language 
of  unfeigned  astonishment.  "You  have  two  or  three  crotchets  win  eh 
you  know  I  laugh  at,  though  I  never  dispute  with  you  on  them  ;  and 
which  I  believe  you  laugh  at  yourself  in  your  sleeve,  though  it  is  a 
large  sleeve  that  would  hold  your  laugh,  However,  there  they  are, 
and  they  belong  to  you,  in  the  same  manner  that  Cromwell's  wart  be- 
longed to  him,  and  he  would  be  a  fine  fool  that  judged  Oliver's  genius 
by  his  wart !  I  do  declare,  not  with  stand  ing  your  Napoleon  wart,  that 
your  work  is  marvellous."  Again  he  wrote  :  "  When  I  consider  that 
the  whole  of  these  volumes  is  original,  the  pure  production  of  your 
inventive  brain,  it  is  astounding.  The  variety  and  purity  of  your  lan- 
guage, the  vigor  and  wit  of  your  thoughts,  the  extent  of  the  ground 
you  travel  over,  are  all  causes  of  amazement."  A  third  letter,  in  which 
be  wrote  of  the  Conversations  more  exclusively,  was  very  characteristic 
of  himself  as  well  as  of  Landor.  "  I  know  not  what  the  temper  of  the 
different  people,  made  eloquent  by  you,  may  have  been,  and  therefore 
I  know  not  if  they  would  have  listened  to  }-ou  ;  but  they  must  all  have 
had,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  genius,  and  wit  in  the  high  significance 
of  that  word,  and  therefore  1  suppose  woidd  have  bestowed  an  hour  or 
two  on  you  ;  and  if  so,  you  have  shown  that  you  could  have  talked  well 
and  wittily  to  the  greatest  men  and  women  of  every  nation  and  of  every 
age,  since  history  took  the  place  of  fable,  and  perhaps  better  when  fable 
zoos  history.  To  the  women  you  certainly  could,  you  cunning  knave, 
for  you  have  adorned  them  with  all  the  graces  that  poetry,  the  best 
and  finest  of  fables,  could  invent.  And  yet  you  have  borrowed  nothing 
from  former  poets  ;  unless  it  be  the  Olympus-shaking  laugh  of  Homer's 
Jupiter,  and  that  you  keep  for  yourself.  I  would  you  could  throw  his 
lightnings  also  !  I  know  where  they  would  fall,  and  the  world  would 
soon  be  purged  of  all  knaves  and  sneaking  scoundrels." 

The  great  soldier  had  perfectly  understood  what  it  was  that  formed 
the  greatness  as  well  as  the  charm  of  this  collected  series  of  writings. 
It  was  the  range  and  the  variety  of  its  power  ;  of  which  Julius  Hare 
hardly  spoke  in  excess,  when,  at  this  time  also,  he  wrote  of  the  book 
to  its  author,  that  it  seemed  to  him  to  "  contain  more    and    more 


JET.  61-82.]  POEMATA    ET    INSCRIPTIONES.  589 

various  beauty  than  any  collection  of  the  writings  of  any  English 
author  since  Shakespeare."  Again  the  widow  of  Shelley,  to  whom 
he  sent  the  volumes,  took  occasion  to  tell  him  how  endeared  to  her 
by  old  associations  all  his  early  poetry  had  been  ;  to  relate  that  her 
husband's  passionate  love  for  Gebir  had  outlived  his  young  college 
days,  remaining  with  him  to  the  last ;  and  to  add  for  herself  that 
she  had  thus  been  led,  since  his  death,  to  Landor's  later  works,  in 
which  she  had  ever  found  "  the  noblest  sentiments,  the  most  pro- 
found remarks,  and  the  most  exquisite  imagery,  expressed  in  words 
that  ought  to  be  studied  for  the  welfare  and  cultivation  of  our  lan- 
guage." -  One  more  opinion  only  I  will  quote,  from  a  man  of  rare 
genius  still  living,  out  of  those  that  Landor  sent  me  on  receiving 
them.  "  Nothing  has  been  published  that  I  can  remember  in 
which  the  display  is  so  altogether  extraordinary,  of  the  rarest  intel- 
lectual  powers,  I  do  believe,  that  were  ever  brought  together  in  one 
man."  It  is  certain  that  no  book  had  been  published  containing  both 
poetry  and  prose,  by  the  same  writer,  of  such  equal  and  extraordinary 
merit. 

There  was  nevertheless  one  thing  wanting  in  it  that  left  Landor 
thoroughly  dissatisfied  till  the  defect  was  otherwise  supplied.  His 
Latin  poetry  and  prose,  in  his  own  esteem  not  inferior  to  his  English 
compositions,  were  not  there.  He  had  yielded  to  my  reasons  for  not 
including  them.  Right  or  wrong  he  could  not  deny  that  there  had 
long  ceased  to  be,  with  rarest  exceptions,  readers  for  Latin  poetry  as 
poetry  and  not  as  Latin  merely  ;  our  college  systems  having  at  least 
done  this  for  us.  Not  for  years  only,  but  generations,  Latin  poems 
had  been  read  for  literally  nothing  but  their  Latinity,  just  as  pictures 
are  often  bought  for  their  frames  ;  the  painting  and  the  poetry  alike 
going  for  nothing.  What  number  of  readers,  then,  could  he  hope  to 
interest,  who  had  made  his  Latinity  but  the  vehicle  for  his  poetry, 
and  finished  his  picture  as  of  greater  worth  than  its  frame  1  I 
might  have  resisted  even  the  publication,  in  a  sepai'ate  small  volume, 
of  the  Poemata  et  Inscriptiones,  novis  auxit  Savagius  Landor,  which 
followed  the  Collected  Works  in  the  succeeding  year,  could  I  have 
foreseen  all  the  troubles  that  attended  the  proper  correction  of  its 
proofs.  For,  an  acquaintance  with  the  niceties  of  the  language, 
which  he  should  have  valued  least,  was  exactly  that  on  wdiich  my  old 
friend  prided  himself  most ;  and  I  should  have  said  to  any  one  who 
wished  to  torment  him,  Don't  question  his  morals  or  steal  his  money, 
but  make  him  answerable  for  false  quantities  or  other  bad  Latin. 
He  raged  against  the  poor  printers  for  such  innocent  lapses  as  Ange- 
lina for  Aufedina,  and,  not  at  all  jocosely  but  quite  angrily,  asked 
what  business  the  fools  had  to  be  thinking  of  their  Angelinas  of  the 
Strand  1  Yet  he  knew  that  he  ought  to  have  been  more  patient. 
"  Truth  is  that  unless  I  write  with  rapidity,  I  write  badly,  and  unless 
I  read  with  rapidity  I  lose  my  grasp  of  the  subject.  It  is  curious 
that  the  word  (terdvoia,  which  is  chiefly  used  for  repentance,  is  primi- 


590  TWEXTY-OXE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  fn,°"K  >'"• 

i«30  -57. 

tively  after-thought ;  and  the  Italian  painters  call  a  correction  a petvti- 

mento."  Ife  gave  forcible  illustration  of  this  the  day  after  writing  it 
by  sending,  in  amendment  of  a  poem  that  had  been  in  print  more 
than  fifty-four  years,  a  correction  which  he  had  intended  to  make  at 
its  first  publication,  and  through  all  those  years  had  recollected.  "  I 
left  my  hod  this  morning  at  six,  after  lying  awake  since  three,  when 
1  suddenly  remembered  a  correction  which  I  ought  to  have  made 
fifty-four  years  ago."  Withal  there  was  a  lurking  dread,  an  always* 
present  fear,  that  he  was  less  familiar  with  the  language  than  formerly, 
which  made  him  often  self-distrustful  without  occasion  ;  and  I  have 
had  as  many  as  half  a  dozen  letters  on  the  same  day  correcting  in  as 
many  ways  a  correction  found  at  last  to  be  itself  not  necessary.  Even 
yet  I  remember  with  a  tender  pity,  ludicrous  in  their  exaggeration  as 
they  were,  his  sufferings  in  connection  with  the  first  syllable  in 
flagrans.  He  had  made  it  short,  but,  visited  with  a  sudden  fear  that 
it  was  long,  had  sent  me  three  several  emendations  of  it.  He  would 
have  to  cancel  four  pages,  for  now  he  felt  only  too  certain  of  his  de- 
plorable oversight,  stupidity,  ignorance,  —  no  name  could  be  too 
hard  ;  but  nobody  else  must  ever  know  of  it.  It  had  kept  him 
awake  the  whole  previous  twenty-four  hours,  and  as  he  wrote  he 
could  no  longer  bid  me  good  night,  for  it  was  already  far  into  morn- 
ing. But  by  the  side  of  the  letter  of  which  this  was  the  ptirport, 
and  brought  to  me  by  the  same  post,  lay  another  letter  winding  up 
the  story.  The  second  night,  or  morning,  had  proved  sleepless  as 
the  first,  and  for  some  hours  he  had  tossed  restlessly  about  under 
torture  of  a  fresh  misgiving  that  he  might  at  first  have  been  right 
after  all  ;  when  suddenly,  as  the  clock  struck  four  on  that  winter 
morning,  relief  came  in  a  remembered  line  from  Virgil,  and  he  sprang 
out  of  bed  repeating  the  331st  verse  of  the  first  Georgic, 

"  Tile  flasriinti, 
Aut  Atho,  nut  Rhodopcn,  ant  alta  Cerannia  telo,"  &c, 

which  ho  then  and  there  set  down  in  the  letter  that  announced  to  me 
the  close  of  his  trial.  He  might  as  well  have  waited  until  daybreak, 
for  he  gained  nothing  by  so  sacrificing  rest ;  but  it  was  his  old  im- 
perious way.  He  was  always  inflicting  a  needless  trouble  on  him- 
Belf  and  on  me,  and  pleading  still  that  each  should  be  the  last. 
"Extremvm  hiinc,  Forstere,  mihi  concede  laborem."  A  week  later,  a 
strophe  was  added  to  one  of  the  poems  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
of  which  I  had  next  day  the  quite  illegible  pencil  scrawl  ;  and  I  may 
remark,  of  one  of  the  best  of  his  Latin  poems  subsequent  to  this  vol- 
ume, written  Ad  Herovnam  amid  the  Italian  excitements  of  1849, 
and  as  much  admired  by  Whewell  of  Trinity  as  by  Aubrey  de  Vere, 
that  this  also  was  written  with  the  like  impetuosity,  scrawled  with 
pencil  in  the  dark  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  in  that  condition 
sent  to  me. 

We  got  through  our  printer's  trials  at  last,  so  successfully  that  he 
believed  the   quickest  eyes  would  not  discover  eight  faults  in  the 


JET.  61-82.]  THE    HELLEXICS.  591 

whole  eight  thousand  lines  ;  and  then  he  was  all  eagerness  for  the 
publication,  alleging  two  special  reasons.  Leipsic  fair  was  coming  on, 
the  very  market  for  such  a  book  ;  and  before  it  could  be  taken  notice 
of  in  England  it  must  be  got  into  France  and  Germany,  if  we  would 
not  have  it  prohibited  in  both  !  Alas,  he  might  have  spared  himself 
these  anxieties.  I  never  heard  that  anybody  asked  for  it  at  Leipsic 
fair  ;  and  sharp  as  were  its  epigrams  against  foreign  as  well  as  native 
rulers  and  statesmen,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  one  noticed 
them  save  a  few  ripe  scholars.  High  opinions  from  Whewell,  Mac- 
leane,  and  others,  to  the  effect  that  there  had  been  no  better  Latin 
poetry  since  the  Virgilian  age,  were  sent  him  by  Julius  Hare; 
who  added,  for  himself,  that  in  spite  of  Landor's  praise  of  Robert 
Smith,  he  suspected  that  the  greatest  Latin  poet  since  Lucretius  and 
Catullus  was  not  Bobus,  but  a  countryman  of  his.* 

The  special  result  of  the  publication  was  rather  for  English  than 
Latin  readers.  It  led  to  the  Hellenics.  Its  reception  had  justified 
my  warning  to  him  that  the  day  was  passed  in  which  imagination  or 
fancy  could  count  for  anything  in  a  Latin  composition,  and  that  if  he 
desired  a  judgment  on  his  poetry  rather  than  his  Latinity,  he  must 
go  before  another  bench.  "  You  were  right,"  he  now  suddenly  an- 
nounced to  me.  "  My  resolution  is  taken  to  send  you  a  translation 
of  all  the  Latin  idyls,  including  my  Gebirus,  out  of  the  Poemata  et 
Tnscriptiones.  You  shall  have  one  a  week  ;  and  a  project  starts  up 
before  my  mind.  This  is,  to  print  them  hereafter,  together  with  the 
English  "  (he  means  the  Hellenics  already  included  in  the  Works),  "  in 
one  small  volume.  It  is  better,  if  we  can,  to  breathe  life  into  such 
figures  as  Pygmalion's  than  into  such  as  decorate  our  London  tea- 
gardens."  He  kept  his  word,  and  the  result  was  one  of  the  most 
delightful  of  his  books.  The  Latin  became  English  idyls,  retaining 
no  trace  of  the  coldness  of  translation,  but  all  glowing  and  warm 
with  original  life.  The  Cupid  and  Pan,  the  Altar  of  Modesty,  the 
Espousals  of  Polyxena,  Dryope,  Corythus,  Pan  and  Pitys,  Coresus 
and  Callirhoe,  Catillus  and  Salia,  the  Children  of  Venus,  and  the  Last 
of  Ulysses,  were  among  those  that  thus  took  their  place  as  English 
poems  ;  and  a  collection  so  rich  and  various  of  classical  scenes  and 
images,  limiting  the  word  as  we  do  in  sculpture  and  painting,  and  as- 
sociating it  with  Greece  and  Rome,  does  not  exist  in  any  other  single 
book  in  our  literature.  Let  the  Corythus  be  studied,  to  understand 
the  full  value  of  its  contents.  Beside  its  beauty  and  wealth  of  ima- 
gery, thei'e  is  also  much  beauty  of  form.  Each  idyl  is  for  the  most 
part  exactly  what  the  word  implies,  a  short  poem  of  the  heroic  cast,  a 
small  image  of  something  great,  epic  in  character,  and  in  treatment 
too.  There  is  a  splendid  touch  in  the  Ulysses,  where  you  see  that 
by  depriving  Circe  of  her  youth  and  restoring  hers  to  Penelope  it  is 

*  For  various  preceding  allusions  to  Landor's  Latin  compositions,  on  which  he  him- 
self set  such  store,  see  ante,  pp.  21,  64,  114,  184  (these  refer  to  the  Gebirus  ;  what  fol- 
low chieflv  to  the  hlyllia  Heroicct),  153,  154,  240,  251,  253,  262,  267,  268,  273,  278,  279, 
288,  293,  296,  297.     See,  also,  pp.  321,  387. 


592  TWENTY-OXE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  'n°,°.K  vn- 

1030-57. 

meant  to  show  how  Vice  loses  her  charm  and  perishes,  and  how  impo- 
tent is  Time  against  Virtue  ;  but  such  meanings  are  never  by  way 
of  sentiment  obtruded.  They  are  everywhere,  but  you  must  find 
them.  It  is  not  the  eagerness  to  say  everything,  but  the  care  to  re- 
ject as  much  as  possible,  which  impresses  the  reader  throughout; 
and  there  is  always  the  absence  of  exaggeration.  When  Jove  looks, 
there  is  no  need  that  he  should  frown. 

Wide-seeing  Zeus  lookt  clown;  as  mortals  knew 

By  the  woods  bending  under  his  dark  eye, 

And  huge  towers  shuddering  on  the  mountain-tops, 

And  stillness  in  the  valley,  in  the  wold, 

And  over  the  deep  waters  all  round  earth. 

Certainly  this  little  book,  which  appeared  at  the  close  of  1847, 
gave  convincing  proof  that  up  to  this  date  Landor's  powers  even  of 
fancy  had  not  ebbed  a  hand's  breadth  on  the  sands  of  time,  seventy- 
three  years  wide. 


X.  SUMMER  HOLIDAYS  AND  GUESTS  AT  HOME. 

When  I  first  visited  Landor  in  Bath  the  city  was  only  accessible 
by  coach,  and  no  coach  left  after  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning.  But 
these  difficulties  in  the  way  of  intercourse  soon  disappeared,  and  the 
travelling  that  had  occupied  two  entire  days  took  up  little  more  than 
double  the  same  number  of  hours.  The  first  time  Mr.  Dickens  went 
with  me  the  railroad  was  open,  and  it  had  become  possible  to  leave 
in  the  afternoon,  dine  and  pass  the  evening  with  Landor,  and  break- 
fast the  next  morning  in  London.  Still  vividly  remembered  by  us 
both  are  such  evenings,  when  a  night's  sleep  purchased  for  us  cheaply 
the  pleasure  of  being  present  with  him  on  his  birthday  ;  and  I  think 
it  was  at  the  first  celebration  of  the  kind  in  the  first  of  his  Bath 
lodgings,  35  St.  James's  Square,  that  the  fancy  which  took  the  form 
of  Little  Nell  in  the  Curiosity  Shop  first  dawned  on  the  genius  of  its 
creator.  No  character  in  prose  fiction  was  a  greater  favorite  with 
Landor.  He  thought  that,  upon  her,  Juliet  might  for  a  moment 
have  turned  her  eves  from  Ptomeo,  and  that  Desdemona  might  have 
taken  her  hair  breadth  escapes  to  heart,  so  interesting  and  pathetic 
did  she  seem  to  him  ;  and  when,  some  years  later,  the  circumstance 
I  have  named  was  recalled  to  him,  he  broke  into  one  of  those  whim- 
sical bursts  of  comical  extravagance  out  of  which  arose  the  fancy  of 
Boythorn.  With  tremendous  emphasis  he  confirmed  the  fact,  and 
added  that  he  had  never  in  his  life  regretted  anything  so  much  as 
his  having  failed  to  carry  otit  an  intention  he  had  formed  respecting 
it ;  for  he  meant  to  have  purchased  that  house,  35  St.  James's 
Square,  and  then  and  there  to  have  burnt  it  to  the  ground,  to  the 
end  that  no  meaner  association  should  ever  desecrate  the  birth- 
place   of   Nell.       Then   he  would  pause   a  little,   become   conscious 


JET.  61-82.]  HOLIDAYS    AND    GUESTS    AT    HOME.  593 

of  our  sense  of  his  absurdity,  and  break  into  a  thundering  peal  of 
laughter. 

Another  of  these  evenings,  when  Mr.  Dickens  and  myself  had 
travelled  to  him  expressly  to  celebrate  his  birthday,  returning  the 
same  night  to  London,  is  worth  recalling  because  of  our  talk  having 
led  to  his  writing  the  quatrain  adopted  afterwards  as  the  motto  to 
his  Last  Fruit.  It  was  his  own  version  of  the  moral  of  his  own  life 
in  its  aims  and  enjoyments  ;  and,  to  all  who  could  so  accept  it,  a  very 
terse  and  conclusive  summing-up  of  Epicurean  philosophy.  But,  on 
another  subject,  Landor  also  talked  that  night  in  a  way  that  hardly 
befitted  a  true  disciple  of  Epicurus,  enlarging  on  the  many  tears  that 
David  Copper  field  had  caused  him  to  shed  ;  to  which  the  author  of 
that  delightful  book  himself  replied  by  a  question,  which,  from  so 
powerful  and  so  gentle  a  master  of  both  laughter  and  tears,  startled  us 
then,  and  may  make  the  matter  worth  allusion  still.  "  But  is  it  not  yet 
more  wonderful  that  one  of  the  most  popular  books  on  earth  has  abso- 
lutely nothing  in  it  to  cause  any  one  either  to  laugh  or  cry  %  "  Such, 
he  proceeded  to  say,  was  to  be  affirmed  with  confidence  of  De  Foe's 
masterpiece ;  he  instanced  the  death  of  Friday,  in  that  marvellous 
novel,  as  one  of  the  least  tender,  and,  in  the  true  sense,  least  senti- 
mental things  ever  written ;  and  he  accounted  for  the  prodigious 
effect  which  the  book  has  had  upon  an  unexampled  number  and  vari- 
ety of  readers,  though  without  tears  in  it,  or  laughter,  or  even  any 
mention  of  love,  by  its  mere  homely  force  and  intensity  of  truth. 
Not  every  school-boy  alone  was  interested  by  it,  but  every  man 
who  had  ever  been  one.  I  may  add,  though  connected  with  the 
night  referred  to  solely  by  the  subject  thus  introduced,  that  six 
years  later,  when  a  project  was  on  foot  to  make  provision  for  a 
then  living  and  destitute  descendant  of  the  author  of  Robinson 
Crusoe,  Landor  sent  a  letter  to  the  Times  which  brought  us  all  the 
help  we  sought. 

A  line  or  two  only  can  I  give  from  its  eloquent  and  touching  ap- 
peal. "  De  Foe  has  left  one  descendant,  —  a  Crusoe  without  a  Fri- 
day, — ■  in  an  island  to  him  a  desert.  .  .  .  There  are  men  who  may 
be  warmed  by  the  reflected  glory  of  their  ancestors ;  but,  however 
elevated  and  unclouded,  it  falls  feebly  on  the  death-bed  of  the  for- 
saken. .  .  .  Daniel  De  Foe  wants  no  statue,  and  is  far  beyond  any 
other  wTant  ;  but,  alas,  there  is  one  behind  who  is  not  so.  Let  all 
contribute  one  penny  for  one  year  :  poor  James  De  Foe  has  lived 
seventy-seven,  and  his  dim  eyes  cannot  look  far  into  another.  ...  It 
was  in  the  power  of  Johnson  to  relieve  the  granddaughter  of  Milton ; 
Mr.  Editor,  it  is  in  yours  to  prop  up  the  last  scion  of  De  Foe.  If 
Milton  wrote  the  grandest  poem  and  the  most  energetic  and  eloquent 
prose  of  any  writer  in  any  country  ;  if  he  stood  erect  before  Tyran- 
ny, and  covered  with  his  buckler  not  England  only,  but  nascent  na- 
tions ;  if  our  great  prophet  raised  in  vision  the  ladder  that  rose  from 
earth  to  heaven,  with  angels  upon  every  step  of  it ;  lower  indeed,  but 

38 


594  TWENTY-ONB    YEARS   AT   BATH.  IB,8?6K- -?1' 

1030  37. 

not  less  useful,  were  the  energies  of  De  Foe.  He  stimulated  to  en- 
terprise those  colonies  of  England  which  extend  over  every  sea,  and 
which  carry  with  them,  from  him,  the  spirit  and  the  language  that 
will  predominate  throughout  the  world.  Achilles  and  Homer  will  be 
forgotten  before  Crusoe  and  De  Foe."  The  poor  old  man  soon  after 
died  ;  but  the  money  obtained  comforted  his  last  days,  and  has  since 
contributed  to  his  daughter's  wants.  The  pennies  did  not  come  in 
very  freely,  but  some  larger  gifts  were  generously  made.  The  late 
Lord  Lansdowne  sent  me  fifty  pounds,  and  Lord  Palmerston  gave  a 
hundred  out  of  the  Queen's  bounty. 

The  visit  to  Landor  last  described  was  made  in  1849,  five  years 
after  he  had  crossed  the  bridge  of  seventy ;  and  the  post  of  the  day 
following  our  return  brought  me  the  quatrain  I  have  mentioned, 
which  it  may  interest  the  reader  to  see,  on  the  opposite  leaf,  in  fac- 
simile as  it  came.  "  My  thanks  were  not  spoken  to  you  and  Dickens 
for  your  journey  of  two  hundred  miles  upon  my  birthday.  Here 
they  are,  —  not  visible  on  the  surface  of  the  paper,  nor  on  any  sur- 
face whatever,  but  in  the  heart  that  is  dictating  this  letter.  On  the 
night  you  left  me  I  wrote  the  following  Dying  Speech  of  an  old 
Philosopher  :  — 

"  I  strove  with  none,  for  none  was  worth  my  strife; 
Nature  I  loved,  and,  next  to  Nature,  Art; 
I  warmed  both  hands  against  the  fire  of  life; 
It  sinks,  and  I  am  ready  to  depart." 

In  a  previous  section  Landor's  summer  visits  to  his  sister  Elizabeth 
have  been  named.  To  her  at  Warwick  he  gave  always,  in  each  year, 
the  largest  part  of  all  the  time  he  passed  away  from  Bath  ;  but  some 
small  portion  of  every  summer  holiday,  for  many  years,  he  gave  to 
me  in  London,  and  of  his  ever-cordial  reception  at  Gore  House  1  have 
already  spoken.  He  made  visits  regularly  (and  few  gave  him  so  much 
happiness)  to  Lady  Sawle  in  Cornwall,  and  often  to  his  friend  Sir 
William  Molesworth  at  Pencarrow  ;  North  Wales  was  familiar  to  him 
as  long  Us  Ablett  lived  ;  and  deserving  to  be  marked  and  set  apart, 
for  the  pleasure  they  yielded  as  well  to  his  friends  as  himself,  were 
such  visits  as  he  paid  to  Archdeacon  Hare  at  his  living  of  Hurstmon- 
ceaux,  to  his  brother  Bobert  at  his  rectory  of  Birlingham,  to  Lord 
Nugent  at  The  Lilies  near  Aylesbury,  to  Kenyon  at  his  villa  in  Wim- 
bledon or  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  to  General  Napier  at  Blackheath 
or  Clapham  Park.  He  exerted  on  these  occasions  a  fascination  that 
fw  could  rrsist ;  enjoyment  and  good-humor  so  abounding,  flashes 
and  thunderbolts  of  wrath  so  harmless  ;  and,  whether  a  guest  himself 
or  receiving  guests,  attracting  every  one  at  such  times  by  the  court- 
liness of  his  manner,  by  an  old-fashioned  dignity  never  absent  from 
his  bearing,  and  withal  by  an  absence  from  it,  to  a  curious  degree,  of 
the  self-assertion  often  loud  and  excessive  in  his  writings.  As  on  a 
former  page  Mr.  Kirkup  said  of  him,  he  was  chivalresque  of  the  old 
school ;  or,  as  I  heard  a  more  unsparing  observer   say,  after  a  visit 


JET.  61-82.]  HOLIDAYS   AND    GUESTS   AT   HOME.  597 

made  to  him  in  Bath,  he  was  truly  a  royal  kind  of  man.  "  I  am  ex- 
pecting Mr.  Carlyle  on  Wednesday,"  Landor  wrote  to  me  on  the  25th 
of  July,  1850  :  "  it  will  be  a  holiday,  a  gaudy-day,  for  me."  It  was 
after  that  visit  the  remark  just  quoted  was  made  to  me.  The  even- 
ing so  passed  in  Bath  has  to  the  survivor  seemed  always  memorable. 
He  brought  away  from  it  an  impression  never  since  effaced,  not  of  the 
wrath  only  of  the  divine  Achilles,  though  it  thundered  and  lightened 
over  many  subjects,  but  of  the  manners  that  should  belong  also  to 
such  a  leader  of  men ;  of  a  hospitality  and  courtesy  in  its  way  quite 
noble  ;  and  of  scholarship,  in  the  old  fine  and  beautiful  sense  that  the 
word  once  had,  such  as  Carlyle  had  met  with  in  no  other  man.  Nor 
was  the  liking  this  meeting  left  behind  it  less  strong  on  the  other  side. 
"I  am  a  great  advocate  for  hero-worship,"  Landor  wrote  to  me  two 
years  after  the  visit ;  "  and  when  you  have  looked  closely  into  Carlyle 
you  may  discover  him  to  be  quite  as  much  of  a  hero  as  Cromwell." 

From  a  hero  cast  in  a  different  mould,  but  who  has  since  had  one 
of  the  greatest  parts  to  play  in  the  world  which  can  be  appointed  to 
any  man,  he  received  also  a  visit  in  Bath  which  dates  a  few  years 
earlier,  some  months  after  the  escape  from  Ham  of  the  Prince  Louis 
Napoleon.  "  Colonel  Jervis  told  me  yesterday,"  Landor  wrote  to  me 
on  August  28,  1S46,  "  that  Prince  Louis  Napoleon  was  in  Bath,  and 
had  done  me  the  favor  to  mention  me,  and  I  shall  therefore  leave  my 
card  at  his  hotel."*  The  office  of  master  of  the  ceremonies  was  in 
those  days  not  extinct  in  the  city  of  Beau  Nash,  and  Colonel  Jervis 
was  the  last  who  held  it.  Three  or  four  days  later  he  wrote  again. 
"  Yesterday  I  had  a  visit  from  the  Prince  Louis  Bonaparte,  who  told 
me  he  had  completed  his  military  work  and  would  give  me  a  copy. 
In  return  for  this  civility  I  told  him  I  should  certainly  have  requested 
his  acceptance  of  my  Works,  only  that  they  contained  some  severe 
strictures  on  his  uncle  the  emperor.  He  said  he  knew  perfectly  well 
my  opinions,  and  admired  the  honesty  with  which  I  expressed  them 
on  all  occasions.  He  came  on  purpose  to  invite  me  to  meet  Lady 
Blessington  to-morrow.  He  had  called  once  before.  I  told  him,  in 
the  course  of  our  interview,  that  he  had  escaped  two  great  curses,  — 
a  prison  and  a  throne.  He  smiled  at  this,  but  made  no  remark." 
The  Prince  kept  his  promise  ;  and  from  the  book  which  he  gave  to 
Landor,  Etudes  sur  le  Passe  et  VAvenir  de  V  Artillerie  par  le  Prince 
Napoleon-Louis  Bonaparte,  and  which  is  now  in  my  possession,  I  may, 
perhaps  to  the  greater  satisfation  of  the  reader,  present  what  the 
author  had  written  on  the  fly-leaf  ("A  Monsieur  W.  S.  Landor, 
temoigne  d'estime  de  la  part  du  Pce  Napoleon  Louis  B.  qui  apprecie 
le  vrai  merite  quelque  oppose  qu'il  soit  a  ses  sentimens  et  a  son  opin- 
ion.    Bath,  6  Sept.,  1846  ")  in  another  fac-simile. 

*  In  an  account  of  Landor  written  shortly  after  his  death  it  was  stated  that  at  the 
very  time  of  his  thus  meeting  Louis  Napoleon  in  Bath,  "  there  was  in  a  boarding- 
school  twelve  miles  off,  on  the  Clifton  downs,  a  pretty  girl  —  grand-niece  to  a  maiden 
lady  living  iu  a  very  small  house  at  Dumfries  —  who'is  now  Empress  of  France." 


598  TWEXTY-ONE   TEARS   AT   BATII.  ^si^"" 

^^U*    /nx^/rt;     «**~^r*«£-  o-Ttf^r1*  I1*    tS'Jri't 
k  fy    /c~£t~^   **—i?  fix  .,p;  k.'cn-T.  . 

If  amid  the  splendors  of  his  later  destiny  it  has  ever  happened  to 
the  Emperor  of  France  to  think  there  might  be  truth  in  what  Landor 
then  said  to  him,  and  that  a  throne  was  not,  after  all,  the  supremest 
of  earthly  blessings,  one  may  fancy  it  likely  to  have  occurred  to  him 
amid  the  horrors  of  the  Orsini  massacre  twelve  years  later.  Two  years 
before  that  miserable  attempt,  in  the  same  city  of  Bath,  Orsini  had 
been  Lander's  guest.  He  had  gone  to  him  with  letters  from  Italians 
in  London  of  high  character  and  moderate  opinions,  Piedmontese  ;  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  up  to  and  beyond  that  date  (185G)  the  unhappy 
man  did  really  believe  in  Piedmont  as  the  hope  of  Italy,  that  he  quar- 
relled with  Mazzini  on  this  ground,  and  that,  during  the  early  part  of 
his  residence  in  England,  he  had  been  honestly  exerting  himself  to  dis- 
cover in  its  direction  help  for  the  rest  of  Italy.  Baffled  in  this  hope, 
he  projected,  under  other  influences,  the  enterprise  at  once  so  cruel  and 
so  wicked  :  cruel,  because,  even  supposing  him  capable  of  justifying  to 
himself,  which  certainly  no  man  could  to  another,  an  enterprise  aimed 
at  what  he  held  to  be  a  guilty  life,  this  involved  also  innocent  lives, 
and  among  them  those  of  women  and  children.  In  the  excitement  of 
the  time  Landor  was  publicly  named  as  friendly  to  Orsini's  later  opin- 
ions, and  he  was  at  some  pains  himself  as  publicly  to  declare  that  the 
imputation  was  grossly  unjust. 

I  satisfied  myself  then  that  it  was  so.  It  is  true  that  Orsini  dined 
with  him  ;  but  another  gentleman  still  living  was  present,  and  it  is 
certain  that  nothing  could  have  passed  at  that  interview  respecting 
the  French  emperor  inconsistent  with  the  Strong  opinion  which  Lan- 
dor undoubtedly  entertained  at  the  time,  that  his  death  would  be  a 
calamity  both  to  England  and  France.  He  had  joined  in  an  address 
from  Bath  sent  up  to  Napoleon  on  his  visit  to  England,  and  this  ap- 
pears to  have  been  the  subject  of  some  remonstrance  on  Orsini's  part; 
whereupon  Landor's  friend,  Mr.  Sandford,  well  known  also  to  myself 
for  l Irratioii  as  well  as  wisdom  in  his  opinions,  joined  Landor  in  ad- 
vising the  Italian  to  forbear  from  any  declaration  then  against  tho 


.#T.  61-82.]  HOLIDAYS    AXD    GUESTS    AT    HOME.  599 

ruler  of  France.  "  Miserable  Orsini !  "  Landor  wrote  to  me  in  Jan- 
nary,  1858,  the  day  after  the  fatal  attempt :  "  he  sat  with  me  two  years 
ago  at  the  table  on  which  I  am  now  writing.  Dreadful  work  !  horrible 
crime !  To  inflict  death  on  a  hundred  for  the  sin  of  one  !  Such  a  blow 
can  serve  only  to  awaken  tyranny,  reverberating  on  the  brass  helmets 
of  her  satellites."* 

In  the  same  letter  to  which  this  was  a  postscript  he  had  reminded 
me  of  an  evening  passed  with  me  in  London  eight  years  before,  when 
he  met  Macaulay,  whose  History  he  had  now  only  lately  made  acquaint- 
ance with,  and  found  less  satisfactory  than  his  Lays  of  Rome.  "  I  sat 
next  him-  at  your  table  and  tried  to  enter  into  conversation  with  him, 
telling  him  that  he  and  Livy  were  under  mutual  obligations  ;  and  that 
I  doubted  whether  in  his  Ballads  of  Rome  he  was  most  indebted  to 
Livy  or  Livy  to  him.  It  would  not  do.  Yet  it  was  no  small  compli- 
ment, for  there  was  hardly  a  genius  so  exalted  as  Livy's  in  all  the  in- 
terval between  iEschylua  and  Dante.  But  there  are  some  who  do  not 
know  it,  and  this  was  probably  the  case  with  Macaulay.  I  knew  at 
Florence  his  uncle  General  Macaulay,  an  excellent  man,  who  showed 
me  a  very  elegant  Imaginary  Conversation  by  his  nephew,  which  must 

*  I  shall  probably  be  forgiven  for  preserving  some  extracts  from  a  letter  of  my  own 
to  Landor  (found  among  hi*  papers)  replying  at  this  date  to  what  he  had  written  of 
some  supposed  recollections  of  mine  concerning  the  Prince,  which  I  was  unable  to 
confirm.  I  make  no  apology  for  printing  them  exactly  as  written:  the  lady  named  as 
one  of  the  only  survivors  of  the  dinner-party  referred  to  in  them  having  since  herself 
passed  away. 

"...  You  are  however  right  as  to  the  meeting  of  which  Lady  Blessington  told  you. 
On  the  first  day  of  Louis  Napoleon's  arrival  in  London  after  the  escape  from  Ham,  I 
formed  one  of  a  party  of  five,  Lady  Blessington.  D'Orsay,  Marguerite  Power,  her  sister 
Ellen,  and  myself,  who  sat  down  with  him  to  dinner  at  Gore  House.  He,  Miss  Power,  and 
myself  are  the  survivors  of  the  party,  to  whom,  after  dinner,  he  described  his  way  of 
escape  by  passing  through  the  fortress-gates  in  a  laborer's  blouse  and  sabots,  with  a 
heavy  plank  on  his  shoulder,  flinging  off  the  plank  into  the  ditch  by  the  wall  of  the 
chateau,  and  afterward,  shod  as  he  was,  running  nearly  two  miles  to  where  a  little  cart 
provided  by  Conneau  waited  to  take  him  within  reach  of  the  coast,  from  which  he  had 
crossed  but  the  day  before :  all  of  it  told  in  his  usual  un-French  way  without  warmth 
or  excitement.  Before  or  since  I  have  never  seen  his  face  as  it  was  then ;  for  he  had 
shaved  his  mustaches  as  part  of  his  disguise,  and  his  lower  and  least  pleasing  features 
were  completely  exposed  under  the  straggling  stubble  of  hair  beginning  again  to  show 
itself.  He  gave  me  afterwards,  with  an  inscription  to  me  on  the  fly-leaf  written  by 
himself,  a  book  which  I  still  keep  called  the  Prisoner  of  Ham,  with  a  clever  pen-and- 
ink  sketch  not  unlike  him  as  he  was  in  those  days.  The  only  other  real  talk  with  him 
that  I  particularly  remember  was  about  Cromwell.  D'Orsay  had  given  him  exagger- 
ated accounts,  in  his  high-flown  good-natured  way,  of  a  memoir  of  the  Protector  by 
me;  and  this  led  to  my  entering  on  one  occasion,  at  his  request,  into  some  detail  of  ex- 
planation as  to  the  conferences  preceding  Cromwell's  rejection  of  the  Crown:  another 
thing  referred  to,  as  I  well  remember,  being  the  essay  written  by  Cowley,  whose  play- 
actor theory  he  rejected,  expressing  his  belief  in  Oliver's  downright  sincerity.  Oddly 
enough,  as  these  things  come  back  to  me,  I  find  I  also  know  something  of  the  man  Allsop, 
in  whose  name  Orsini's  passport  was  made  out,  and  who  is  accused  of  complicity  in 
Orsini's  crime.  I  met  him  at  Charles  Lamb's,  in  the  last  year  of  Elia's  life.  He  had 
given  Coleridge  .£  200  on  some  occasion  to  help  him  in  a  distress;  and  so  had  recom- 
mended himself  to  Lamb.  He  afterwards  published,  without  his  name,  a  wonderfully 
foolish  book  called  Recollections  and  Letters  of  Coleridge.  And  now,  I  perceive,  .£  200 
is  offered  here  in  Scotland  Yard  for  his  apprehension  as  accessory  to  murder.  Vanity 
is  the  never-failing  lever  by  which  men  of  this  sentimental  sort  may  at  all  times  be 
lifted  out  of  the  flat  commonplace  of  their  silliness  and  good  intentions,  into  any  kind 
of  monstrous  enterprise." 


GOO  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS   AT   BATH.  [n3&-  $"' 

have  been  one  of  his  earliest  writings  ;  and  which  he  said  was  written 
in  consequence  of  mine.  My  first  two  volumes  had  been  published  only 
a  few  months  before."  He  was  better  pleased  with  Milman,  who  de- 
lighted him  on  one  occasion  by  repeating  very  humorously  a  suppressed 
stanza  of  the  Devil's  Walk-,  written  by  Southey  at  a  time  (already  re- 
ferred to  in  this  memoir*)  when  Lord  Lonsdale  had  greatly  exasperated 
both  him  and  Wordsworth,  wherein  the  Devil  was  compared  to  the  lord 
of  the  dale.  Lander's  prolonged  roar  of  laughter  at  this,  and  Milman's 
own  enjoyment  of  those  peals  of  mirth  as  they  rose  and  rose  again,  were 
things  rememberable.  But  one  of  Landor's  greatest  London  favorites, 
of  those  who  were  not  among  his  intimate  friends,  was  the  author  of 
the  Pleasures  of  Memory.  He  always  got  on  well  with  Rogers,  of 
whom  he  saw  something  at  nearly  all  his  visits  to  London,  as  well  at 
St.  James's  Place  as  at  Kenyon's  house  and  mine  ;  and  with  whom 
kindly  messages  were  frequently  interchanged.  "  Poor  Rogers  !  "  he 
wrote  on  hearing  of  his  accident :  "  I  think  of  him  much  in  that  sad 
and  silent  captivity  of  his  bedroom.  When  he  goes,  if  a  star  of  the 
first  magnitude  will  not  have  set,  a  bright  lamp  at  the  dinner-table 
will  have  gone  out.    No  man  told  a  story  better,  or  loved  art  so  well." 

His  own  love  of  art  he  indulged  on  these  occasions  by  passing  a  por- 
tion of  nearly  every  day  in  the  National  Gallery,  where  his  chief 
favorite  was  Hogarth.  "  What  nonsense  I  see  written  of  Hogarth's 
defects  as  a  colorist,"  he  wrote  to  me  after  one  of  his  visits.  "  He 
was  in  truth  far  more  than  the  most  humorous,  than  the  most  pathetic 
and  most  instructive,  of  painters.  He  excelled  at  once  in  composi- 
tion, in  drawing,  and  in  coloring  ;  and  of  what  other  can  we  say  the 
samel  In  his  portraits  he  is  as  true  as  Gainsborough,  as  historical 
as  Titian.  It  is  equally  fortunate  and  wonderful  that  we  have  good 
examples  of  him  in  our  National  Gallery."  At  the  Academy  exhibi- 
tions he  had  great  enjo}'ment.  "If  I  pluck  up  courage  to  move 
Londonward  this  spring,"  he  wrote  in  1851,  "  it  cannot  lie  earlier 
than  July,  when  I  have  promised  Kenyon  to  spend  a  week  with  him 
at  Wimbledon.  1  shall  stand  again  before  the  wonders  of  Landseer, 
Mulready,  and  Maclise,  and  look  once  more  on  the  waves  about  Ischia, 
over  which  your  Neptunian  friend  motos  j)rajstat  componere ftuctw.  For 
surely  Stanfield  is  god  of  the  sea.  But  perhaps  it  is  because  my  heart 
lies  usually  among  the  animals  (so  do  men  call  them,  not  intending  any 
compliment),  that  the  dying  solitary  stag  of  Landseer  made  an  impres- 
sion upon  me  beyond  them  all.  There  are  two  men,  Hogarth  and 
Landseer,  who  affect  my  heart  the  most  deeply  of  all  painters,  and 
Raffael  alone  can  detain  me  so  long  a  time  before  him.1'  Of  music  he 
was  also  passionately  fond;  and  though  he  gave  away,  from  time  to 
time,  almost  evvvy  book  possessed  by  himself,  he  had  extraordinary 
enjoyment  in  wandering  up  and  down  a  library  belonging  to  a  friend. 

This  pleasure  always  awaited  him  at  Julius  Hare's  house  and  at 
mine,  and  welcomes,  he  would  truly  say,  counted  by  as  many  thousands 

*  See  ante,  p.  142. 


JET.  6I-S2.1  HOLIDAYS    AND    GUESTS    AT    HOME.  G01 

as  our  books  ;  our  Dii  Lares  aud  Dii  Penates,  as  he  told  me  it  was 
Parr's  unvarying  custom  to  say  (though  he  never  could  explain  the 
difference  between  them),  all  bowing  down  before  him  ;  and  such  at- 
tentions paid  him  on  every  side  as  he  would  protest  that  he  had  never 
received  since  what  he  called  the  heroic  ages,  when  epistles  were  writ- 
ten him  by  conquered  heroines.  I  heard  from  him  during  his  first 
visit  to  Hurstmonceaux  (I  think  in  1843),  when  Hare  and  his  friend 
Bunsen  were  engaged  in  the  pious  duty  of  doing  honor  to  the  memory 
of  Arnold,  and  had  solicited  Landor's  help  towards  a  Latin  inscription, 
which  wras  to  have  for  its  model  the  famous  one  on  the  Scipios.  It 
was  Landor's  belief,  in  which  he  was  surely  right,  that  there  was  not 
only  much  difficulty,  but  a  want  of  keeping  and  of  fitness,  in  apply- 
ing classical  Latin  to  the  commemoration  of  Christian  thoughts  and 
Christian  relations  ;  but  his  corrections  of  what  had  been  written 
were  gratefully  received,  and,  in  the  state  wherein  finally  it  left  his 
hands,  it  expressed  worthily  two  of  the  most  marked  characteristics 
of  Arnold's  life  ;  his  constant  effort  to  uphold  the  liberty  of  the  Chris- 
tian laity  against  all  hierarchal  usurpations,  and  his  unwearying  en- 
deavor to  make  Christianity  not  a  dead  form  of  words,  but  a  living 
and  actuating  principle  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  his  pupils.  Lan- 
dor's old  school-days  at  Rugby  gave  him  a  personal  interest  in  every- 
thing connected  with  the  place,  and  with  infinite  gratification  he 
received,  some  years  later,  a  famous  record  of  Ptugby  school-days  very 
wonderfully  contrasting  with  his  own,  which  had  been  sent  as  a  trib- 
ute from  Tom  Brown  to  the  most  famous  of  living  Rugbseans.  "  I 
am  sure,"  wrote  the  author  of  this  delightful  book,  "  you  will  feel  that 
the  approval  of  no  living  man  can  give  the  author  more  pleasure  than 
that  of  the  oldest  and  most  distinguished  of  those  who  have  been 
educated  at  the  same  school  with  himself." 

The  enjoyment  of  one  of  his  visits  to  Hurstmonceaux  had  been 
greatly  enhanced  by  meeting  there  the  hero  of  Scinde,  the  brother  of 
his  friend  the  historian.  His  admiration  for  both  these  extraordinary 
men  amounted  almost  to  a  passion.  After  Wellington,  his  ideal  of  a 
great  captain,  he  thought  Charles  the  most  illustrious  of  soldiers  ;  and 
after  Livy,  to  him  the  very  genius  of  history,  he  thought  William  the 
most  powerful  and  the  most  picturesque  of  historians.  Their  partic- 
ular bearing  towards  each  other  had  also  a  wonderful  charm  for  him, 
by  its  very  contrast  with  their  general  attitude  towards  nearly  all  the 
world  beside  ;  and  I  well  remember  with  what  a  glow  of  emotion  he 
repeated  to  me  almost  the  first  words  addressed  to  him  by  the  elder 
of  the  brothers,  declaring  that  the  antique  world  had  nothing  to  show 
more  touching  of  the  Scipios  or  the  Gracchi.  Modestly  disclaiming 
his  title  to  the  homage  which  Landor  was  offering  him,  the  great 
soldier  bade  him  reserve  it  for  his  brother  William  alone.  "  This 
brother,"  he  said,  "  is  indeed  an  extraordinary  man.  All  his  flime  he 
has  earned  by  the  unaided  force  of  his  genius.  My  soldiers  fought  me 
through  my  work  and  errors."     In  such  a  saying  one  may  find  some 


C02  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^isS.*^/* 

clew  to  the  devoted  attachment  felt  for  both  the  brothers  by  all  who 
had  kindly  or  near  association  with  them.  With  frailties  of  temper 
that  too  often  presented  to  the  outer  world  only  what  seemed  arro- 
gant or  self-willed  :  in  all  the  inner  relations  they  were  unselfish  to  a 
fault,  tender  and  humane  as  the  gentlest  of  women,  chivalrous,  sim- 
ple, and  brave.  Not  that  Landor  was  at  all  given  to  observe  any 
such  distinctions  in  his  liking  for  them.  It  is  more  probable  that  he 
did  not  admire  them  least  when  their  judgments  were  warped  the 
most,  for  he  made  all  their  quarrels  his  own  ;  though  it  is  only  fair 
to  add  that  the  heat  of  temper  and  impetuosity  of  language  with 
which  he  fought  their  battles  were  as  free  as  their  own  from  anything 
ungenerous  or  unworthy.  "  You  don't  draw  your  ale  mild,"  wrote 
"William  Napier  to  him  on  one  occasion,  "  any  more  than  I  do  ;  but 
if  Pam  or  Johnny  call  you  out,  I  will  be  your  second." 

There  was  indeed,  between  Landor  and  the  younger  of  the  broth- 
ers, a  liking  confirmed  by  long  personal  intimacy,  which  was  hardly 
capable  of  increase  on  either  side  ;  and  which  had  begun,  on  the  part 
of  Napier,  before  Landor  was  personally  known  to  him.  No  fame 
had  been  dearer  to  the  Peninsula  captain  than  that  of  his  old  chief 
who  fell  at  Corunna.  By  the  splendor  of  his  life,  the  glory  of  his 
death,  and  the  injustice  done  to  his  memory,  the  career  of  Sir  John 
Moore  had  fulfilled,  to  the  ardent  young  soldier's  imagination,  the 
uncommon  exploits  as  well  as  common  fate  of  a  hero  ;  and  in  his  ma- 
turer  years  Napier  never  forgot,  that,  when  Moore's  rude  grave  had 
hardly  closed,  Landor  was  in  the  field  to  do  battle  for  him  against 
one  of  his  own  dearest  friends.*  Differences  of  opinion  Napier  had 
with  Landor,  and  some  not  slight,  but  none  that  were  not  covered  by 
a  kindly  tolerance.  He  could  forgive  him  his  onslaughts  on  the  sol- 
diership of  Napoleon,  though  he  would  never  let  them  disturb  his 
own  faith  in  it,  as  to  which,  he  would  say,  he  was  as  a  rock,  around 
which  Landor,  like  the  ocean,  might  rage  as  he  would.  "  If  you  will, 
you  may  submerge  me,  but  you  cannot  shake  me."  Nay,  he  could 
even  tolerate  an  allusion  of  Lander's  which  he  thought  unfair  to  the 
memory  of  Charles  Fox.  "  I  own  to  having  been  grieved  for  the  mo- 
ment," he  wrote  ;  "  but  we  differ  as  to  so  many  public  men,  that  this 
passed  away  instantly  ;  because  there  is  one  public  man  upon  whose 
character  we  are  entirely  and  always  agreed,  namely,  Walter  Savage 
Landor.  I  know  he  is  all  truth,  and  sincerity,  and  honor,  in  feeling ; 
and  therefore  his  opinions,  though  as  in  the  instance  of  Mr.  Fox  they 
may  grieve,  can  never  make  me  angry.  It  is  a  different  way  of  look- 
ing at  a  picture,  nothing  more."  In  another  letter  to  Landor  of  the 
same  date  (1851)  he  protests  against  a  comparison  of  him  to  an 
American  writer,  made  in  one  of  the  journals.  "  Your  vagaries,  if  I 
may  without  offending  you  use  the  word,  are,  in  comparison  with  this 
man's,  (lie  gambols  and  boundings  of  a  lion,  from  light  to  shade  and 
back  again,  to  the  mere  mouthings  and  grimaces  of  a  monkey  at  the 

*  See  ante,  pp.  144,  145. 


/ET.  61-82.J  HOLIDAYS    AXD    GUESTS    AT    HOME.  603 

moon."  Nor  was  Landor  ever  left  in  doubt  of  the  value  of  his  own 
good  word  to  Napier,  who  repeatedly  assured  him,  with  affecting 
earnestness,  that  his  genius  was  not  a  greater  pleasure  for  all  the 
world  than  his  friendly  feelings  toward  himself  were  a  delight  to  him 
personally.  "  I  need  not,"  he  wrote,  in  one  of  the  last  of  his  letters 
written  with  his  own  hand  (18th  April,  1857),  —  "I  need  not  tell  you 
now,  my  dear  Landor,  that  your  praise  is  manna  to  me  ;  for,  though 
I  am  not  in  a  desert  as  to  praise,  most  of  it  appears  dry  and  unprofit- 
able in  comparison  with  yours.  Not  all,  though  ;  some  others  there 
are  who  give  me  quails." 

Such  grateful  offerings  made  directly  to  Landor  himself  require  no 
confirmation  ;  but  for  other  reasons  a  few  more  words  may  be  added 
from  Napier's  defence  of  Landor  to  a  friend  who  did  not  know  him, 
from  a  charge  of  having  favored  assassination  in  a  letter  defending 
tyrannicide.  Napier  himself  will  be  forgotten  before  its  touching 
opening  sentences.  "  This,"  the  10th  of  November,  1856,  "is  the 
anniversary  of  the  battle  of  the  Nivelle,  in  which  I  won  my  lieut.- 
colonelcy.  I  was  then  strong  and  swift  of  foot  ;  only  one  man  got 
into  the  rocks  of  La  Rhune  before  me,  and  he  was  but  a  step  ;  yet 
eight  hundred  noble  veterans,  strong  as  lions,  were  striving  madly  to 
be  first.  I  am  now  old,  feeble,  bent,  miserable,  and  my  eyes  are  dim, 
very  dim,  with  weeping  for  my  lost  child  ;  and  my  brain  is  weak  also  ; 
I  cannot  read  with  pleasure,  and  still  less  can  I  think  and  judge  of 
what  other  people  write.  You  must  not  therefore  expect  from  me  an 
essay  on  Landor's  noble  letter  ;  and  it  would  require  an  essay,  it  is  so 
full  of  meaning.  I  call  it  noble  while  differing  on  many  points 
pushed  out  by  him  like  needles  against  the  world  and  its  opinions 
and  conventionalism.  I  call  it  noble,  I  say,  because  it  is  not  Landor's 
writing,  but  Landor  himself,  bold,  generous,  brave,  and  reckless  where 
his  feelings  as  a  human  being  are  stirred.  I  have  myself  no  objection 
to  the  death  of  King  Bomba,  or  any  other  ruffian  like  him  ;  hang 
them  as  high  as  Hainan  :  but  once  allow  tyrannicide,  and  the  best 
man  in  the  world  is  no  longer  safe.  Well,  but  this  mistake  does  not 
make  Landor  obnoxious  to  anybody  who  knows  him,  because  it  is  not 
his  feeling  ;  he  is  reckless  in  expression  only,  not  in  deeds.  And  again 
I  say  his  letter  is  Landor,  bold,  original,  and  vigorous,  his  right  and 
his  wrong  alike.  He  is  an  oak  with  many  gnarled  branches  and 
queer  excrescences,  but  always  an  oak,  and  one  that  will  be  admired 
for  ages."'  * 

In  the  summer  of  the  year  before  this  letter  was  written,  Landor 
had  paid  his  last  visit  to  London,  and  seen  Napier  there  for  the  last 
time.  It  had  become  very  difficult  now  to  persuade  him  to  leave 
Bath.  He  was  readier  than  formerly  with  excuses  for  not  visiting  us. 
His  excuses  were  sometimes  the  reverse  of  complimentary,  as  when 
he    explained   (1853)  his  disinclination  to  come   to  the  great  city, 

*  Ante,  p.  577.  And  see  the  remarks  made  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  Book,  ante, 
pp.  302,  304. 


C04  TWENTY-ONE   TEARS   AT   BATH.  ^fi-^ 

because  there  if  he  saw  three  men  he  might  be  pretty  sure  that  a 
couple  of  them  were  scoundrels,  while  out  of  the  same  number  in  the 
country  it  might  be  doubted  if  the  villanous  proportion  would  lie  more 
than  one.  The  following  year  he  gave  a  more  touching  reason,  some- 
what nearer  the  truth.  "  I  too  often  think  at  night  of  what  I  had 
been  seeing  in  the  morning,  poor  mothers,  half-starved  children,  and 
girls  habitually  called  unfortunate  by  people  who  drop  the  word  as 
lightly  as  if  it  had  no  meaning  in  it.  Little  do  they  think  that  they  are 
sj  leaking  of  the  fallen  angels ;  the  real  ones,  not  the  angels  of 
mythology  and  fable.  So  many  heart-aches  always  leave  me  one." 
At  last  however  he  again  came  to  us  in  1855.  He  desired  to  see 
the  palace  at  Sydenham,  and  my  old  friend  Sir  Joseph  Paxton  had 
promised  to  set  the  great  fountains  playing  in  his  honor.  I  took 
rooms  for  him  in  the  hotel  adjoining ;  and  a  part  of  the  time  he 
passed  with  Napier,  dining  with  him  at  Clapham  Park,  and  inducing 
him  to  come  over  to  his  hotel.  A  few  lines  from  a  letter  to  Lady 
Sawle,  written  at  the  close  of  this  visit,  will  very  succinctly  describe 
it,  and  the  persons  it  enabled  him  to  see.  "  I  found  my  old  friend," 
he  writes  (July,  1855),  "  in  better  health  than  I  expected.  He  had 
never  seen  the  Crystal  Palace.  Lame  as  he  is,  he  came  over  the  fol- 
lowing day  with  Lady  Napier,  and  we  went  together  over  the  whole 
of  it.  And  only  fancy,  the  great  fountains  were  set  playing  for  me  ! 
The  beautiful  N.  showed  me  her  little  girl,  who  was  very  amiable  with 
me,  as  little  girls  always  were:  I  mean  very  little  ones.  I  was 
obliged  to  declare  to  Lady  Napier  that  if  she  spoilt  her  grandchild,  I 
would  never  make  her  a  proposal.  I  spent  some  hours  too  with 
Kossuth,  who  could  not  dine  with  me  and  Forster,  because  he  had  to 
receive  a  deputation  q\iite  unexpected  ;  and  by  no  means  the  smallest 
part  of  my  pleasure  wras  the  introduction  to  me,  the  following  day,  of 
Mr.  Lytton.  None  of  the  younger  poets  of  the  present  day  breathes 
so  high  a  spirit  of  poetry.     Of  what  impressed  me  most  in  the  palace 

itself  I  should  tell  you  that  I  saw  the  statue  of  Satan  by ,  and 

the  wonderful  picture  of  Cimabue  and  Giotto  by .     Alas  !  alas ! 

every  name  flics  off  from  my  memory  when  1  would  seize  it.  Leigh- 
ton,  I  should  have  said,  is  the  painter :  the  sculptor  is  Lough."  In 
making  this  holiday  visit,  it  was  his  intention  to  have  gone  with  me 
at  its  dose  to  pass  a  few  days  with  Kenyon  at  Cowes  ;  but  when  the 
time  came  he  pleaded  his  eighty  years,  and,  with  amusing  exaggera- 
tion of  Southampton  Water  into  a  rolling  tempestuous  sea,  protested 
that  if  he  were  to  indulge  his  wish  to  accompany  me,  I  should  have 
to  borrow  a  shroud  from  some  sailor,  and  a  couplet  from  Tibullus, 
made  to  fit  :  — 

"  Hie  jacet  immiti  consamptus  mortc  viator, 
Forsterum  terra  dum  Bequiturque  mari." 

This  was  his  last  visit  to  London  :  indeed  his  last  absence  from 
Bath,  until  he  quitted  it  forever,  with  one  exception.  lie  went  once 
more  to  Llanthony.     "Alas,  my  dear  friend,"  he  wrote  in  January, 


JET.  6l-82.]  DEATHS    OF    OLD    FRIENDS.  605 

1856,  "  I  would  rather  undertake  a  voyage  to  Babylon  than  to  Lon- 
don. One  sorrowful  task  is  imposed  on  me,  —  to  take  two  ladies  to 
my  abbey.  Sad  scene  !  sad  remembrances  !  Forty-three  years  have 
passed  since  I  saw  the  place,  and  never  had  I  wished  to  see  it  again." 
A  few  days  later  brought  me  nevertheless  my  usual  summons  on  his 
birthday  :  — 

"  I  am,  but  would  not  be,  a  hermit : 

Forster!  come  hither  and  confirm  it. 
I  may  not  offer  '  beechen  bowl,' 

But  I  can  give  you  soup  and  sole, 
Sherry  and  (grown  half  mythic)  port  .  .  . 

Wise  men  would  change  their  claret  for  't; 
Quince  at  dessert,  and  apricot  .  .  . 

In  short,  with  you  what  have  I  not?  " 

Even  our  meetings  on  that  day  were  how  to  close,  as  he  too  surely 
predicted  in  a  touching  letter  after  our  last  celebration  of  it.  "It 
appears  to  me  that  neither  of  us  will  have  anything  more  to  say  on 
that  subject.  However,  I  have  enjoyed  better  health  this  winter, 
such  as  it  has  been,  than  in  almost  any  other  since  I  left  my  paradise 
in  Italy.  Strength  alone  fails  me  in  the  corporeal,  and  memory  in 
the  mental.  I  remember  what  I  would  forget,  and  I  forget  what  I 
would  remember.  I  have  nothing  to  do  now  but  to  look  into  the 
fire,  and  see  it  burn  down,  as  I  myself  have  done.  Solitude  was  al- 
ways dear  to  me  ;  and  at  present  more  than  ever ;  once  a  playful 
friend,  and  now  a  quiet  nurse.  Scarcely  a  soul  of  my  old  acquaint- 
ance is  left  in  Bath.  All  have  departed  ;  the  most  part  to  that  coun- 
try where  there  neither  are  nor  ever  will  be  railroads.  I  must  per- 
force remain  where  I  am.  I  have  only  one  more  journey  to  make, 
and  I  hope  it  may  be  by  an  express  train.  I  was  very  near  taking 
my  ticket  a  little  while  ago,  and  now  stop  only  in  the  waiting-room." 
Within  the  last  few  years,  death  had  indeed  been  busy  around  him  ; 
and  it  remains  that  I  should  give  brief  mention  of  his  losses  in  this 
way,  and  the  penalties  he  wTas  paying  for  extreme  old  age. 

XI.    DEATHS   OF   OLD  FRIENDS. 

The  first  loss  by  which  Landor  suffered  keenly  was  that  of  Joseph 
Ablett,  to  whose  generous  kindness  he  first  owed  his  Fiesolan  villa. 
We  were  under  promise  together  to  visit  Llanbedr  in  the  spring  of 
18-48  ;  when,  early  in  the  January  of  that  year,  our  loss  was  an- 
nounced to  us.  "  Poor  dear  Ablett !  "  Landor  wrote  :  "  at  whose 
house  we  were  to  meet  in  the  spring,  died  on  the  9th,  and  I  can  re- 
member few  things  that  have  caused  tears  to  burst  forth  from  me  as 
this  did.  Never  was  there  so  kind-hearted  a  man.  His  manner 
(though  never  to  us)  often  seemed  cold  :  but  even  then  there  was  a 
hot  spring  gushing  from  a  vast  depth  through  a  glacier.  I  heard 
almost  at  the  same  time  of  the  death  of 'a  companion  of  my  early 
childhood,  on  whose  marriage  I  think  I  wrote  my  first  verses  ;  *  but 

*  His  cousin,  Mrs.  Shuckburgh :  see  ante,  p.  17. 


COG  TWEXTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  fB™K  XIL 

her  loss  has  grieved  me  incomparably  less  than  that  of  my  later 
friend.  Good,  generous  Ablett !  one  more  tear  for  thee  !  "  He  never 
would  admit  that  age,  which  remembered  its  sorrows  longer  than 
youth,  had  even  the  poor  advantage  of  feeling  them  less  acutely. 

The  following  year  carried  oft'  the  brother  next  to  himself  in  years. 
"  My  brother  Charles,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  the  8th  July,  1841.)/"  the 
liveliest,  wittiest,  most  energetic  and  independent  of  men,  is  lying 
on  his  death-bed.  This  verv  instant  a  letter  tells  me  he  is  dead." 
The  handsomest  of  the  family  in  person,  Charles  Landor  had  singular- 
ly genial  and  pleasant  manners,  and,  though  too  passionately  fond  of 
field-sports  and  out-door  occupations  to  have  time  for  cultivation  of 
the  pursuits  that  attracted  his  brothers,  had  many  of  the  accomplish- 
ments in  which  they  excelled,  with  a  much  keener  observation  in  the 
affairs  of  life.  Exactly  a  month  before  this  death  of  his  brother 
there  had  come  the  news  of  Lady  Blessington's,  and  the  way  in 
which  this  affected  her  old  friend  has  been  seen.  "  Yet  why,"  he 
wrote  to  me,  "call  it  sad]  It  was  the  very  mode  of  departure  she 
anticipated  and  desired  :  as  I  do  too."  Before  the  year  closed  he  had 
also  himself  a  warning.  Death  had  taken  aim  at  him  and  missed 
him,  he  said ;  but  let  the  next  be  more  successful,  if  so  he  might  be 
spared  the  sorrowing  over  friends.  "  Let  him  take  another  as  soon 
as  he  pleases  but  pass  by  those  I  love."  A  vain  wish,  as  he  knew 
well. 

Ah!  he  strikes  all  things,  all  alike, 
But  bargains:  those  he  will  not  strike. 

After  not  many  months  he  lost  another  friend  for  whose  summons 
to  a  promised  visit  at  Aylesbury  in  the  autumn  of  1850  we  were 
both  waiting  when  the  sad  intelligence  came.  During  the  two  pre- 
ceding years  Landor  had  seen  much  of  Lord  Nugent,  and  his  allu- 
sions to  him  in  casual  verses  were  frequent.  The  Hungarian  war 
had  roused  the  wannest  zeal  of  both,  and  they  took  unwearying  de- 
light in  rendering  service  to  such  of  the  leaders  of  that  gallant  peo- 
ple as  were  in  England  after  the  struggle.  I  was  witness  to  Lander's 
grief  when  he  heard  that  our  friend  was  taken  from  us,  and  I  strong- 
ly sympathized  with  an  opinion  he  expressed  publicly  at  the  time 
that  Nugent  had  deserved  better  treatment  than  his  party  gave  him. 
Some  public  men  are  unlucky,  and  he  has  been  longer  remembered 
by  a  joke  of  Canning's  than  for  qualities  of  his  own  deserving  the 
highest  respect.  He  was  a  courageous  and  consistent  politician,  and 
few  men  had  been  so  at  the  cost  of  greater  worldly  sacrifices.  To 
Landor  he  was  further  endeared  by  social  characteristics  of  the  pleas- 
antest  kind  ;  and  perhaps  by  some  resemblances  in  temperament, 
which  made  them  both,  as  the  survivor  confessed,  apt  to  be  ardent 
after  impracticable  things. 

"  We  scliomed  such  projects  as  we  might 
In  younger  days  with  better  right. 
Athene  was  ours;  and  who  but  we 
Shouted  along  Thermopylae ! " 


JET.  6l-82.]  DEATHS    OF    OLD    FRIENDS.  607 

More  of  his  Irish  than  of  his  English  stock  was  indeed  to  be  ob- 
served in  Nugent.  He  did  not  inherit  from  his  mother  his  title  only. 
Her  father  was  Lord  Clare,  to  whom  the  Haunch  of  Venison  was 
written  ;  and  his  grandson  had  not  a  little  of  the  genial  nature,  the 
cordial  tastes,  the  respectable  talents  for  literature,  even  the  reported 
portliness  of  person,  which  distinguished  Goldsmith's  friend,  who  had 
himself  written  that  ode  to  Pulteney  which  contains  the  masterly 
verse  quoted  by  Gibbon  in  his  character  of  Brutus. 

The  next  of  Landor's  friends  who  passed  away  had  been  the  hero- 
ine of  much  of  his  minor  poetry.  To  her  were  addressed,  amid 
many  others  as  tender  and  graceful,  the  lovely  lines  in  which  he  de- 
scribes himself,  when  first  she  separated  from  him  and  crossed  the 
sea,  as  having  no  power  to  rest 

But  on  the  very  thought  that  swells  with  pain. 

0  bid  me  hope  again ! 
0  give  me  back  what  earth,  what  (without  you) 

Not  heaven  itself  can  do, 
One  of  the  golden  days  that  we  have  past; 

And  let  it  be  my  last! 
Or  else  the  gift  would  be,  however  sweet, 

Fragile  and  incomplete. 

"  I  have  lost  my  beloved  friend  of  half  a  century,  Jane,  the  Countess 
de  Molande,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  the  3d  of  August,  1851.  "  She  died 
at  Versailles  on  the  last  of  July,  after  sixteen  hours'  illness.  This 
most  afflicting  intelligence  was  sent  me  by  her  son  William,  who  was 
with  her  at  the  last  hour.  She  will  be  brought  over  to  the  family 
vault,  in  county  Meath,  of  her  first  husband,  Swifte,  great-great- 
grandson  of  the  uncle  of  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick.  I  hoped  she 
might  have  seen  my  grave.  Hers  I  shall  never  see,  but  my  thoughts 
will  visit  it  often.  Though  other  friends  have  died  in  other  days 
(why  cannot  I  help  this  running  into  verse)  One  grave  there  is  where 
memory  sinks  and  stays."  It  was  to  see  Landor  at  his  very  best  to 
see  him  in  the  presence  of  this  lady.  In  language,  manner,  look, 
voice,  even  in  the  minutest  points  of  gesture  and  bearing,  it  was  all 
that  one  could  possibly  imagine  of  the  perfection  of  chivalrous  re- 
spect. Even  when  I  first  saw  her,  a  bright  good-humored  Irish  face 
was  all  her  beauty,  but  youth  still  lingered  in  her  eyes  and  hair ; 
and  a  little  scene  between  her  and  Landor  at  the  interview  was  per- 
fectly expressed  in  a  few  lines  of  dialogue  written  by  him  next  day. 

M.  Why,  who  now  in  the  world  is  this  ? 
It  cannot  be  the  same  ...  I  miss 
The  gift  he  always  brought  ...  a  kiss. 
Yet  still  I  know  my  eyes  are  bright, 
And  not  a  single  hair  turned  white. 

L.  0  idol  of  my  youth !  upon 

That  joyous  head  gray  hair  there 's  none, 
Nor  may  there  ever  be !  gray  hair 
Is  the  unthrifty  growth  of  Care, 
Which  she  has  planted  —  you  see  where. 

Two  years  later  brought  the  same  fatal  summons  for  one  who 


608  TWEXTY-OXE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^is^s;"' 

during  many  years  had  been  held  in  high  esteem  by  all  the  Landor 
family.  Mr.  Rosenhagen  died  in  the  middle  of  the  December  of 
1853  ;  and  when  my  old  friend  wrote  to  me  as  usiud  on  Christmas 
day,  the  event  was  painfully  affecting  him.  "  Merry  Christmases 
(that  is  the  right  word,  and  no  other  will  do)  are  mostly  over  with 
childhood,  though  they  sometimes  boisterously  burst  into  the  circle 
when  they  ought  to  be  abed.  I  am  in  perfectly  good  health,  but  my 
upper  teeth  are  as  useless  as  the  fleets  in  the  Euxinc  ;  and  of  all  infi- 
delities the  worst  is  their  secession.  I  have  been  very  sad  too  since 
the  loss  of  my  friend  Rosenhagen.  In  writing  the  name  my  hand 
trembles.  Never  was  there  a  better  man  or  more  perfect  gentleman. 
With  his  father  and  himself  and  Thomas  Grenville  have  passed  away 
any  remaining  chances  of  discovering  the  writer  of  Junius.  How- 
ever, it  matters  little,  —  Johnson's  letter  to  Chesterfield  is  worth 
them  all,  admirable  as  they  are." 

But  the  year  then  beginning,  his  eightieth,  was  to  be  the  saddest 
of  all  to  him.  It  opened  with  the  death  of  the  last  survivor  of  those 
who  had  known  him  at  Bath  at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  "  My 
earliest  Bath  friend,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  the  6th  of  February,  1854, 
"  .Miss  Caldwell,  sister  to  good  dear  Lady  Belmore,  of  whose  death  I 
so  lately  wrote  to  you,  died  a  few  days  ago.  I  had  known  them 
since  the  beginning  of  the  century.  Alas !  I  feel  that  I  am  gone 
very  far  down  the  vale  of  years  :  a  vale  in  which  there  is  no  fine 
prospect  on  either  side,  and  the  few  flowers  are  scarcely  worth  the 
gathering."  Nor  had  the  month  thus  mournfully  opened  come  to  its 
close  before  a  much  sadder  loss  had  fallen  on  him.  The  companion 
of  his  childhood,  his  eldest  and  only  surviving  sister,  Elizabeth,  died 
in  the  family  house  at  Warwick.  Her  illness  had  not  been  serious  at 
first,  and  to  the  end  there  seemed  to  be  hope  :  but  on  the  2d  of 
March  he  wrote  to  me  that  he  had  lost  his  earliest,  dearest,  and 
nearly  his  last  friend  ;  and  that  grief  had  taken  away  his  sleep,  appe- 
tite, digestion,  everything.  It  was  indeed  a  hard  and  heavy  blow, 
though  there  was  much  to  soften  it  in  the  many  memorials  she  left 
of  a  tender  regard  that  had  survived  and  been  true  to  him  through 
all  his  life's  vicissitudes. 

His  letters  for  some  time  bore  the  trace  of  grief  in  even  the  tone 
with  which  they  spoke  of  ordinary  things  ;  and  one  of  them,  written 
little  more  than  a  month  after  this  last  great  loss,  in  which  he  de- 
scribed himself  watching  the  lights  of  a  Bath  sunset  disappear,  and 
thinking  of  the  friends  who  like  them  had  gone  out  ;is  suddenly,  I 
felt  to  be  very  touching  at  the  time.  "  What  delightful  weather  ! 
Lasl  evening"  (8th  April,  1S54)  "I  walked  in  the  park,  and  saw  the 
sun  gradually  illuminate  the  whole  of  Marlborough  buildings,  win- 
dow after  window,  six  or  seven  at  the  time.  Many  of  my  old  friends 
lived  there,  and  went  away  in  like  manner,  one  after  another.  This 
evening  I  took  my  usual  walk  a  little  earlier,  and,  sitting  afterwards 
without  candles  for  about  an  hour  as  I  always  do,  I  have  had  the 


JEX.  61-82.]  DEATHS   OF   OLD    FRIENDS.  609 

same  feeling  as  I  watched  the  twilight  darken  on  my  walls,  and  my 
pictures  vanish  from  before  me.  I  make  no  change  in  these  lines, 
hut  write  them  as  they  have  risen  to  my  mind  :  — 

My  pictures  blacken  in  their  frames 

As  night  comes  on, 
And  youthful  maids  and  wrinkled  dames 

Are  now  all  one. 

Death  of  the  Day !  a  sterner  Death 

Did  worse  before: 
The  fairest  form  and  balmiest  breath 

Away  he  bore." 

As  the  same  year  wore  on,  he  saw  too  surely  another  grief  prepar- 
ing for  him.  He  wrote  to  me  in  July  of  the  illness  of  Julius  Hare ; 
and  soon  after,  on  his  friend's  expressed  wish  to  see  him,  he  went  to 
Hurstmonceaux,  from  which  I  received  soon  after  some  verses  written 
by  him  on  his  friend's  having  placed  in  his  hands  a  small  unpublished 
poem  of  Wordsworth's. 

"  Derwent !  Winander !  your  twin  poets  come 
Star-crowned  along  with  you,  nor  stand  apart. 
Wordsworth  comes  hither,  hither  Southey  comes, 
His  friend  and  mine,  and  every  man's  who  lives, 
Or  who  shall  live  when  days  far  off  have  risen. 
Here  are  they  with  me  yet  again,  here  dwell 
Among  the  sages  of  antiquity, 
Under  his  hospitable  roof  whose  life 
Surpasses  theirs  in  strong  serenity, 
Whose  genius  walks  more  humbly,  stooping  down 
From  the  same  height  to  cheer  the  weak  of  soul 
And  guide  the  erring  from  the  tortuous  way. 
Hail,  ye  departed !  hail,  thou  later  friend, 
Julius !  but  never  by  my  voice  invoked 
With  such  an  invocation  .  .  .  hail,  and  live  !  " 

It  was,  alas  !  rather  fear  than  hope  that  had  suggested  this  earnest 
prayer ;  for,  though  the  good  archdeacon  had  rallied  somewhat,  Lan- 
dor  left  him  with  the  feeling  that  they  would  not  meet  again ;  and 
the  last  letter  addressed  to  him  by  Julius  he  received  not  many 
weeks  later. 

It  spoke  of  matters  they  had  talked  about  together,  and  especially 
of  an  old  mulberry-tree  in  the  garden  at  Warwick  celebrated  in  Lan- 
dor's  verse.  The  ancient  gods  and  heroes,  said  Julius,  had  each  his 
favorite  plant ;  and  there  were  other  reasons,  which  he  had  tried  to 
express  in  unaccustomed  verse,  why  Landor  should  have  the  mul- 
berry. 

Of  yore  in  Babylon  the  mulberry 

Changed  color  at  fond  lovers'  misery;  • 

In  England,  to  her  noblest  poets  dear, 

It  keeps  the  records  of  glad  friendships  here: 

'T  was  Shakespeare's,  Milton's,  now  't  is  Landor's  tree; 

Precious  to  those  who  love  the  gifted  three. 

The  letter  also  made  pathetic  reference  to  the  effect  on  Sir  William 
Napier  of  the  death  of  his  brother  Sir  Charles  in  the  previous  year, 
and  ended  with  words  very  memorable  to  me,  and  worthy  to  have 
closed  the  intercourse  of  two  such  friends.     "  The  great  men  of  Eng- 

39 


CIO  TWENTY-ONE   YEARS    AT    BATII.  [B8#K-»"' 

land  seem  to  be  passing  away,  those  at  least  of  that  great  generation 
whose  youth  was  kindled  and  stirred  by  the  first  French  Revolution. 
But  one  of  them  remains,  my  friend  Walter  Landor,  and  may  he  still 
remain  as  long  as  his  spirit  is  not  too  impatient  to  escape  from  the  de- 
cay of  the  body.  It  is  perhaps  well  that  the  influence  which  first 
moved  you  to  the  resentment  of  injustice  should  be  with  you  to  the 
end."  (Landor  had  sent  him  a  new  Conversation  having  for  its  sub- 
ject the  politics  of  the  day.)  "  There  are  still  so  many  painful  things 
in  the  actual  state  of  the  world,  so  much  wrong  and  so  much  folly,  that 
it  may  probably  be  the  duty  of  those  who  see  these  evils  clearly,  and 
feel  the  mischief  of  them  strongly,  to  do  all  they  can  to  expose  and 
redress  them.  But  it  is  the  very  pressure  of  such  evils  that  makes  me 
desire  more  earnestly  to  be  borne  away  from  them  by  some  of  those 
visions  of  beauty  and  tenderness  which  you  in  former  times  raised  up 
for  me,  or  by  more  of  that  intercourse  with  sages  and  heroes  which 
led  me  not  to  the  treasures  of  antiquity  alone,  but  to  those  that  lie  in 
our  own  native  speech.  The  Greek  and  Roman  dialogues  you  have 
printed  separately  ;  but  I  have  always  had  a  strong  wish  to  see  a  selec- 
tion made  of  the  more  purely  poetical  and  dramatic  dialogues,  includ- 
ing almost  all  in  which  there  are  female  speakers.  It  would  be  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  books  in  the  language,  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  in  the  world." 

Hare  survived  only  until  the  middle  of  January,  1855.  He  had  been 
again  a  prisoner  from  illness  for  a  month,  but  nothing  immediately 
dangerous  was  apprehended  ;  when  suddenly  he  grew  rapidly  worse, 
and  died  on  the  morning  of  Tuesday  the  23d  in  his  sixtieth  year. 
From  one  of  the  mourners  at  his  death-bed  Landor  heard  the  sad  in- 
telligence, in  a  letter  written  two  days,  later.  "  How  often  your  friend 
spoke  of  you.  Dear  Landor  I  he  used  to  say  ;  /  hope  we  shall  meet 
once  more.  Yes,  but  not  on  earth."  It  was  to  this  Landor  referred  in 
lines  sent  to  me  on  the  27th.  "I  sit  up  in  bed  to  write  what  pressed 
upon  me  this  morning.  Poor  Julius  was  hardly  sixty.  In  three  days 
I  shall  enter  on  my  eighty-first  year.  Superfluous  lags  the  veteran  on 
the  stage.  I  am  outliving  all  my  friends,  and  it  is  time  for  me  to  go 
and  join  those  who  arc  gone  before  me.  Already  memory  and  strength 
are  gone,  and  surely  my  days  are  numbered. 

"  Julius!  how  many  hours  have  we 
Spent  with  the  sage  and  bard  of  old! 
In  wisdom  none  surpassing  thee, 

In  truth's  bright  armor  none  more  bold. 

"  By  friends  around  thy  lied  in  death 

My  name  from  those  pure  lips  was  heard. 
0  Fame!  how  feebler  all  thy  breath 
Than  Virtue's  one  expiring  word!  " 

Towards  the  close  of  the  same  year,  too,  he  lost  a  friend  for  whom 
he  had  a  thoroughly  genuine  admiration  and  regard.  "  I  am  grieving, 
and  shall  grieve  long,"  he  wrote  to  me  (25th  October,  1855),  "for  Sir 
William   Molesworth.     When,  on  that  desert  heath   the   House  of 


JET.  61-S2.]  FRUITS  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE.  Gil 

Commons,  will  three  such  men  for  honest  and  useful  work,  as  himself 
and  Hume  and  Peel,  ever  meet  again  1  Poor  Sir  William  !  The  last 
time  we  met  was  at  Pencarrow.  We  started  a  state  near  the  pool,  and 
both  ran  after  it,  might  and  main.  I  ran  faster  than  stote  or  baronet ; 
but  the  creature  must  have  been  bred  on  Whig  land,  for  he  doubled, 
and  fairly  escaped  us." 

The  following  year  brought  a  much  greater  loss,  and  the  name  with 
which  my  melancholy  list  must  close  is  that  of  one  very  dear  to  us 
both.  The  good,  joyous,  generous  Kenyon  died  in  December,  1856, 
thinking  of  his  friends  to  the  last ;  and  finding  it  his  happiness  in 
death,  as  it  had  been  through  life,  to  provide  for  the  welfare  and  en- 
joyment of  all  who  had  ever  been  associated  with  enjoyments  of  his 
own.  "  This  indeed  is  a  sad  grief,"  Landor  wrote  to  me,  "  after  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century's  friendship.  He  was  the  kindest,  the  most  genial  of 
men,  ever  known  to  me.  I  never  saw  a  cloud  upon  his  face.  There 
was  not  a  word  he  uttered,  not  a  letter  he  wrote,  that  did  not  carry 
on  its  surface  some  ray  of  light  from  the  happiness  he  was  spreading 
around  him." 

Yet  why  should  I  scruple  to  add  another  name  1      Landor  had  lost 

in  this  year  also  the  little  Pomeranian  dog  who  had  been  for  more  than 

twelve  years  his  constant  and  sprightly  companion.      "  Pomero,  dear 

Ponxero  died  this  evening"  (10th  March,  185G)  "at  about  four  o'clock. 

I  have  been  able  to  think  of  nothing  else."    "Everybody  in  this  house," 

he  wrote  a  few  days  later,  "  grieves  for  Pomero.      The  cat  lies  day  and 

night  upon  his  grave  ;  and  I  will  not  disturb  the  kind  creature,  though 

I  want  to  plant  some  violets  upon  it,  and  to  have  his  epitaph  placed 

around  his  little  urn. 

"  0  urna!  nunquam  sis  tuo  eruta  hortulo: 
Cor  intus  est  fidele,  nam  cor  est  canis. 
Vale,  hortule !  seternumque,  Pomero !  vale. 
Sed,  si  datur,  nostri  memor." 

XII.  FRUITS  GATHERED  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE. 

To  a  republication  in  1853  of  Conversations,  Critical  Essays,  Poems, 
and  Miscellaneous  Prose  Pieces,  all  of  which  had  been  written,  with 
few  exceptions,  in  the  interval  of  seven  years  since  the  collection  of  his 
Works,  Landor  gave  the  title  of  Last  Fruit  off  an  Old  Tree  ;  and  allu- 
sion has  already  been  made  to  such  of  it  as  consisted  of  new  Conver- 
sations, or  of  critical  studies  on  Theocritus,  Catullus,  and  Petrarch. 
It  remains,  however,  generally  to  speak  of  its  other  contents,  and  to 
bring  under  the  same  pretty  and  pathetic  title,  to  which  it  more 
strictly  applies,  the  yield  of  still  later  fruit  from  the  old  tree  ;  or,  in 
other  words,  such  additions  to  Landor's  writings  as  were  either  pub- 
lished, or  collected  with  a  view  to  publication,  under  the  titles  respec- 
tively of  Scenes  for  a  Stud//,  Dry  Sticks,  and  Hellenics  Enlarged,  before 
he  finally  departed  for  Italy  in  1858. 

The  principal  prose  pieces  of  the  Last  Fruit,  apart  from  its  reviews, 


G12  .  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  lBS2P  X11' 

1S30  -  57. 

were  nineteen  chapters  on  "  Popciy  British  and  Foreign,"  and  ten 
letters  of  a  true  believer  to  Cardinal  Wiseman,  laughing  at  the  public 
alarm  in  1850  over  papal  aggression,  and  condemning  more  gravely 
the  legislation  that  followed.  "  As  if  fifty  cardinals  in  England,"  he 
wrote  to  me  (and  the  remark  will  sufficiently  describe  his  view  of  the 
case),  "  could  do  us  damage  to  the  amount  of  live  farthings  !  "  The 
High-Church  view  in  either  communion,  Protestant  or  Popish,  had 
nevertheless  small  comfort  or  support  for  him.  In  the  course  of  his 
chapters  there  is  an  eloquent  passage  on  the  services  of  Methodism  in 
reclaiming,  at  a  critical  time,  the  most  profligate  of  the  people  from  tur- 
bulence and  crime.  On  one  side  is  the  gentle  and  virtuous  AYcsley, 
bringing  about  him  as  great  multitudes  as  ever  surrounded  the  earlier 
apostles,  and  working  as  great  marvels  in  their  hearts ;  while  on  the 
other  are  the  beneficed  clergy  everywhere  setting  their  faces  against 
him,  "and  angry  faces  they  are,  partly  from  old  prejudices,  and  partly 
from  old  port."  In  another  chapter  there  is  masterly  ridicule  of  any 
argument  against  extravagant  sacerdotal  pretensions  drawn  from  our 
modern  enlightenment  and  learning :  the  enlightenment  represented 
by  a  fewT  altar-candles  extiuguishable  at  pleasure,  and  as  for  the  learn- 
ing !  —  "  Learning  was  never  so  highly  cultivated  in  Italy  as  when 
Muretus  delivered  an  oration  eulogistic  of  Catherine  de'  Medici  in 
celebration  of  the  massacre  on  St.  Bartholomew's  day.  Give  the  same 
priests  the  same  power,  and  nothing  will  be  wanting  but  latinity  for 
the  oration."  At  nearly  the  time  when  these  chapters  were  written, 
Landor  had  been  corresponding  about  one  of  his  Llanthony  livings 
with  the  bishop  of  St.  David's,  for  whose  character  and  learning  he 
had  high  respect ;  and  he  has  some  excellent  remarks  on  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  payment  of  curates,  which  were  probably  suggested  by 
that  correspondence.  His  conclusion  upon  the  whole  matter  is  to 
counsel  moderation  on  all  sides  ;  and  this  he  enforces  in  language  not 
undeserving  of  respect,  though  little  likely  to  have  hearing  as  matters 
stand  at  present.  "  It  would  grieve  me  to  foresee  a  day  when  our 
cathedrals  and  our  churches  shall  be  demolished  or  desecrated  ;  when 
the  tones  of  the  organ,  when  the  symphonies  of  Handel,  shall  no  longer 
swell  and  reverberate  along  the  groined  roof  and  painted  windows. 
But  let  old  superstitions  crumble  into  dust ;  let  faith,  hope,  and  char- 
ity be  simple  in  their  attire  ;  let  few  and  solemn  words  be  spoken  be- 
fore Him  to  whom  all  hearts  are  open,  all  desires  known.  Principali- 
ties and  powers  belong  not  to  the  service  of  the  Crucified,  and  religion 
can  never  he  pure,  never  of  good  report,  among  those  who  usurp  or 
covet  them ! " 

A  similar  set  of  letters  or  chapters,  written  two  years  afterwards 
in  the  assumed  character  of  an  American,  and  dedicated  with  much 
admiration  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  had  for  their  subject  the  outset  of  the 
Crimean  War,  which  was  sharply  criticised.  These  were  issued 
separately  :  but,  collected  in  the  same  volume  with  those  on  Popery, 
were  others  calling  attention  to  Southey's  services  in  connection  with 


JET.  61-82.]  FRUITS  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE.  613 

the  neglect  of  his  family  ;  and  of  these  last  the  sequel  may  be  worth 
relating. 

They  had  been  published  in  a  paper  I  had  long  been  connected 
with,  and  at  that  time  conducted  ;  not  better  known  for  its  liberal 
opinions,  than  for  the  incomparable  wit  and  ability  which  the  friend 
whom  I  followed  as  its  editor  had  associated  with  its  name.  Nor 
had  only  the  letters  been  given.  Comments  had  been  made  on  the 
subject  of  them  from  time  to  time  ;  and  I  had  very  strongly  directed 
attention  to  the  fact,  that  though  a  Tory  administration  was  in  power 
when  South ey  died  and  until  three  years  after  his  death,  his  son  was 
still  suffered  to  languish  on  less  than  a  hundred  a  year,  in  the  church 
of  whose  interests  his  father  had  been  so  zealous  a  champion.  This 
was  a  duty  that  should  hardly  have  been  left  to  a  journal  differing  so 
strongly  from  many  of  Southey's  views  ;  but  it  was  nothing  to  what 
occurred  a  little  later,  when  (if  small  things  may  be  compared  to 
great),  with  astonishment  only  equalled  by  Sydney  Smith's  at  finding 
himself,  an  old  Edinburgh  reviewer,  defending  the  church  against 
archbishops  and  bishops,  I  found  myself  —  the  editor  of  a  paper  of 
what  was  then  called  extreme  liberal  opinions  —  defending  Southey 
against  the  Quarterly  Review.  At  this  very  time,  however,  in  Janu- 
ary, 1851,  unexpected  help  came  from  another  quarter.  The  Whig 
chancellor,  Lord  Truro,  resolved  that  Southey's  son  should  have  a 
chancery  living ;  and  as  his  interest  in  the  case  had  been  awakened 
by  a  newspaper,  he  made  its  editor,  throughout,  the  channel  of  his 
kindness.  Not  disdaining  to  seek  information  where  great  officials 
are  apt  to  turn  away  in  fright  lest  they  should  find  it,  he  applied 
privately  for  such  suggestion  as  I  could  give  on  the  subject  that  had 
attracted  his  notice  :  having  thus  satisfied  himself  that  the  living 
would  be  worthily  bestowed,  he  made  me  the  means  of  conveying  it ; 
and  at  the  close  of  the  month  I  handed  over  to  Mr.  Cuthbert  Southey 
the  presentation  under  the  great  seal  to  a  rectory  of  the  value  of  up- 
wards of  three  hundred  a  year,  besides  house  and  glebe.  Even  the 
fees  had  been  paid  by  Lord  Truro.  The  transaction  altogether,  I  need 
hardly  add,  was  a  wonderful  surprise  as  well  as  pleasure  to  Landor. 

The  most  important  of  the  poetical  pieces  in  the  volume  I  am  now 
noticing  were  five  dramatic  scenes  on  a  subject  familiarized  already 
to  poetical  readers  by  a  very  great  genius.  Landor  had  been  much 
moved  by  the  story  of  Beatrice  Cenci,  thinking  it  indeed  the  most 
deeply  pathetic  of  any  in  the  annals  of  the  world.  "  When  I  was  at 
Rome,"  he  wrote  to  me  in  1850,  "  I  visited  frequently  Lady  Mary 
Deerhurst,  afterwards  Lady  Coventry  ;  and  yet  more  frequently  I 
foi'got  the  object  of  my  visit  to  palazzo  Barberini,  and  turned  im- 
pulsively to  the  room  containing  the  portrait  of  Beatrice.  Nothing 
else  could  fix  my  attention  :  my  heart  rose  violently  with  more  than 
one  emotion.  Shelley  has  shown  great  delicacy  in  overshadowing  the 
incest,  but  the  violent  language  he  gives  to  Beatrice  somewhat  lowers 
her.     Alas,  alas,  poor  Cenci !  she  never  told  her  grief.     Of  this  I  am 


G14  TWEXTY-OXE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  ^1836*  ^ 

certain.  In  her  heart  was  the  same  heroism  as  that  of  Prometheus  : 
no  torture  could  extort  the  dreadful  secret  :  she  would  have  died 
without  disclosing  it.  I  had  once  an  inclination  myself  to  write  a 
few  scenes  of  this  sad  and  sacred  drama." 

Not  only  his  inclination  is  expressed  here,  but  the  manner  in 
which  he  intended  to  treat  his  theme  ;  and  very  soon  he  was  at  work 
upon  it.  At  first  the  scenes  were  not  to  be  in  verse,  but  the  passion 
and  imagination  of  a  subject  of  this  kind  easily  overflow  the  low 
banks  of  prose.  The  first  three  scenes  show  Cenci's  character  at 
home,  and  the  last  two  exhibit  his  daughters  sufferings  and  death. 
Of  Italian  character,  in  its  highest  and  lowest  grades,  a  very  singular 
and  intimate  knowledge  is  displayed  ;  and  there  is  marvellous  skill  in 
revealing  just  enough,  and  only  enough,  to  render  a  horrible  story 
intelligible  :  but  what  is  said  by  himself  of  the  scenes  is  otherwise 
perfectly  true,  that  "  they  interfere  very  little  with  Shelley's  noble 
tragedy."  When  first  sent  to  me  they  were  inscribed  to  the  memory 
of  Beddoes,  a  man  who  wasted  on  wild  and  impracticable  subjects  a 
genius  only  second  to  the  highest  in  tragic  poetry.  "  In  laying  these 
scattered  lines  of  mine,"  Landor  wrote,  "  on  the  recently  closed  grave 
of  Beddoes,  fungar  inani  munere  ;  but  it  is,  if  not  a  merit,  at  least  a 
somewhat  of  self-satisfaction,  to  be  among  the  earliest,  if  among  the 
humblest,  in  my  oblation.  Nearly  two  centuries  have  elapsed  since 
a  work  of  the  same  wealth  of  genius  as  Death's  Jest-Book  hath  been 
given  to  the  world."  This  he  replaced  afterwards  by  a  dedication  to 
Miss  Lynn,  a  lady  for  whose  character  and  attainments  he  had  an  ex- 
treme admiration,  whose  books  gave  him  high  pleasure  and  enjoyment 
of  the  most  unaffected  kind,  and  from  whose  visits  and  correspondence 
he  derived  not  a  small  portion  of  his  happiness  in  these  later  years. 

Of  the  other  poems  included  in  Last  Fruit,  or  in  the  two  later 
issues  of  Dry  Sticks  and  Hellenics  Enlarged,  those  that  alone  require 
present  allusion  from  me  are  such  as  had  any  personal  significance  or 
interest.  Some  had  formerly  been  printed  in  less  perfect  shape ;  a 
much  larger  number  should  never  have  been  printed  at  all  ;  a  few, 
upon  grave  subjects,  had  his  old  exquisite  grace  of  diction;  and 
another  few,  even  \ipon  subjects  almost  too  trivial  to  put  into  verse, 
were  so  good  as  to  take  rank  with  the  best  things  of  that  sort  to  be 
found  in  books  before  book-making  was.  They  are  of  what  may  be 
called  the  old  style,  in  which  he  printed  his  first  imitation  of  the 
manner  of  his  favorite  Latin  poet. 

"  Aurelius,  sire  of  Hunjrrinesses! 
Thee  thy  old  friend  Catullus  blesses, 
And  sends  thee  six  fine  wutereresses. 

"There  are  who  would  not  think  me  quite 
(Unless  we  were  old  friends)  polite 
To  mention  whom  you  should  invite. 

"  Look  at  them  well ;  and  turn  it  o'er 
In  your  own  mind  .  .  .  I'd  have  but  four  •  •  • 
Lucullus,  Cxsur,  and  two  more." 


JET.   61-82.]  FBUITS  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE.  G15 

Something  of  that  style  we  may  also  discover  in  these  little  follow- 
ing pieces,  where  he  sketches  the  popular  Matho  j  where  he  gives  a 
hint  to  his  own  critics  ;  where  he  opens  the  world's  theatre  to  us,  at 
its  three  principal  performances ;  or  where  he  rebukes  our  good  Ken- 
yon  for  deserting  his  cottage  at  Wimbledon. 

"  Deep  forests  hide  the  stoutest  oaks ; 
Hazels  make  sticks  for  market-folks ; 
He  who  comes  soon  to  his  estate 
Dies  poor;  the  rich  heir  is  the  late. 
Sere  ivy  shaded  Shakespeare's  brow; 
But  Matho  is  a  poet  now." 

"  Wearers  of  rings  and  chains ! 
Pray  do  not  take  the  pains 

To  set  me  right. 
In  vain  my  faults  ye  quote ; 
I  write  as  others  wrote 

On  Sunium's  height." 


"  Alas,  how  soon  the  hours  are  over 
Counted  us  out  to  play  the  lover ! 
And  how  much  narrower  is  the  stage 
Allotted  us  to  play  the  sage ! 
But  when  we  play  the  fool,  how  wide 
The  theatre  expands !  beside 
How  long  the  audience  sits  before  us ! 
How  many  prompters !  what  a  chorus !  " 


"  Wimbledon  has  all  charms  for  me ! 
Per  Bacco,  I  would  rather  see, 
Than  all  the  crowds  that  crowd  the  gate 
Before  the  greatest  of  the  great, 
The  gander  and  the  goose  upon 
Your  little  mere  at  Wimbledon."" 

Nor  is  it  absent  from  such  graver  moods  as  I  may  illustrate  by  four 
other  poems  of  equal  brevity,  in  which,  though  with  also  equal  sim- 
plicity and  directness  of  expression,  there  is  a  tone  half  soothing  in 
the  sadness,  and  a  coloring  as  of  autumn  sunsets,  rather  soft  and  rich 
than  sorrowful  or  mournful. 

"  How  calm,  0  life,  is  thy  decline ! 
Ah,  it  is  only  when  the  sun 
His  hot  and  headstrong  course  hath  run. 
Heaven's  guiding  stars  serenely  shine !  " 


"  False  are  our  dreams,  or  there  are  fields  below 
To  which  the  weariest  feet  the  swiftest  go; 
And  there  are  bitter  streams  the  wretched  bless, 
Before  whose  thirst  they  lose  their  bitterness. 
'T  is  hard  to  love!  to  unlove  harder  yet! 
Not  so  to  die —  and  then,  perhaps,  forget." 


"  The  place  where  soon  I  think  to  lie 
In  its  old  creviced  nook  hard  by 

Rears  many  a  weed: 
If  parties  bring  you  there,  will  you 
Drop  slyly  in  a  grain  or  two 

Of  wallflower  seed? 


616  TWENTY-ONE   YEARS   AT   BATH.  ^igSsiw11" 


1836-57. 


"I  shall  not  see  it,  and  (too  sure!) 
I  shall  not  ever  hear  that  your 

Light  step  was  there; 
Rut  the  rich  odor  some  fine  day 
Will,  what  I  cannot  do,  repay 

That  little  care." 


"  The  grateful  heart  for  all  things  blesses' 
Not  only  joy,  but  grief  endears : 
I  love  you  for  your  few  caresses, 
I  love  you  for  my  many  tears." 

That  last  is  very  perfect.  Nor  less  beautiful  in  its  tenderness  and 
delicacy,  as  well  as  very  affecting  for  other  reasons,  is  one  of  his  many 
recollections  of  his  earliest  friend,  his  sister  Elizabeth.  Old  age  ever 
links  to  the  present  the  most  distant  past ;  and  here  is  the  school- 
room not  seen  for  nearly  eighty  years,  overshadowed  by  the  still 
unchanged  cedar  seen  only  yesterday.  Here,  too,  are  the  works  of 
charity  and  mercy  that  died  with  her,  and  his  favorite  plant  that  also 
withered  when  her  loving  care  was  withdrawn.* 

"  Is  there  a  day  or  night 
One  when  the  vision  of  my  earliest  friend, 

Kobed  in  her  own  pure  light, 
Fails  on  my  weary  vigils  to  descend  ? 

"  Sometimes  she  may  appear 
Before  the  expectant  school-room  when  the  chimes 

Sing  blithely  '  dinner  near ' ; 
And,  in  a  darker  sadder  scene  sometimes, 

"  The  lonely  widow's  door 
Knows  by  long  use  what  step  is  on  the  sill; 

It  opens,  as  before 
Year  after  year!     Pain  flies,  and  moans  are  still. 

"  And  then  to  walks  at  home 
From  age's  griefs  and  childhood's  games  we  pass, 

Where,  gloom  o'erlmnging  gloom, 
The  stern  old  cedar  waves  away  the  grass. 

"  Thou,  too,  my  cistus,  thou 
Whose  one-day  flowers  in  my  best  books  lie  spread, 

Deserted  long  erenow, 
With  none  to  prop  thee,  side  by  side,  art  dead." 

Another  only  I  may  give  of  the  very  many  that  memories  of  her 
had  suggested  after  her  death  :  on  some  of  the  trees  in  the  old  War- 
wick garden. 

"  Cypress  and  Cedar !  grncefullest  of  trees, 
Friends  of  my  boyhood!  ye  before  the  breeze, 
As  lofty  lords  before  an  eastern  throne, 
Bend  the  whole  body,  not  the  head  alone." 

Among  these  fruits  too,  the  produce  of  old  age  thus  gathered,  there 
is  not  wanting,  at  times,  an  austerer  flavor  ;  and  there  was  as  yet  no 
weakness  in  his  voice  when  he  uplifted  it  against  tyranny  or  wrong. 
There  are  few  of  his  lines  on  Kossuth  that  have  not  the  ring  of  the 

*  See  ante,  p.  574. 


JET.  61-82.]  FRUITS  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE.  617 

true  metal.     As  in  the  descriptive  touch  of  his  passage  of  the  desert 
after  the  Sultan  had  unlocked  the  gates  for  him. 

"  Him  when  the  sons  of  Ismael  saw, 
The  man  who  gave  free  men  the  law, 

They  stopt  the  camel-train  to  gaze: 
For  in  the  desert  they  had  heard 
The  miracles  of  Kossuth's  word, 

The  myriad  voices  of  his  praise." 

Or  where  he  thanks  the  Turk  for  having  done  that  fearless  deed  of 
justice  and  humanity. 

"  In  vain  two  proud  usurpers  side  by  side, 
Mesehid!  would  shake  thy  throne: 
Sit  firm;  these  outlaws  of  the  world  deride, 
And  fear  thy  God  alone. 

"  The  Merciful  and  Mighty,  Wise  and  Just, 
Who  lays  the  proud  man  low, 
Who  raises  up  the  fallen  from  the  dust, 
And  bids  the  captive  go." 

Belonging  also  to  these  latest  years  are  several  critical  poems ; 
and  from  one  of  them  descriptive  of  contemporary  poets,  written  in 
hexameters  at  the  request  of  Hare,  who  had  a  strange  liking  for  such 
ungainly  intruders  upon  a  language  entirely  unsuited  to  them,  I  take 
some  lines  on  Wordsworth  confirmatory  of  what  was  lately  said  as  to 
Landor's  final  belief  in  regard  to  him.* 

"  Wordsworth,  well  pleased  with  himself,  cared  little  for  modern  or  ancient, 
His  was  the  moor  and  the  tarn,  the  recess  in  the  mountain,  the  woodland 
Scattered  with  trees  far  and  wide,  trees  never  too  solemn  or  lofty, 
Never  entangled  with  plants  overrunning  the  villager's  footpath. 
Equable  was  he  and  plain ;  and  though  wandering  a  little  in  wisdom 
Ever  was  English  at  heart.     If  his  words  were  too  many;  if  Fancy's 
Furniture  lookt  rather  scant  in  a  whitewashed  and  homely  apartment; 
If  in  his  rural  designs  there  is  sameness  and  tameness;  if  often 
Feebleness  is  there  for  breadth;  if  his  pencil  wants  rounding  and  pointing; 
Few  of  this  age  or  the  last  stand  out  on  the  like  elevation. 
There  is  a  sheepfold  he  raised  which  my  memory  loves  to  revisit, 
Sheepfold  whose  wall  shall  endure  when  there  is  not  a  stone  of  the  palace." 

Another  poem  in  the  collection  was  addressed  to  his  brother  Robert, 
and  is  not  now  to  be  named  without  sorrowful  addition.  Both  Lan- 
dor's surviving  brothers  were  living  in  the  autumn  of  1865,  when 
this  biography  was  begun  ;  and  at  this  Easter  of  1869,  when  it  ap- 
proaches to  its  tardy  completion,  both  are  passed  away.  Henry  died 
three  years  ago  ;  and  it  is  little  more  than  three  weeks  since  I  stood 
at  the  grave  which  closed  over  Robert,  the  last  of  this  family  of 
remarkable  men.f  Without  him  the  book  could  not  have  been 
written  ;  he  took  a  natural  interest  in  what  he  had  helped  so  much  ; 
and  but  for  him  I  should  hardly  have  persisted  with  it  against  many 
difficulties.     To  his  writings,  and  to  the  extraordinary  likeness  be- 

*  Ante,  p.  667. 

t  Charles  Landor  was  in  his  seventy-third  year,  when  he  died  of  an  illness  rendered 
serious  only  bv  his  too  great  confidence  in  his  strength.  Henry  survived  to  his  eighty- 
seventh  year,  Robert  to  his  eighty-eighth,  and  Walter  to  his  ninetieth. 


G18  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^S&-&L 

tween  his  genius  and  his  brother's,  many  references  have  been  made 
in  the  course  of  it  ;  and  what  I  may  now  permit  myself  to  say  of  his 
character  will  be  said  least  obtrusively  in  connection  with  this  poem. 
One  allusion  in  it,  which  had  given  him  pain,  I  shall  transcribe  with 
his  own  marginal  comment  upon  it,  sent  me  at  the  time. 

''  Thine  is  the  care  to  keep  our  native  springs 
Pure  of  pollution,  clear  of  weeds;  but  thine 
Are  also  graver  cares,  with  fortune  blest 
Not  above  competence,  with  duties  charged 
Which  with  more  zeal  and  prudence  none  perform. 
There  are  who  guide  the  erring,  tend  the  sick, 
Nor  frown  the  starving  from  a  half-closed  door; 
But  none  beside  my  brother,  none  beside, 
In  stall  thick  littered  or  on  mitred  throne, 
Gives  the  more  needy  all  the  Church  gives  him. 
Unaided,  though  years  press  and  health  declines, 
By  aught  of  clerical  or  human  aid, 
Thou  servest  God,  and  God's  poor  guests,  alone." 

"Few  things  of  little  consequence  have  ever  given  me  so  much  mortifica- 
tion as  this  praise ;  the  more  painful  because  it  was  kindly  intended. 
Neither  my  brother,  nor  any  other  person,  ever  heard  me  say  what  I  had 
given  to  the  poor.  If  I  had  given  only  '  all  the  Church  gives  me,'  they 
would  not  have  received,  in  sixty  years,  so  much  as  sixpence.  I  never 
received  a  farthing  from  the  Church  in  my  life.  The  income  arising  from  my 
living,  which  is  less  than  the  income  arising  from  the  £  6,000  my  mother 
had  previously  given  me  to  purchase  it  with,  does  not  pay  my  curate  and 
other  such  expenses.  I  lose  £  200  a  year  by  being  a  clergyman.  I  am 
that  much  poorer  than  I  should  have  been  as  a  layman,  after  bringing  my 
own  private  property  into  the  Church ;  and  what  little  I  can  spare  for 
charity  is  from  my  other  personal  resources.  It  is  not  an  uncommon  case. 
The  vicar  of  a  parish  adjoining  mine,  equally  unaided,  has  spent  £  800  in 
building  one  church,  and  £  500  in  restoring  another.  But  how  could  my 
brother  have  learnt  my  virtues  but  from  me  ?  and  how  can  I  escape  the 
contempt  which  such  boasting  must  provoke  ?  I  would  rather  be  thought 
deserving  of  a  halter  for  my  rapacity  than  of  commendations  for  charity 
claimed  by  myself." 

What  is  implied  in  this  remonstrance  (addressed  also  at  the  time 
to  his  brother  in  almost  the  same  words),  not  of  independence,  con- 
scientiousness, and  the  sense  of  justice  only,  but  of  their  never-failing 
accompaniment  of  self-denial,  attended  Mr.  Landor  through  every 
part  of  his  long  life.  At  its  outset,  when  an  income  placing  him 
above  want  had  been  secured  to  him,  he  resigned  his  fellowship  at 
Oxford  because  he  believed  such  endowments  to  have  been  intended 
only  for  gentlemen  or  scholars  who  had  no  other  sufficient  means. 
At  its  close,  and  the  close  of  his  ministry  in  an  establishment  which 
had  withheld  from  him  all  her  worldly  rewards,  and  for  sixty  years 
had  accepted  his  labor  unpaid  even  by  laborers'  hire,  his  only  desire 
was,  by  such  bequests  as  he  could  make  on  his  death,  to  improve  the 
Church  of  his  vicarage  for  its  next  successor.  For  all  the  forty  years 
while  incumbent  of  Birlingham,  he  was  never,  for  a  single  Sunday,  ab- 
sent from  his  parish,  nor,  until  he  had  passed  his  eightieth  year,  absent 


MT.  61-82.]  FRUITS   FROM   AN    OLD   TREE.  619 

even  from  his  pulpit.*  Yet,  by  the  mere  character  of  his  accomplish- 
ments, to  speak  of  nothing  higher,  society  must  have  had  for  him 
all  the  charms  which  it  rarely  fails  to  yield  to  one  fitted  to  shine  in 
it.  He  had  travelled  in  early  life,  had  taken  part  in  many  public 
discussions  as  a  writer  in  journals  and  reviews,  was  a  really  brilliant 
talker  up  to  the  year  but  one  before  he  died,  and  had  an  amount  as 
well  as  variety  of  knowledge  of  a  quite  uncommon  kind.  Nor  was 
there  anything  he  knew  that  he  had  not  ready  for  use ;  and  I  re- 
member how  much  he  surprised  me,  in  the  last  conversation  I  had 
with  him,  by  his  homely  social  pictures  and  illustrations  of  a  period 
beyond  all  others  least  authentically  known  to  us,  which  he  had 
drawn,  besides  graver  matters  of  higher  importance,  from  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Fathers.  He  had  the  quick  gray  eyes  of  his  brother 
Walter ;  with  wonderful  resemblance  to  him  in  his  voice,  in  a  laugh 
as  frequent  and  genial  though  les,s  loud  and  prolonged,  in  modes- of 
expressing  himself,  even  in  turns  and  tones  of  Warwickshire  speech 
which  we  may  fancy  Shakespeare  himself  to  have  had ;  but  he  was 
much  taller,  and  had  more  refined  and  handsome  features.  Altogether 
he  was  a  man,  this  quiet  rector  of  a  sequestered  country  parish,  who 
by  natural  gifts  as  well  as  great  acquirements  might  have  been  ex- 
pected to  make  a  figure  in  the  world ;  but  there  was  a  wisdom  also 
possessed  by  him  which  explains  the  life  he  preferred  to  live. 

It  was  impossible  for  any  man  to  be  more  sensitive  on  points  of 
honor,  but  he  had  obligations  to  faith  and  duty  higher  than  even 
this,  and  one  allegiance  which  was  always  supreme.  The  object  of 
one  of  his  tragedies  was  to  show,  how,  by  a  Christian,  dishonor  itself 
might  be  borne  ;  and  to  him  was  expressed,  in  that,  all  human  trial. 
Truth  in  the  very  smallest  things  he  thought  of  equal  importance  as 
in  the  very  greatest  :  and  when  another  of  his  tragedies  was  obtain- 
ing unexpected  success  by  having  been  ascribed  to  Lord  Byron,  f  he 
insisted  on  being  announced  as  its  writer  •  just  as,  when  his  Fawn  of 
Sertorius  was  universally  ascribed  to  his  brother,  he  at  once  had  the 
error  publicly  corrected.  He  would  have  rejected  with  as  infinite  scorn 
any  advantage  to  be  purchased  by  silence  as  any  gain  to  be  got  by  a 

*  I  take  some  lines  from  a  pleasing  notice  in  a  local  paper  (  Worcester  Journal,  13th 
February,  1869),  written  by  a  gentleman  who  was  for  some  time  Mr.  Landor's  curate  at 
Birlingham.  "  Every  individual  in  his  parish  had  been  christened  or  married  by  him,  or 
came  in  some  special  manner  under  his  cognizance.  ...  He  received  the  appointment 
of  Chaplain  to  the  Prince  Regent  .  .  .  but  he  preferred  to  spend  in  the  unobtrusive 
duties  of  a  country  clergyman  his  long  unmarried  life  and  his  considerable  private  prop- 
erty. .  .  .  His  one  indulgence  was  the  collecting  of  pictures  by  the  old  masters.  .  .  . 
His  standard  of  clerical  duty  was  not  a  low  or  self-indulgent  one.  He  was  in  the  prac- 
tice of  reading  through  the  Bible  in  the  Greek  version  every  year;  and  on  Christmas 
day  and  Good  Friday,  after  full  morning  service  and  communion,  he  made  a  point  of 
visiting  and  administering  the  sacrament  to  every  sick  or  infirm  person  in  his  parish. 
It  will  be  no  matter  of  surprise,  that  though  a  few  families  in  the  place  (one  of  them 
having  position  and  wealth)  were  Dissenters,  no  chapel  was  ever  built  in  it,  no  rivalry 
or  opposition  known.  The  rector's  wishes  were  his  people's  law."  As  I  stood  at  his 
grave  I  saw  few  eyes  that  seemed  dry  among  the  entire  parish  of  very  old  and  very 
young,  the  poor  and  the  well-to-do,  who  crowded  around ;  and  it  had  been  the  care  of 
the  great  lady  of  the  place  to  put  all  the  children  of  his  schools  in  mourning. 

t  Ante,  pp'.  535  -  537. 


C20  TWEXTY-OXE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^SSs'i11, 

1B3C  -  57. 

lie.  He  would  rest  in  nothing  that  he  did  not  think  to  be  true ; 
and  it  was  the  impregnability  of  his  belief  in  the  religion  whose  min- 
ister he  was,  that  very  early  had  made  distasteful  to  him  that  kind 
of  worldly  success  which  he  had  seen  for  the  most  part  to  consist  in 
adhering  to  the  forms  and  giving  up  the  substance  as  well  as  guid- 
ance of  Christianity.  The  drift  of  his  noble  romance  of  the  Fountain 
of  Arethusa  is  a  comparison  of  the  results  of  revelation  in  the  modern 
world  with  those  of  reason  in  the  ancient ;  and  the  end  is  to  show  that 
if  the  moral  and  religious  institutions  of  men  have  become  happier 
through  divine  illumination,  so  much  the  more  feeble  would  seem  to 
have  become  their  ability  to  appreciate  the  benefit  and  profit  by  its 
splendor.  The  old  world  and  the  new  are  brought  face  to  face  ;  and 
the  ancients,  exerting  the  reason  which  was  their  unassisted  guide, 
bring  the  moderns  to  the  test  of  the  Christianity  they  profess,  to  find 
their  conduct  in  unceasing  contradiction  to  their  faith.  Of  the  wit 
and  philosophy  with  which  that  fine  fancy  is  worked  out,  or  of  the 
splendor  of  imagination  with  which  his  tale  of  Sertorius  is  told  in 
all  its  beauty,  mystery,  and  tragedy,  this  is  not  the  place  to  speak. 
But  posterity  will  find  these  books,  if  it  has  time  to  attend  to  any- 
thing done  in  our  day ;  in  its  gallery  will  be  a  place  for  both  the 
brothers ;  and  not  far  from  the  plinth  that  bears  Walter  Landor's 
name,  will  be  that  which  is  inscribed  with  the  name  of  Robert  Eyres 
Landor. 

We  met  them  in  the  street  and  pave  not  way; 
When  they  were  gone  we  lifted  up  both  hands, 
And  said  to  neighbors,  Thtse  were  men  indeed! 

Those  lines,  which  are  from  Scenes  for  a  Stud//,  recall  me  to  that 
work.  It  was  the  last  of  the  poetical  fruits,  gathered  on  the  eve  of 
quitting  England  forever,  of  which  it  was  to  be  said  (this  being,  as 
certainly,  not  applicable  to  all)  that  they  had  in  them  the  true  relish 
of  the  Hesperides  gardens.  "  I  will  hope,"  Landor  wrote  to  me  in 
December,  1855,  "to  send  you  on  my  birthday,  when  I  shall  enter 
on  my  eighty-second  year,  some  scenes  for  the  study.  I  write  one 
day  and  correct  the  next,  and  some  days  do  a  little  of  both.  The 
Muses,  we  hear,  are  the  daughters  of  Memory.  In  the  nature  and 
course  of  things,  the  mother  should  go  first.  With  me  it  is  so.  But 
I  doubt  whether  you  will  find  the  young  ladies  looking  so  fresh  and 
active  as  they  should  do."  The  doubt  was  not  justified.  Rarely  had 
anything  better  been  done  by  this  extraordinary  old  man  than  these 
dozen  scenes  in  which  he  had  told  again  the  ancient  story  of  the  two 
gamblers  in  ambition  and  love  who  threw  between  them  for  the  stake 
of  the  world.  The  place  (excepting  only  of  the  last  dialogue)  is 
Egypt;  the  time,  that  of  the  victory  of  Actium  ;  the  principal  inci- 
dents, the  deaths  of  Antony  and  of  Cleopatra,  the  murder  of  Caesa- 
rion,  son  to  Cleopatra  and  Julius  Caesar,  and  the  capture  of  Lucius 
and  Marcus,  children  of  Cleopatra  and  Antony  ;  and  the  leading  pe- 
culiarity of   the   whole,  great  force  and  distinctness  of   character. 


JET.  61-82.]  FRUITS  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE.  G21 

The  two  triumvirs,  victorious  and  vanquished,  are  as  finely  contrasted 
as  their  fortunes.  The  one,  in  his  success,  waiting  and  far-seeing,  but 
crafty,  selfish,  and  coldly  and  calmly  treacherous  ;  the  other  rougher 
in  his  adversity,  with  louder  laugh  and  less  tolerant  speech,  become 
less  patient  and  more  reckless,  but  largely  generous  and  trustful  still 
as  well  as  proud  and  bold,  Roman  soldier  and  lover  to  the  last.  Oc- 
tavius  has  a  false  friend  in  Dolabella,  who  unsuccessfully  tries  to  un- 
dermine him  ;  and  Antony  has  a  loyal  adversary  in  Agrippa,  the  con- 
queror at  Actium,  who  vainly  tries  to  serve  him  :  the  one  meant  to 
be  as  typical  of  the  new  empire  that  is  coming,  as  the  other  of  the 
old  republic  that  is  gone.  But  this  is  done  without  strain.  We  are 
only  conscious  of  it  as  of  the  contrasting  influences  of  Egypt  and  of 
Rome,  which  are  all  the  more  strongly  felt  as  the  art  of  them  is  never 
obtruded.  Rome  herself  seems  dwarfed,  with  her  turbulent  victories 
and  deities,  in  the  huge  silent  presence  of  those 

"  Mild  Gods  both  arms  upon  their  knees  " ; 

and  there  is  a  very  fine  effect  in  the  scene  where  the  death  of  An- 
tony is  announced,  and  Octavius  is  at  the  summit  of  his  triumph, 
when,  from  the  poet  who  is  his  friend  and  fellow-captain,  Cornelius 
Gallus,  there  falls  upon  him  unexpectedly,  like  a  cold  blast  from  a 
sepulchre,  elegiac  verses  on  the  mighty  of  the  earth,  to  tell  him  they 
are  only  earth,  and  that  death  claims  earth  for  its  heritage.  Not  all 
I  have  thus  described  however  is  what  most  of  all  deserves  remem- 
brance in  these  fine  Scenes.  Undoubtedly  their  masterpiece  is  the 
character  and  death  of  Ceesarion.  Everything  beyond  even  poetic 
warrant  in  making  this  boy  and  mother  so  young  *  is  to  be  freely 
forgiven  for  the  extraordinary  beauty  it  imparts  to  the  sketch.  The 
lad  has  never  left  the  side  of  Cleopatra  and  her  women,  but  never- 
theless he  is  the  son  of  Julius  ;  and  his  manly,  almost  martial  confi- 
dence, displayed  with  all  the  feminine  enjoyment  of  a  nature  which 
is  nothing  without  something  it  can  trust  to  and  love,  has  an  enchant- 
ing effect.  Cleopatra  herself  has  such  belief  in  it,  and  is  so  confident 
that  in  the  presence  of  Romans  the  son  of  Caesar  will  be  safe  ;  nay, 
she  has  such  faith  in  his  power,  protected  by  his  father's  name,  also 
to  save  even  the  sons  of  Antony  ;  that  she  trusts  him  into  his  cous- 
in's camp.     This  of  course  is  fatal  to  CEesarion  ;  but  the  opportunity 

*  I  remonstrated  with  Landor  on  this  point;  and  here  was  his  reply:  "I  don't  think 
the  point  so  certain  as  you  appear  to  think  it  is.  There  -were  differences  between 
Cleopatra  and  her  brother  at  the  time  when  Julius  Cresar  went  into  Egypt;  and  he 
settled  them  on  his  arrival.  She  was  carried  up  into  his  bedroom  on  a  man's  shonl- 
ders  in  a  coverlet.  She  and  her  brother  were  minors,  under  tutelage.  Eastern  kings 
and  queens  are  not  minors  after  twelve.  At  twelve  girls  are  marriageable.  I  doubt  if 
Cleopatra  was  much  above  thirteen  when  Ca;sarion  was  born;  certainly  not  fourteen. 
Now,  it  is  easy  to  know  at  what  time  Antony  came  into  Egypt,  and  when  he  died." 
Unfortunately  it  is  the  very  ease  with  which  dates  may  be  computed  that  overturns 
altogether  Landor's  theory.  She  was,  I  fear,  as  certainly  born  B.  C.  69  as  the  battle 
of  Actium  was  fought  B.  C.  30.  The  story  of  the  coverlet  is  no  more  than  a  tradition 
preserved  by  Plutarch  of  the  way  in  which  she  got  herself  carried  into  the  chamber 
of  Csesar,  whom  she  was  bent  on  fascinating  to  her  will,  in  the  form  of  a  bale  of 
goods. 


G22 


TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH. 


[BOOK  VII. 

1830-57. 


for  the  poet  is  a  fine  one,  and  the  scene  where  the  boy,  betrayed  and 
murdered,  yet  trusts  and  loves  to  the  last  the  man  who  murders,  him, 

is  as  pathetic  as  anything  ever  written  by  Landor. 

To  this  account,  that  the  reader  may  to  some  extent  judge  whether 
the  power  to  sustain  so  masterly  a  conception  had  been  weakened  by 
the  strain  of  the  poet's  eighty-two  years,  I  will  add  some  illustrations 
from  the  Scenes  themselves,  now  not  easily  obtainable  by  any  one. 

I.  CLEOPATRA  CONSENTS  TO  DIE  WITH  ANTONY. 

Antony.  Generous,  pious  girl ! 

Daughter  of  Ptolemies!  thou  hast  not  won 

A  lower  man  than  they.     Thy  name  shall  rise 

Above  the  pyramids,  above  the  stars; 

Nations  yet  wild  shall  that  name  civilize, 

And  glorious  poets  shake  their  theatres 

And  stagger  kings  and  emperors  with  applause. 
Cleopatra.     I  was  not  born  to  die ;  but  I  was  born 

To  leave  the  world  with  Antony,  and  will. 
Antony.         The  greatest  of  all  eastern  kings  died  thus, 

The  greater  than  all  eastern  kings  thus  died. 


II.  MEC2ENAS   ADVISES   OCTAVIUS. 

Mecanas.      All  may  be  won,  well  handled ;  but  the  ear 
Is  not  the  thing  to  hold  by.     Show  men  gold, 
Entangle  them  in  Gallie  turquoises, 
Tie  stubborn  necks  with  ropes  of  blushing  pearls, 
Seat  them  on  ivory  from  the  realms  of  Ind, 
Augur  them  consulates,  pro-consulates, 
Make  their  eyes  widen  into  provinces, 
And,  gleaming  farther  onward,  tetrarchies. 

Octavius.       It  strikes  me  now  that  we  may  offer  Gallus 
The  prefecture  of  Egypt. 

Mecanas.  Some  time  hence; 

Better  consult  Agrippa. 

Octavius.  None  more  trusty. 

Yet  our  Agrippa  hath  strange  whims;  he  dotes 
Upon  old  Koine,  the  Pome  of  matted  beards 
And  of  curt  tunics;  of  old  Rome's  old  laws 
Worm-eaten  long  .  .  . 


III.  A   LOVER   OP    HIMSELF. 

Octavius.      I  do  not  think,  my  Cilnius,  thou  hast  felt 
Love  but  for  me;'  I  never  knew  thee  hate. 

Meccenas.     It  is  too  troublesome,  it  rumples  sleep, 
It  settles  on  the  dishes  of  the  feast. 
It  bites  the  fruit,  it  dips  into  the  wine; 
I  'd  rather  let  my  enemy  hate  me 
Than  I  hate  him. 


IV.  WHAT    THE    ROME    OF    AUGUSTUS    IS   TO    BE. 

Octavius.      I  wish  this  country  settled,  us  returned. 

Resolved  am  I  to  do  what  none  hath  done, 
And  only  Julius  ever  purposed  doing; 
Resolved  t"  render  Rome,  beneath  my  rule, 
A  second  Alexandria.     Corinth,  Carthage, 


mt.  61-82.] 


FRUITS  FROM  AN  OLD  TREE. 


623 


Meccenas. 


One  autumn  saw  in  stubble:  not  a  wreath 
Enough  to  crown  a  capital  was  left, 
Nor  capital  to  crown  its  pillar,  none; 
But  here  behold  what  glorious  edifices ! 
What  palaces !  what  temples !  what  august 
Kings!  how  unmoved  is  every  countenance 
Above  the  crowd !  And  so  it  was  in  life. 
No  other  city  in  the  world,  from  west 
To  east,  seems  built  for  rich  and  poor  alike. 
In  Athens,  Antioch,  Miletus,  Rhodes, 
The  richest  Roman  could  not  shelter  him 
Against  the  dog-star;  here  the  poorest  slave 
Finds  refuge  under  granite,  here  he  sleeps 
Noiseless,  and  when  he  wakens,  dips  his  hand 
Into  the  treasured  waters  of  the  Nile. 
I  wish,  Octavius,  thou  wouldst  carry  hence 
For  thy  own  worship  one  of  those  mild  Gods 
Both  arms  upon  the  knees :  't  is  time  that  all 
Should  imitate  this  posture. 


V. 


A    POET-SOLDIERS    PREFERENCES. 


Octavius  (to  a  Guard) 
G  alius. 


Octavius. 


Gallus. 


Octavius. 
Gallus. 


Call  Gallus  hither. 

Caesar !  what  commands  ? 
I  would  intrust  a  legion,  more  than  one, 
To  our  friend  Gallus:  I  would  fix  him  here 
In  Egypt:  none  is  abler  to  coerce 
The  turbulent. 

Let  others  flap  their  limbs 
With  lotus-leaves  when  Sirius  flames  above; 
Give  me  the  banks  of  Anio,  where  young  Spring, 
Who  knows  not  half  the  names  of  her  own  flowers, 
Looks  into  Summer's  eyes  and  wakes  him  up 
Alert,  and  laughs  at  him  until  he  lifts 
His  rod  of  roses,  and  she  runs  away. 
And  has  that  lovely  queen  no  charms  for  thee? 
If  truth  be  spokenof  her,  and  it  may, 
Since  she  is  powerless  and  deserted  now, 
Though  more  than  thrice  seven  years  have  come  and  stolen 
Day  after  day  a  leaf  or  two  of  bloom, 
She  has  but  changed  her  beauty;  the  soft  tears 
Fall,  one  would  think,  to  make  it  spring  afresh. 


VI. 


DOLABELLA  COUNSELS  ANTONY  TO  SURRENDER  OESARION. 

Dolabdla.     Create  a  generosity  of  soul 

In  one  whom  conquest  now  hath  made  secure; 

Bid  him  put  forth  his  power,  it  now  is  greater 

Than  any  man's:  consider  what  a  friend 

Cresarion  hath  in  Julius,  all  whose  wounds 

Will  bleed  afresh  before  the  assembled  tribes 

On  the  imperial  robe  thy  hands  outspread 

With  its  wide  rents,  for'every  God  above 

And  every  Roman  upon  earth  to  number. 
Antony.        Ah !  those  were  days  worth  living  o'er  again. 

My  Cleopatra!  never  will  we  part; 

Thy  son  shall  reign  in  Egypt. 
Dolabella.         '  Much  I  feared, 

0  Antony,  thy  rancor  might  prevail 

Against  thy  prudence.     Cassar  bears  no  rancor. 
Antony.        Too  little  is  that  heart  for  honest  hatred. 

The  serpent  the  most  venomous  hath  just 

Enough  of  venom  for  one  deadly  wound; 

He  strikes  but  once,  and  then  he  glides  away. 


G24 


TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH. 


[Book  VII. 
1836  -  s> 


VII. 


Antony. 
Agrippa. 


Antony. 


Agrippa. 
Antony. 


VIII. 


Agrippa. 
Antony. 

Agrippa. 
Antony. 


ANTONY   SPEAKS   OP   HIS   FRIENDS   TO   AGRIPPA. 

But  many  yet  are  left  me,  brave  and  true. 

When  Fortune  hath  deserted  us,  too  late 

Comes  Valor,  standing  us  in  little  stead. 

They  who  would  die  for  us  are  just  the  men 

We  should  not  push  on  death  or  throw  away. 

Too  true!     Octavius  with  his  golden  wand 

Hath  reacht  from  far  some  who  defied  his  sword  .  .  . 

I  have  too  long  stood  balancing  the  world 

Not  to  know  well  its  weight:  of  that  frail  crust 

Friends  are  the  lightest  atoms. 

Not  so  all. 
I  thought  of  Dolabella  and  the  rest. 


ANTONYS   LAST   REQUEST   TO   AGRIPPA. 

Thy  gladness  gladdens  me, 
Bursting  so  suddenly.     What  happy  change! 
Thou  hast  a  little  daughter,  my  old  friend, 
And  I  two  little  sons  —  I  had  at  least  — 
Give  her  the  better  and  the  braver  one, 
When  by  thy  care  he  comes  to  riper  age. 

0  Antony !  the  changes  of  our  earth 

Are  suddener  and  oftener  than  the  moon's; 

On  hers  we  calculate,  not  so  on  ours, 

But  leave  them  in  the  hands  of  wilful  Gods, 

Inflexible,  yet  sometimes  not  malign. 

They  have  done  much  for  me,  nor  shall  reproach 

Against  them  pass  my  lips:  I  might  have  asked, 

But  never  thought  of  asking,  what  desert 

Was  mine  for  half  the  blessings  they  bestowed. 

1  will  not  question  them  why  they  have  cast 
My  greatness  and  my  happiness  so  low; 
They  have  not  taken  from  me  their  best  gift, 
A  heart  forever  open  to  my  friends. 


IX. 


Octarius. 
Agrippa. 
Octarius. 

Agrippa. 


Octariuf. 
Agrippa. 


C.ESARION. 

Agrippa,  didst  thou  mark  that  comely  boy? 
I  did  indeed. 

There  is,  methinks,  in  him 
A  somewhat  not  unlike  our  common  friend. 
Unlike?     There  never  was  such  similar 
Expression.     I  remember  Caius  Julius 
In  youth,  although  my  elder  by  some  years; 
Well  I  remember  that  high-vaulted  brow, 
Those  eyes  of  eagle  under  it,  those  lips 
At  which  the  Senate  and  the  people  stood 
Expectant  for  their  portals  to  unclose; 
Then  speech,  not  womanly  but  manly  sweet, 
Came  from  them,  and  shed  pleasure  as  the  morn 
Sheds  light. 

The  boy  has  too  much  confidenoe. 
Not  fur  his  prototype.     When  he  threw  back 
That  hair,  in  hue  like  cinnamon,  I  thought 
I  saw  great  Julius  tossing  his  .  .  . 


AGRIPPA    PLEADS    TO    MEC/ENAS    FOR    CJESARION. 

Agrippa.  My  gentle  Cilnius, 

Do  save  this  lad!     Octavins  is  so  calm, 
I  doubt  he  hath  some  evil  in  his  breast 


JET.  61-82.]  FRUITS  PROM  AN  OLD  TREE.  625 

Against  the  only  scion  of  the  house, 

The  orphan  child  of  Julius. 
Mecamas.  Think,  Agrippa, 

If  there  be  safety  where  such  scion  is, 

Safety  for  you  and  me. 
Agrippa.  The  mother  must 

Adorn  the  triumph ;  but  that  boy  would  push 

Rome,  universal  Rome,  against  the  steeds    ' 

That  should  in  ignominy  bear  along 

The  image  of  her  Julius.     Think ;  when  Antony 

Showed  but  his  vesture,  sprang  there  not  tears,  swords, 

Curses  V  and  swept  they  not  before  them  all 

Who  shared  the  parricide  ?    If  such  result 

Sprang  from  torn  garment,  what  must  from  the  sight 

Of  that  fresh  image  which  calls  back  again 

The  latest  of  the  gods,  and  not  the  least, 

Who  nurtured  every  child  within  those  walls, 

And  emptied  into  every  mother's  lap 
•     Africa,  Sicily,  Sardinia,  Gaul, 

And  this  inheritance  of  mighty  kings. 

No  such  disgrace  must  fall  on  Cassar's  son. 

Spare  but  the  boy,  and  we  are  friends  forever. 


XI.     .  OCTAVIA   INTERCEDES   FOR   ANTONY'S   CHILDREN. 

Octavius.  Are  children  always  children  ? 

Octavia.        O  brother !  brother !  are  men  always  men  ? 

They  are  full-grown  then  only  when  grown  up 

Above  their  fears.    Rome  never  yet  stood  safe; 

Compass  it  round  with  friends  and  kindnesses, 

And  not  with  moats  of  blood.    Remember  Thebes: 

The  towers  of  Cadmus  toppled,  split  asunder 

Crasht :  in  the  shadow  of  her  oleanders  ■ 

The  pure  and  placid  Dirce  still  flows  by. 

What  shattered  to  its  base  but  cruelty 

( Mother  of  crimes,  all  lesser  than  herself) 

The  house  of  Agamemnon,  king  of  kings? 
Octavius.      Thou  art  not  yet,  Octavia,  an  old  woman; 

Tell  not,  I  do  beseech  thee,  such  old  tales. 
Octavia.        Hear  later;  hear  what  our  own  parents  saw. 

Where  lies  the  seed  of  Sulla  ?     Could  the  walls 

Of  his  Prseneste  shelter  the  young  Marius, 

Or  subterranean  passages  provide 

Escape  ?  he  stumbled  through  the  gore  his  father 

Had  left  in  swamps  on  our  Italian  plains. 

We  have  been  taught  these  histories  together, 

Neither  untrue  nor  profitless;  few  years 

Have  since  gone  by,  can  memory  too  have  gone? 

Ay,  smile,  Octavius !  only  let  the  smile 

Be  somewhat  less  disdainful. 
Octavius.  >T  is  unwise 

To  plant  thy  foot  where  Fortune's  wheel  runs  on. 
Octavia.       I  lack  not  wisdom  utterly;  my  soul 

Assures  me  wisdom  is  humanity; 

And  they  who  want  it,  wise  as  they  may  seem, 

And  confident  in  their  own  sight  and  strength, 

Reach  not  the  scope  they  aim  at. 

Worst  of  war 

Is  war  of  passion;  best  of  peace  is  peace 

Of  mind,  reposing  on  the  watchful  care 

Daily  and  nightly  of  the  household  Gods. 

These  Scenes  were  in  my  hands  three  weeks  before  the  day  he  had 
promised  them  to  me,  and  were  indeed  published  on  that  very  day 

40 


62G  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^ei™1' 

(30th  January,  1856) ;  in  a  tract  exactly  resembling,  as  to  size  and 
price,  that  in  which  Gebir  had  appeared  nearly  sixty  years  before. 
That  such  attributes  and  powers  of  mind  should  so  long  have  re- 
tained  their  freshness,  that  their  unceasing  exercise  over  so  wide  a 
space  of  time  should  have  left  them  neither  weakened  nor  strained, 
and  that  at  its  close  this  most  delicate  of  all  intellectual  fruit  should 
exhibit  nothing  of  the  chill  of  more  than  fourscore  winters,  may 
hereafter  be  accounted  one  of  the  marvels  of  literature.  Nor  did  it 
pass  without  notice  at  the  time  ;  not  publicly,  for  the  Scenes  had 
small  acceptance  from  the  critics,  but  in  quarters  from  which  praise 
was  more  grateful.  "  What  an  undaunted  soul  before  his  eighty 
years,"  Mrs.  Browning  wrote  to  me  (March,  1850),  after  infinite  praise 
of  the  Scenes,  "  and  how  good  for  all  other  souls  to  contemplate  !  It 
is  better  than  any  treatise  on  immortality !  "  "  What  a  wonderful 
Landor  he  is,"  was  written  by  another  hand  in  the  same  letter. 
"  The  eye  is  not  dim,  nor  the  natural  force  abated.  That  is  to  live 
one's  eighty  years  indeed.  I  wish,  if  you  have  a  way,  you  woidd  ex- 
press our  veneration  for  what  he  is,  has  been,  and  we  trust  long  will 
be."  Not  that  any  undue  confidence  in  this  undimmed  intellect  ever 
blinded  Landor  to  the  sense  of  how  near  he  stood  to  the  inevitable 
presence  ;  in  these  Scenes  very  frequently,  and  scattered  over  all  his 
last  fruit,*  is  the  lesson,  not  unwisely  at  any  time  enforced,  of  the 
tranquillity  with  which  the  rest  of  death  may  be  waited  for ;  he  was 
ever  ready  to  contemplate  calmly  in  his  own  case  what  arises  to  the 
thought  of  Antony, 

I  hnve  been  sitting  longer  at  life's  feast 
Than  does  me  good;  I  will  arise  and  go: 

and  for  that  especially  Mr.  Carlyle  at  this  time  thanked  him.  "  Yo« 
look  into  the  eyes  of  Death  withal,  as  the  brave  all  do  habitually 
from  an  early  period  of  their  course  ;  and  certainly  one's  heart 
answers  to  you.  Yea,  valiant  brother,  yea,  even  so  !  There  is  a 
tone  as  of  the  old  Roman  in  these  things  which  does  me  good,  and 
is  very  sad  to  me,  and  very  noble." 

Little  more  remains  to  be  said  of  Landor's  last  literary  labors  in 
England.  The  old  tree  was  to  go  on  shedding  fruit  as  long  as  there 
was  life  in  trunk  or  bough,  and  the  last  was  never  to  mean  anything 
more  than  the  latest.  Of  those  under  immediate  notice  the  latest 
was  the  enlargement  of  his  Hellenics;  several  new  ones  being  added, 
and  several  of  the  old  ones  rewritten;  but  enough  will  have  been 
said  of  it  if  I  add  that  it  had  been  especially  his  study,  with  advan- 
cing years,  to  give  more  and  more  of  a  severe  and  simple  character  to 
all  his  writing  after  the  antique,  and  that  this  was  exclusively  the 
object,  here,  of  the  most  part  of  his  changes  or  additions.  For  this 
reason  they  deserve  close  attention.  It  was  an  old  sagacious  warning 
to  a  young  writer,  that  if  he  should  happen  to  observe  in  his  writing 
at  any  time  what  appeared  to  him  to  be  particularly  fine,  he  would 
do  well  to  strike  it  out ;  and,  in  revising  those  pieces  on  classical 


JET.  6I-S2.]  SILENT   COMPANIONS.  627 

subjects,  Landor  was  following  the  advice  as  implicitly  after  he  had 
passed  his  eightieth  year  as  if  he  had  not  reached  his  eighteenth.  I 
remember  a  close  he  had  put  to  the  exquisite  Paris  and  (Enone  which 
I  thought  extremely  striking.  But  no,  he  said  ;  it  ended  the  poem 
too  much  in  a  flash,  which  we  below  were  fond  of,  but  which  those 
on  the  heights  of  antiquity,  both  in  poetry  and  prose,  avoided.  And 
of  course  he  was  right. 

The  incidents  that  led  to  his  final  departure  from  England  are  now 
briefly  to  be  named.  But  as  in  these  latter  years,  when  he  had 
ceased  to  visit  much,  he  had  been  deriving  no  inconsiderable  enjoy- 
ment as  well  from  the  reading  as  from  the  writing  of  books,  some 
notices  of  that  kind  of  use  of  his  leisure  may  have  also  some  inter- 
est for  the  reader,  and  will  here  be  properly  interposed. 

XIII.    SILENT  COMPANIONS. 

All  the  recent  years,  as  they  passed,  had  found  my  old  friend  con- 
tent with  his  few  associates  in  Bath,  and  more  and  more  indisposed 
to  other  society.  He  made  exception  only  for  that  of  his  books,  and 
here  it  became  my  privilege  still  to  have  part.  There  was  rarely  a 
week  in  which  he  did  not  write  to  me  of  some  book  as  of  a  friend  he 
had  been  talking  with ;  and  often  so  characteristically,  that  any  ac- 
count of  this  portion  of  his  life  would  be  incomplete  which  did  not 
borrow  illustration  from  these  letters.  Dialogues  not  imaginary  I 
may  call  them,  with  but  one  listener  until  now  ;  and  the  reader  will 
have  to  judge  if  they  were  worthy  of  a  larger  audience.  I  will  take  a 
few  of  the  subjects  that  thus  occurred  in  our  correspondence,  some 
touched  briefly,  some  at  large  ;  and  in  the  order  or  connection,  or 
absence  of  both,  just  as  I  received  them. 

To  the  first  I  shall  name  he  had  been  attracted,  by  remember- 
ing that  when  Southey  visited  him  at  Como,  in  1816,  he  mentioned 
Blanco  White  with  much  affection  as  the  most  interesting  character 
he  had  left  behind  him  in  England.  "  But  he  never  mentioned  him 
as  the  best  dialectician  and  the  most  dispassionate  reasoner.  He 
rated  less  highly  than  I  now  perceive  to  be  his  due  both  his  abilities 
and  the  beauty  of  his  language.  I  had  always  thought  Whately  his 
superior  ;  but  I  am  converted  to  the  side  of  Blanco,  who  unites  the 
graces  of  poetry  and  the  refinements  of  criticism,  and  superadds  to 
both  a  passionate  love  of  truth.  He  is  indeed  the  very  opposite  of  a 
character  on  which  he  discourses  in  one  of  the  volumes  ;  a  man  so 
fond  of  lying  that  he  lies  to  himself,  as  men  sing  to  themselves  who 
are  fond  of  singing."  The  volumes  were  the  Life  and  Letters  of 
Blanco  White,  and  the  more  he  read  in  them  the  higher  his  opinion 
became.  They  opened  a  California  to  him,  he  said,  "  all  gold  below, 
and  all  salubrity  above."  This  admiration  did  not  surprise  me.  The 
book  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  hold  a  high  place  among  the  few  in 
our  language  of  a  biographical  kind  that  have  a  purely  and  keenly 


G28  TWENTY-ONE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  **%&.&*' 

intellectual  interest ;  and  Blanco  himself  was  so  uncommon  a  man, 
though  the  name  is  unfamiliar  now,  that  the  reader  may  thank 
me  for  prefacing  what  Landor  has  to  say  by  a  few  words  of  my 
own. 

It  is  nearly  thirty  years  since  Blanco  White  died,  and  for  thirty 
years  before  that  time  there  were  few  names  better  known  than  his 
in  the  society  of  London  and  Oxford.  He  was  a  Spaniard,  born  in 
the  same  year  as  Landor  ;  his  father  of  an  Irish  stock,  settled  in 
Seville,  then  the  most  bigoted  town  in  Spain  ;  and  his  mother  an 
Andalusian  so  ardent  for  her  church,  that  she  dragged  her  son  from 
his  father's  counting-house  to  turn  him  into  an  ecclesiastic.  The 
career  unhappily  proved  to  be  so  conflicting  with  the  character  of  his 
mind,  that  by  the  time  he  obtained  rank  as  a  priest,  its  unfavorable 
influences  affected  him  with  such  keenness  as  to  render  flight  his  only 
escape  from  infidelity.  He  came  to  England  in  1810,  then  so  imper- 
fectly acquainted  with  English  that  he  had  to  support  himself  in  Lon- 
don by  setting  up  a  Spanish  newspaper ;  which  he  did  by  the  kindness 
of  Lord  Holland.  He  rendered  in  this  way  much  public  service,  up 
to  the  expulsion  of  the  French  from  Spain  in  1814  ;  became  gradually 
meanwhile  a  master  of  our  language  ;  lived  very  familiarly  in  Holland 
House  for  a  part  of  the  time  ;  and  settled  ultimately  at  Oxford,  where 
he  was  no  mean  figure  among  even  the  extraordinary  group  of  men 
who  then  met  in  the  common  room  of  Oriel.  He  received  from  the 
University  a  mastership  of  arts,  and  was  led  to  take  English  orders. 
These  were  his  not  least  happy  years.  He  corresponded  with  Southey 
and  Coleridge,  explained  the  Roman  Catholic  Breviary  to  Pusey  and 
Hurrell  Froude,  and  delighted  equally  in  Newman  and  Whately. 
But,  tempted  into  controversy  with  members  of  his  former  com- 
munion, he  threw  himself  over-zealously  into  the  strife,  and  shocked 
Lord  Holland  not  a  little  by  declaring  in  the  Quarterly  against  Cath- 
olic emancipation.  Soon,  however,  the  larger  liberality  of  his  nature 
reasserted  itself,  and,  upon  the  schism  that  made  broad  division  in 
Oriel,  stood  fast  by  Whately.  He  accompanied  his  friend  to  Dublin  ; 
was  unhappily  not  strengthened  in  his  new  belief  by  what  he  saw  of 
the  Irish  Establishment ;  and,  shaken  by  his  own  doubts  at  the  very 
time  when  he  was  hoping  to  settle  the  wavering  faith  of  a  Unitarian, 
became  Unitarian  himself.  His  sincerity  no  one  could  doubt.  He 
proved  it  by  the  most  painful  sacrifices  ;  nay,  by  what  is  entitled  to 
be  called  even  heroism,  touching  and  noble.  The  real  truth  was  that 
his  ardent,  impulsive  nature  had  never  actually  recovered  the  shock 
of  its  recoil  from  the  Jesuit  discipline.  What  followed,  in  successive 
stages,  was  compromise  ;  and  compromises  only  last  for  a  time.  Ho 
did  not  remain  in  Unitarianism.  But  to  the  very  last  he  seems  to 
me,  in  a  certain  construction  of  his  mind,  in  its  close  union  of  the 
moral  with  the  intellectual  faculties,  even  in  some  of  its  weaknesses, 
but  above  all  in  its  restless  desire  for  truth,  a  nonconformist  Doctor 
Arnold.     Perhaps  however  he  will  be  remembered  longest  for  the 


.ST.  6l-82.]  SILENT    COMPANIONS.  629 

extraordinary  intellectual  achievement  of  Laving  so  mastered  our  lan- 
guage, some  time  after  he  had  passed  middle  life,  as  to  have  made  it 
thoroughly  his  own.  He  literally  recast  his  mind  in  an  English  mould  ; 
after  a  few  years  never  thought  but  in  English  ;  wrote  an  admirable 
English  style,  strong  and  simple ;  and  is  the  author  of  an  English 
sonnet  called  "  Night  and  Death,"  of  surpassing  beauty  of  expression, 
and  subtlety  as  well  as  grandeur  of  thought. 

What  first  enchanted  Landor,  apart  from  the  spiritual  insight  of 
this  man  or  the  force  of  reasoning  and  conviction  in  him,  was  the 
discovery  in  every  part  of  his  mind  of  sensitiveness  and  elegance 
carried  almost  to  extreme.  Here  was  continual  protest  against  a 
style  of  all  others  the  most  odious,  by  which  Landor  in  his  time  had 
seen  havoc  made  of  names  that  should  have  had  nothing  but  honor ; 
the  style  of  the  swaggering  cut-and-slash  critic,  now  gone  much  out 
of  vogue,  but  whom  I  can  well  remember  in  a  still  rampant  state 
when  first  I  was  connected  with  letters,  disposing  easily  of  all  kinds 
of  reputations,  terrifying  his  readers  into  thinking  him  original  by 
merely  opening  on  them  sluices  of  slang,  and  finding  them  more  and 
more  foolishly  eager  to  wipe  his  shoes  the  dirtier  and  more  slipshod 
he  wore  them. 

"  Is  it  not  incredible  that  a  Spaniard  should  be  a  critic  ?  And  yet  in 
what  review  or  magazine  do  you  find  remarks  so  perfectly  just  and  delicate 
as  those  in  Vol.  II.  p.  183  ?  '  I  ought,  however,  to  have  remembered  that 
there  is  a  set  of  very  able  men  writing  constantly  as  critics,  whose  principal 
fund  of  humor  arises  from  the  roistering  (I  use  their  own  descriptive  word), 
carousing,  eating,  and  drinking  spirits,  which  they  take  a  pleasure  to  bring 
out  before  the  public  with  the  same  kind  of  satisfaction  as  a  set  of  half- 
drunken  noblemen  and  their  parasites  at  Oxford  would  feel  in  showing  the 
world  what  freedoms  they  can  use  with  it.  Their  humorous  writing  is  a 
kind  of  row.     It  is  unquestionable  that  much  of  the  "  talk  "  which  you  find, 

especially  in ,  would  be  impertinent  and  coarse  in'  refined  company : 

how,  then,  can  it  be  tolerable  when  addressed  to  the  public  ?  '  The  purity 
and  elevation  of  Blanco  place  him  so  utterly  above  the  rabble  of  magazine 
men,  that  there  is  no  chance  that  these  admirable  observations  will  correct 
them.  He  will  never  rain  influence  on  this  hard  clay  and  crackling  stubble. 
I  heartily  wish  that  no  gentleman  at  either  of  our  Universities  could  take  a 
bachelor's  degree  before  he  had  been  examined  in  this  book.  At  present 
one  side  of  a  question  is  thought  quite  sufficient.  Nobody  seems  to  recollect 
the  first  words  of  the  wise  Epictetus,  nav  to  Kprjfia  8vas  e\ei  \aj3ds.  If  this 
is  questionable,  and  I  think  it  is,  at  least  let  it  be  questioned.  Let  all  be 
said  that  can  be  said  for  and  against  what  may  interest  any  one,  and  more 
especially  for  and  against  what  may  interest  a  great 'portion  of  mankind." 

Blanco's  occasional  errors  in  criticism  belonged  to  the  same  charac- 
ter of  refinement  in  his  mind ;  as  where  he  objects  to  Gil  Bias,  and 
thinks  that  Falstaff  should  have  been  made  comfortable  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  "  Yes,"  says  Landor,  "  if  Shakespeare  had  been  a  novelist. 
But  Shakespeare  was  resolved  on  showing  that  the  levit}7  and  even  the 
heartiness  of  princes  is  failing  to  their  favorites  in  the  hour  of  need." 
And  so  of  the  objection  to  Le  Sage's  hero  that  he  is  a  scoundrel.     So 


630  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS   AT    BATH.  '^8^5-"' 

he  is  ;  but  the  scoundrel  we  laugh  at  we  should  no  more  think  of  tak- 
ing fur  imitation  than  of  taking  into  our  service.  "  Show  me  any 
style  in  any  language  so  diversified,  so  easy,  so  graceful  as  Le  Sage's. 
He  wanted  the  painter's  eye,  the  poet's  invention,  fire,  and  energy ; 
but  life  had  opened  to  him  all  its  experiences,  and  he  carries  around 
about  him  a  perpetual  carnival,  pelting  incessantly  at  everybody,  and 
hurting  none." 

A  large  class  of  sayings  in  the  book,  arising  out  of  or  reflecting 
the  doubts  and  misgivings  that  shook  Blanco's  mind  in  his  later  years, 
have  expression  in  the  next  extract  made  from  it :  — 

"  At  p.  300  I  find  this :  '  I  have  heard  a  man  of  great  talents,  and  conscien- 
tious besides,  speak  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  as  if  virtue  were  abso- 
lutely dependent  upon  it.  But  for  the  happy  inconsistency  which  in  such 
cases  corrects  the  evil  tendencies  of  mischievous  abstract  principles,  I  would 
not  give  a  straw  for  that  man's  virtue.  Men  who  check  their  appetites 
upon  speculation,  who  lay  out  their  abstinence  or  moderation  (as  they 
think)  at  a  high  interest,  are  most  unsafe  to  deal  with :  for  if,  by  some  mis- 
take or  other,  they  were  to  believe  that  there  was  a  cent-per-cent  of  happi- 
ness to  be  earned  by  a  bold  stroke,  they  would  not  hesitate  a  moment  to 
sacrifice  one  half  of  mankind  to  their  own  private  gain.  The  name  of 
virtue  is  desecrated  by  its  being  given  to  that  truly  gross,  though  perfectly 
disguised,  selfishness.'  Was  there  ever  anything,  in  even  the  sayings  of 
Bacon,  better  or  more  wisely  said  than  this? " 

"What  follows  on  the  Protestant  Church  Establishment  in  Ireland 
may  in  present  circumstances  be  read  with  an  interest  surpassing 
Laudor's  :  — 

"  At  p.  247  of  the  second  volume  we  have  these  remarks  on  the  Church 
Establishment  in  Ireland,  where  Blanco  had  lived  so  long  with  his  friend 
Archbishop  Whately:  'I  have  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that,  were  it  not  for 
the  Irish  Church  Establishment,  the  indirect  influence  of  English  civilization 
would  have  produced  a  tacit  reformation  on  Irish  Popery.  I  am  indeed 
fully  aware  that  the  Romanist  system  is  incapable  of  a  real  reform:  for  its 
principle,  submission  to  a  priesthood,  is  essentially  wrong  and  mischievous. 
But,  had  it  not  been  for  the  constant  irritation  produced  on  both  the  priest- 
hood ami  laity  of  Catholic  Ireland  by  the  political  ascendency  enjoyed  and 
asserted  by  a  small  minority  of  Protestants,  Irish  Popery  would  by  this  time 
be  bul  an  empty  name  for  all  the  efficient  intellect  of  Ireland.'  How  true 
is  all  this  page  I  how  worthy  of  remembrance!  " 

My  old  friend  here  gets  upon  a  favorite  theme  :  — 

<;  It  appears  to  me  that  you  are  perfectly  right  in  preferring  the  idiom  to 
the  grammar,  for  idiom  is  not  founded  on  grammar,  but  grammar  on  idiom. 
How  would  some  of  our  fashionable  writers  stare  if  they  could  read  Thuey- 
dides  or  Plato!  The  best  authors  had  no  authority  before  them.  Pascal 
and  Madame  de  Se"vigne  wrote  before  there  was  any  French  grammar,  I 
believe  j  I )emost  1  icues  and  Cicero  before  there  was  a  Greek  or  a  Latin  one. 
Never  in  my  life  did  I  open,  much  less  read,  any  of  ours.  This  is  among 
God's  mercies  to  me.  Blanco  White,  whom  I  continue  to  read  with  in- 
creasing interest,  makes  the  most  just  remarks  upon  our  English  style,  in 
pp.  38G  and  3^7  of  the  volumes  edited  by  Thorn.     How  admirably  he  him- 


JET.  61-82.]  SILENT   COMPANIONS.  631 

self  writes  in  what  is  rapidly  to  us  becoming  a  dead  language,  and  is  to  him 
a  foreign  one  !  Honor  to  the  women !  I  say  with  him.  The  French  have 
no  better  author  than  Madame  de  Sevigne ;  we  very  few  better  than  Mrs. 
Inchbald  and  Mrs.  Barbauld.  What  is  taken  for  the  style  of  Addison  is 
indeed  not  his  style,  but  his  temperament,  his  graceful  mind,  his  easy 
humor,  and,  in  the  Vision  of  Mirza,  a  calm  quiet  genius  borne  upward  by  a 
warm  but  not  a  fiery  imagination." 

More  and  more  the  book  delighted  him  as  he  read,  more  and  more 
lucid  seemed  the  depth  of  Blanco's  thought :  — 

"  '  It  is  remarkable '  (Vol.  II.  p.  319)  '  that  when  any  man  manifests  strong 
convictions,  especially  if  he  does  not  share  them  with  a  party,  he  is  said  to 
have  strong  prejudices,'  &c.  Admirable  the  whole  of  this  passage,  showing 
how  the  world  is  divided  between  those  who  believe  steadily  by  early 
habit  and  prejudice,  and  those  who  have  no  steady  belief;  so  that  he  who 
has  strong  individual  conviction's,  obtained  by  independent  inquiry,  is  at- 
tacked by  both.  What  a  profound  observation  is  this  of  Goethe's  quoted 
by  Blanco  !  '  Time  is  infinitely  long,  and  each  day  a  vessel  into  which  a 
great  deal  may  be  poured  if  we  really  desire  to  fill  it '  (p.  320).  Certainly 
the  man  who  said  this  was  the  wisest  man  of  his  time,  as  he  was  the  most 
poetical.  Drops  hang  from  every  work  of  Goethe's  that  I  have  seen  of  the 
very  purest  brightness,  such  as  will  never  dry  up  nor  fall.  I  can  judge  of 
them  by  translations  only ;  but  I  admire  much  of  his  poetry  and  all  his 
prose.  —  What  a  tender  and  beautiful  notice  (p.  325)  of  Mrs.  Whately  and 
her  daughters !  What  a  just  remark  is  this  on  free  institutions  in  such 
countries  as  Spain,  Portugal,  and  Greece !  '  Civil  liberty  is  morally  useful 
only  inasmuch  as  it  makes  individuals  respect  themselves.  When  liberty 
does  not  produce  this  effect,  it  is  mere  license,  its  end  anarchy,  and,  through 
anarchy,  slavery.  Despotism  is  then  preferable  to  liberty  ;•  for  despotism  is 
at  all  events  order.  The  difficulty  of  establishing  free  institutions  in  Spain, 
Portugal,  Greece,  arises  from  the  total  absence  of  any  seed  of  that  self- 
respect  which  liberty  may  indeed  raise  in  a  rude  soul,  but  which  it  will 
never  produce  in  a  degraded  one '  (p.  330).  As  wisely  says  Blanco  (p.  346) 
of  political  profligacy  that  it  is  the  last  sin  which  men  are  likely  to  acknowl- 
edge as  such,  and  renounce :  and  for  myself  I  add,  that  were  I  a  casuist  or 
a  Jesuit,  I  would  start  a  question  whether  a  man  who  aspires  to  be  prime 
minister  is  a  patriot  or  a  scoundrel.  He  must  know  that  he  becomes  a  liar, 
if  never  one  before.  He  must  lie  both  actively  and  passively ;  he  must 
commit  injustice  by  giving  to  the  less  worthy  what  he  should  have  given  to 
the  more  worthy.  All  this  he  does,  he  tells  you,  for  his  country.  He  does 
not  give  his  life  for  it,  as  many  Romans  did ;  but  he  gives  his  soul,  such  as 
it  is.  Many  thoughts  crowd  upon  me  here,  but  neither  have  I  room  for 
them,  nor  have  you  patience.  Supreme  power  may  be  worth  the  anxieties 
of  ambition  ;  but  a  lofty  mind  could  never  condescend  to  bargain  with  the 
brokers  in  a  house  of  commons,  or  endure  to  sit  at  a  long  dinner-table  with 
such  a  gang  of  blackguards.  Vol.  II.  p.  19.  '  The  moral  world  presents 
upon  the  whole  a  most  hideous  and  distorted  appearance.  But  it  happens 
here,  as  in  some  pictures.  Looked  at  with  the  naked  eye,  they  are  a  per- 
fect mass  of  confusion ;  but  the  moment  you  look  through  a  lens  con- 
structed'to  unite  the  scattered  lines  in  a  proper  focus,  they  show  regularity 
and  even  beauty.  My  favorite  lens  is  a  virtuous  man :  it  brings  into  har- 
mony the  discordant  parts  of  the  moral  world.'  Philosophy  and  piety  were 
never  more  beautifully  blended  than  here ;  and  a  hue  spirit  of  poetry  per- 
vades the  whole." 


C32  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  AT  BATH.  ^Ss^-h.1' 

Space  is  left  for  only  one  example  more  of  this  loving  talk  with  a 
silent  friend,  and  it  shall  be  taken  from  the  last  of  the  letters  Landor 
sent  me  about  him  :  — 

"He  has  just  remarks  on  our  architects.  In  my  own  opinion  every  Eng- 
lishman ought  to  be  restrained,  by  act  of  Parliament,  from  building  any- 
thing above  a  pigsty.  What  has  the  present  age  to  do  with  the 
Elizabethan?  Have  we  so  much  light  that  a  sixth  of  every  window  should 
be  composed  of  stone  and  another  sixth  of  lead?  And  must  we,  young 
and  old,  mount  upon  stools  to  look  out  of  them  ?  Architecture  should  be 
modified  by  the  climate.  We  have  Whitehall  before  our  eyes,  if  indeed 
we  have  any  eyes  before  Whitehall.  Inigo  Jones  was  one  of  our  great 
glories.  The  arts  will  readily  place  him  with  Eogarth,  Wilson,  Wollett^ 
Flaxman  (the  greatest  man  of  all),  and  your  friends  Landseer,  Stanfield, 
and  Maclise.  I  think  even  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough  may  be  proud  of 
such  companionship.  There  is,  by  the  way,  something  in  the  portraits  of 
Gainsborough  which  I  am  disposed  to  think  unrivalled  in  his  time  or  since. 
—  Blanco  in  a  following  page  says  truly :  '  A  quick  and  deep  perception  of 
the  beautiful  is  of  the  utmost  importance  both  for  our  virtue  and  our  happi- 
ness.' And  he  adds,  that  he  generally  closes  his  day  with  Shakespeare. 
Poor  Blanco !  poor  Blanco !  I  have  now  gone  along  with  him  through  all 
his  perplexities,  all  his  bodily  pains  and  mortal  sorrows,  and  have  left  him 
at  the  gates  of  heaven.  Hope  has  already  thrown  them  wide  for  him,  the 
Hope  that  never  trembles.  There  is  more  goodness,  as  there  is  more 
knowledge  and  wisdom,  in  our  days  than  in  any  past;  but  it  is  diffused 
among  many  :  we  find  nowhere  much  concentrated ;  there  is  no  man  pre- 
eminent in  sanctitude,  none  a  half-head  above  the  rest  in  genius.  Again 
poor  Blanco  !  If  his  genius  was  not  indeed  of  the  very  highest  order,  his 
knowledge,  his  judgment,  his  disinterestedness,  his  many  virtues,  ahove  all 
his  noble  conscientiousness,  have  left  him  hardly  an  equal  upon  earth." 


Of  course  Landor  read  with  eager  attention  the  volumes  of  Soathey's 
Life  and  Letters  as  they  successively  appeai-ed  ;  but  from  his  many 
letters  referring  to  them  only  a  very  few  extracts  can  be  taken.  They 
show  how  steady,  on  the  whole,  was  his  poetical  faith  that  there  have 
been  four  magic  poets  in  the  world,  Homer,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and 
Wilton,  and  that  we  are  still  awaiting  the  Fifth  Monarchy.  The  diffi- 
culty in  the  case  is  that  this  monarchy  may  already  have  come,  or 
may  come  at  any  time  hereafter,  without  our  being  aware  of  it,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Jews  with  the  Messiah. 

"  All  yesterday  and  all  this  day  "  (8th  January,  1850)  "  I  have  been  read- 
ing Southey's  Life  and  Letters,  ...  If  he  had  not  spoken  so  favorably  of 
my  Gebir,  I  might  venture  to  say  that  there  had  been  no  one,  for  a  couple 
of  centuries,  so  thoroughly  conversant  and  well  informed  in  poetry,  or  so 
candid  and  impartial  Only  Addison,  with  his  gentle  eyes,  had  lookt  a 
little  way  into  the  glorious  scenes  of  Paradise  ;  for  which  he  now  lies  upon 
Milton's  bosom,  the  greatest  of  God's  rewards.  I  have  been  reading  once 
more  Dante's  Paradiao.  There  are  most  beautiful  things  in  it;  much  bettor 
than  the  best  in  Paradise  Regained,  and  more  of  them.  But  never  will  I 
concede  that  he  has  written  so  grand  a  poem  as  Paradise  Last;  no,  nor  any 
man  else.  The  Iliad  in  comparison  is  Ida  to  the  Andes-  The  odes  of  Pin- 
dar to  Milton's  lyrics,  that  is,   the  sonnets,  Allegro,   Penseroso,  &c,  are 


JET.  61-82.]  SILENT   COMPANIONS.  633 

Epsom  race-course  to  the  New  Forest.     I  am  not  "writing  on  my  knees ; 
that  duty  would  be  an  incommodious  one." 

Of  himself,  as  he  appears  in  Southey' s  Letters. 

"  Here  I  stand,  brought  to  life  by  a  dead  man.  Few  people  would  ever 
have  known  that  I  had  written  poetry,  if  Southey  had  not  given  his  word 
that  a  sort  of  poetry  it  really  and  truly  was.  I  must  have  waited  until 
Pindar  and  JSschylus  had  taken  me  between  them,  and  until  Milton  had 
said,  '  Commonwealth's  man,  we  meet  at  last.'  Well,  I  would  rather  meet 
him  and  Southey  hereafter  than  any  of  them;  though  I  know  he  will  ask 
me  why  I  have  done  so  little.  My  answer  will  be,  Because  I  wrote  chiefly 
to  occupy  the  vacant  hour,  caring  not  a  straw  for  popularity,  and  little  more 
for  fame  J' 

Of  the  great  Masters  of  our  Language.     (March,  1850.) 

"  Dear  Southey,  like  Julius  Hare,  was  fond  of  English  hexameters,  my 
abhorrence.  As  I  see  that  word  it  makes  me  shudder ;  for  what  could  I 
have  written  that  Southey  should  believe  I  felt  it  for  the  gentle  Spenser  ?  I 
may  have  expressed  abhorrence  for  his  method,  never  for  himself.  Partly 
the  dreariness  of  allegory,  and  partly  the  reduplication  of  similar  sounds  in 
the  stanza,  made  me  as  incapable  of  reading  a  hundred  or  half-hundred  of 
them  consecutively  as  of  reading  two  hundred  ten-syllable  couplets.  Never 
in  my  life  could  I  perform  that  feat.  He  (Southey)  represents  me  as  think- 
ing we  had  little  poetry  which  was  good  for  anything  before  Milton.  Not 
so.  Othello  had  agonized  my  heart  before  Milton  had  reacht  my  ear.  For 
the  best  poetry,  as  for  the  best  painters  and  statuary,  we  must  be  disci- 
plined. I  had  read  the  Iliad  twice  over  before  I  had  well  studied  Paradise 
Lost.  Then  the  hexameter,  even  Homer's,  fell  upon  my  ear  as  a  ring  of 
fine  bells  after  a  full  organ.  There  are  a  few  passages  in  Lucretius,  a  few  in 
Catullus,  and  very  many  in  Virgil,  which  it  is  delightful  to  read  and  repeat ; 
but  our  heroic  measure  is  fuller  and  more  varied.  Not  only  Milton  has 
shown  it,  but  Shakespeare  too,  as  often  as  strong  passion  demanded  it. 
Southey  and  Wordsworth  have  caught  up  the  echo  from  a  distance,  and 
repeated  the  cadence  in  a  feebler  voice.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  judge 
fairly  of  Shakespeare's  satellites.  I  have  not  read,  and  never  shall  read,  a 
tithe  of  their  dramas,  such  is  my  abhorrence  of  dirty  cut-throats  and  courtly 
drabs.  Ben  Jonson  I  have  studied,  principally  for  the  purity  of  his  English. 
Had  it  not  been  for  him  and  Shakespeare,  our  language  would  have  fallen 
into  ruin.  Hooker  too  lent  his  surpliced  shoulder  to  its  support,  and  Bacon 
brought  some  well-squared  massy  stones  towards  the  edifice  those  masters 
were  building.     Southey  also  has  contributed  much  to  the  glorious  work."    . 

Of  Southey  and  Cowper. 

"  How  could  Southey  praise  such  harsh  sounds  following  one  another  so 
closely  as  in  Lamb's  line,  '  calls  strangers  still '  ?  What  an  ear-ache  they 
have  given  me !  Southey's  heart  protected  his  ear.  He  always  found  a 
little  good  poetry  in  much'  good  feeling.  I  would  have  given  Cowper  a 
hundred  pounds  for  permission  to  strike  out  half  that  number  of  verses 
from  the  Task.  I  hope  he  and  Southey  have  met  in  heaven.  Two  such 
men  have  seldom  met  on  earth.  Who  is  worth  the  least  of  them  ?  None 
among  the  living.,  I  have  been  reading  also  lately"  (April,  1856)  "the 
Life  of  Cowper  for  the  fourth  or  fifth  time.  No  author's  life  ever  interested 
me  so  deeply.  How  sublime  must  have  been  the  devotion  of  that  man 
who  could  sacrifice  the  purest  and  tenderest  love  to  gratitude  !  A  sacrifice 
in  his  case  of  heart  and  soul,  leaving  Venus  Urania  for  morose  Saturn.  Ah! 
why  did  she  who  loved  Cowper  ever  love  again  ?    How  could  she  ?  " 


G34  TWEXTY-ONE    YEARS   AT    BATH.  ''I'^-V1' 

Of  William  Gifford  and  other  Mistakes. 

"  I  am  reading "  (July,  1856)  "  another  volume  of  Southcy's  Letters. 
What  an  invidious  knave  it  shows  Gifford  to  have  been,  and  how  much 
trouble  he  took  to  spoil  Southey's  reviews!  This  dJbbler  cut  away  so 
much  of  leather,  The  shoe  would  neither  fit  nor  hold  together.  His  tastes 
were  detestable.  He  ought  to  have  kept  his  nose  eternally  over  Juvenal's 
full  cess-pool.  Cumberland  told  me  that,  one  morning  when  he  called  on  his 
friend  Lord  Farnborough,  at  that  time  untitled  but  in  office,  he  found  Gif- 
ford and  another  hack  in  the  antechamber.  They  were  admitted  to  the 
minister,  and  soon  dismist.  He  made  an  apology  to  Cumberland  for  de- 
taining him,  but  said,  '  These  fellows  must  be  attended  to.'  In  fact  they 
came  Ibr  their  pay,  and  got  it.  It  disturbs  me  to  find  in  Southey  (Vol.  III. 
p.  300)  the  word  rewrite.  I  had  thought  it,  and  reread,  the  spawn  infect- 
ing a  muddier  and  shallower  water.  Properly  re  should  precede  none  but 
words  of  Latin  origin,  though  there  are  a  few  exceptions  of  some  date 
and  authority.  Our  language  is  running  downhill  without  a  dragchain. 
Ben  Jonson  tried  to  put  the  pole  between  can  and  nut :  he  was  run  over. 
We  are  now  at  daresay :  where  next  ?  In  the  page  which  I  have  markt 
there  is  an  observation  on  the  '  besetting  sin '  of  our  government,  which 
has  been  signally  exemplified  of  late,  '  a  habit  of  leaving  its  foreign  agents 
without  instructions,  for  the  sake  of  shifting  off  the  responsibility.'  I  am 
entirely  of  his  opinion  also  in  regard  to  promotion  by  merit  instead  of 
seniority.  It  is  a  fraud.  Merit  is  favor;  no  challenging  it:  seniority  is 
ascertainable. 

Of  Tennyson's  Maud. 

"  I  am  delighted "  (August,  1855)  "  with  Tennyson's  Maud.  In  this 
poem  how  much  higher  and  fresher  is  his  laurel  than  the  dipt  and  stunted 
ones  of  the  old  gardeners  in  the  same  garden!  Poetry  and  philosophy 
have  rarely  met  so  cordially  before.  I  wish  he  had  not  written  the  Wel- 
lington ode.  He  is  indeed  a  true  poet.  What  other  could  have  written 
this  verse,  worth  many  whole  volumes:  'the  breaking  heart  that  will  not 
break'?  Infinite  his  tenderness,  his  thought,  his  imagination,  the  melody 
and  softness  as  well  as  the  strength  and  stateliness  of  his  verse." 

Of  Aubrey  de  Vere's  Masque  of  Proserpine  and  of  the  Envy  of  Poets. 

"Have  you  the  Masque  of  Proserpine?  If  not,  I  will  lend  you  mine" 
(23d  October,  1848).  "He  has  raised  her  not  only  up  to  earth  again,  but 
to  heaven.  It  is  delightful  to  find  one  figure  who  has  escaped  the  hair- 
dresser and  the  milliner.  ...  I  had  written  thus  much  last  night,  and  am 
delighted  to  find  in  the  Examiner  this  morning  that  poets  or  half-poets  are 
imitating  me  in  praising  one  another.  I  do  not  believe  there  is  a  grain  of 
sincerity  among  all  I  know  of  the  number;  but  the  outside  of  the  lilbert 
looks  just  as  well  as  if  there  were  no  grub  within  it.  The  most  envious  of 
them  does  not  envy  me  more  than  I  envy  Aubrey  de  Vere;  but  Envy 
with  me  lowers  her  shoulder  to  let  a  Love  mount  upon  it.  These  are  in- 
deed revolutionary  times,  when  not  only  old  forms  of  government,  but  old 
forms  of  poetry  start  up  again.  I  can  imagine  Milton  reading  to  Proser- 
pine the  beautiful  Masque,  and  Proserpine  saying  in  her  simplicity,  'You 
have  succeeded  with  me.'  "  , 

Of  Scott  and  Keats,  our  Prospero  and  Ariel. 

"I  have  been  reading"  (24th  March,  1850)  "Scott's  Kenilworth,  and 
think  I  shall  prefer  it,  on  a  second  reading,  either  to  the  Bride  of  Lammer- 


MT.  6l-82.]  SILENT    COMPANIONS.  635 

moor  or  my  old  favorite  The  Heart  of  Mid- Lothian.  It  appears  to  me  now 
to  be  quite  a  fine  epic.  We  ought  to  glory  in  such  men  as  Scott.  The 
Germans  would ;  and  so  should  we,  if  hatred  of  our  neighbor  were  not  the 
religion  of  authors,  and  warfare  the  practice  of  borderers.  Keats  is  our 
Ariel  of  poetry,  Scott  our  Prospero.  The  one  commands,  the  other  capti- 
vates :  the  one  controls  all  the  elements,  the  other  tempers  and  enlivens 
them.  And  yet  this  wonderful  creature  Keats,  who  in  his  felicities  of  ex- 
pression comes  very  often  near  to  Shakespeare,  has  defects  which  his 
admirers  do  not  seem  to  understand.  Wordsworth  called  his  ode  to  Pan  a 
very  pretty  piece  of  paganism  when  my  friend  Charles  Brown  read  it  to 
him  ;  but  Keats  was  no  more  pagan  than  Wordsworth  himself.  Between 
you  and  me,  the  style  of  Keats  is  extremely  far  removed  from  the  very 
boundaries  of  Greece.  I  wish  some  one  had  been  near  him  when  he  printed 
his  Endymion,  to  strike  out,  as  ruthlessly  as  you  would  have  done,  all  that 
amidst  its  opulence  is  capricious  and  disorderly.  The  truth  is,  and  indeed  I 
hardly  know  an  exception  to  it,  it  is  in  Selection  that  we  English  are  most 
deficient.  We  lay  our  hands  upon  all,  and  manage  very  badly  our  depen- 
dencies. A  young  poet  should  be  bound  apprentice  to  Pindar  for  three 
years,  whether  his  business  be  the  ode  or  anything  else.  He  will  find  noth- 
ing in  the  workshop  which  he  expected  to  find,  but  quite  enough  of  highly 
wrought  tools  and  well-seasoned  materials." 

Of  Sydney  and  Bobus  Smith. 

"  Never  was  I  more  interested  in  any  book  than  I  am  now  "  (26th  of 
August,  1855)  "  in  reading  the  Life  of  Sydney  Smith.  The  English  lan- 
guage has  had  few  such  writers;  happily  there  are  flashes  of  wit  flying  yet 
over  his  grave.  Curious  that  great  men  should  so  run  in  pairs :  the  two 
Napiers,  the  two  Smiths,  &c.  Will  they  ever  talk  of  the  two  Landors, 
myself  and  Robert  ?  According  to  what  appear  to  be  the  laws  of  nature 
and  of  society  in  regard  to  authors,  I  ought  especially  to  hate  Bobus  and 
Sydney  for  beating  me  out  and  out :  Bobus  in  Latin  poetry,  and  Sydney  in 
English  prose.  But  Bobus  has  had  no  rival  in  Latin  this  1800  years.  You 
seem  to  place  Jeffrey,  Horner,  Mackintosh,  and  Brougham  more  nearly  on 
a  level  than  I  should  ever  do.  Of  those  qualities  which  they  had  in  com- 
mon, Sydney  had  greatly  more  than  all  those  people  put  together ;  and  how 
many  more  parts,  both  shining  and  solid,  had  his  rich  mind !  Why  do  we, 
by  the  by,  drop  our  good  word  parts  for  talents  ?  Even  talents  are  dropt 
for  talent     To  talk  about  a  '  man  of  talent '  is  to  talk  like  a  fool." 

Of  Sydney  on  Demosthenes  and  Plato  :  old  Heresy. 

"Sydney  Smith  unluckily  attributes  wit  to  Demosthenes.  Quinctilian 
very  justly  says,  '  Non  displicuisse  ei  jocos,  sed  defmisse.'  He  takes  up  the 
tradition  of  Plato's  animation.  He  is  often  grandiose,  but  never  animated : 
deliberately  I  say  never.  I  have  read  him  carefully  twice  over.  What 
other  man  has  done  the  same  of  men  now  living?  He  moves  wonder  far 
oftener  than  admiration  ;  and  there  is  all  the  difference.  Wonder  is  sudden 
and  transient:  admiration  the  reverse.  I  have  pointed  out  forty  or  fifty 
gross  faults  in  his  language,  and  I  could  have  added  a  dozen  more.  Demos- 
thenes is  animated,  Milton  is  an  imated ;  Plato  at  best  is  but  emphatical,  and 
not  often  that.  Even  in  language  there  are  finer  things  in  Bacon,  things 
more  imaginative  and  poetical.  He  is  to  Plato  what  a  wrestler  is  to  a  rope- 
dancer,  but  very  few  men  have  a  grasp  capacious  enough  to  comprehend 
his  muscles.  The  hand  more  easily  goes  round  the  full  rotundity  of 
Plato's." 


G36  TWENTY-ONE   YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^is^-s;."" 

A  Preferment  unsought. 

"  In  reading  "  (March,  1855)  "  the  third  volume  of  Lady  Blessington's 
Life,  I  am  surprised  and  confounded  at  a  letter  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington's. 
It  appears  that  good  Lady  Blessington  had  asked  him,  as  chancellor  of  Ox- 
ford, to  nominate  my  brother  Robert  as  provost  of  Worcester  College.  I 
do  not  think  Robert  would  have  accepted  the  charge.  He  was  established 
in  his  rectory  of  Birlingham,  and  might  have  risen  to  higher  rank  with  less 
responsibility." 

Reading  De  Quincey  on  Sergeant  Hill  and  Bishop  Watson^ 

"  I  am  reading  his  Essays  and  Recollections"  (October,  1854).  "  He  does 
not  tell  his  stories  well.  How  few  there  are  who  can  carry  a  story  without 
dropping  the  best  part  of  it!  There  is  one  he  tells  very  badly  which  has 
carried  my  memory  back  nearly  sixty  years.  It  is  that  (p.  175)  about  the 
absent  Sergeant  Hill,  who  had  managed,  as  he  sat  next  a  lady  at  dinner,  to 
tuck  into  his  fob,  without  being  in  the  least  degree  conscious  of  it,  all  the 
apron  she  wore  except  the  strings,  and  was  in  ludicrous  perturbation  when 
she  rose  and  said,  '  Mr.  Sergeant,  I  must  sue  you  for  a  bill  of  divorce.'  I 
remember  it  repeated  at  my  father's  table  by  old  Counsellor  W heeler,  who 
was  present  with  his  wife  when  it  happened.  De  Quincey  is  stronger  in 
his  essays,  and  it  seems  to  me  he  has  seldom  written  better  than  in  his  re- 
marks on  your  Goldsmith.  But  his  account  of  Watson  is  rather  amusing. 
Watson  was  made  a  hypocrite  not  by  choice  but  by  necessity :  not  that 
goddess  Necessity  whom  Horace  represents  with  the  clavi  trabales,  but  the 
blander  with  the  clavi  episcopales.  Imagine  him  to  yourself  standing  hefore 
Pitt  and  asking  to  be  made  archbisliop.  This  he  could  do  conscientiously; 
he  had  said  nolo  episcopari,  he  never  had  said  nolo  archi-episcopari.  I  can 
bring  before  my  eyes  the  premier,  bolt-upright,  with  his  head  steady  and 
stiff  upon  his  crane-like  neck,  and  his  hard  gray  eyes  looking  down  the  tri- 
angular declivity  of  his  dawn-bright  nose ;  and  I  can  fancy  his  deep  so- 
norous voice  as  he  wishes  my  lord  bishop  a  good-day.  '  Damn  the  fellow  ! ' 
cries  the  bishop  the  moment  the  hall  door  is  shut  behind  him." 

Of  some  Novels. 

" 1  have  been"  (August,  1856)  "  cushioning  my  old  head  on  the  pillow  of 
novels.  What  a  delightful  book  is  Bulwer's  CaxtonsI  I  have  done  him 
injustice,  for  I  never  thought  he  could  have  written  such  pure  Saxon  Eng- 
lish as  maybe  found  here;  and  Sterne  himself,  whom  he  has  chosen  to 
imitate  as  to  manner,  is  hardly  better  in  the  way  of  character.  Esmond, 
too,  is  a  novel  that  has  surprised  me.  Never  could  I  have  believed  that 
Thackeray,  great  as  his  abilities  are,  could  have  written  so  noble  a  story  as 
Esmond.  On  your  recommendation  I  have  since  been  reading  the  whole 
of  //inii/ihrei/  ('/inker.  It  seems  to  me  that  I  must  have  read  a  part  of  it 
before.  Every  letter  ends  with  a  rigmarole,  then  much  in  fashion,  and 
thought  to  be  very  graceful.  By  rigmarole  I  mean  such  a  termination  as 
this:  'It  had  liked  to  have  kindled  the  flames  of  discord  in  the  family  of 
yours  always,  &c.'  A  tail  always  curls  round  the  back  of  the  letter-writer, 
and  sticks  to  his  sincerely,  &c.  How  would  Cicero  and  Pliny  and  Trajan 
have  laught  at  this  circumbendibus  I  In  the  main  however  you  are  right 
about  the  book.  It  has  abundant  humor;  and  how  admirable  are  such 
strokes  as  where  the  jailer's  wife  'wishes  there  was  such  another  good  soul 
in  every  jail  in  England !  '  But  I  find  it  rather  wearisome,  and  stuffed  with 
oddities  of  language.  P.  191.  '  I  have  no  doubt  but  your  parents  will  in  a 
little  time  bring  you  into  the  world.'     Lf  the  parents  did  not  bring  her  into 


MT.  6l-82.]  SILENT   COMPANIONS.  637 

the  world  (one  of  them  at  least),  I  wonder  who  did  ?  By  the  tvorld  he 
means  society ;  as  Young  did  in  saying  of  the  God  Sleep,  '  lie,  like  the 
world,  his  ready  visit  pays,'  &c.,  card-case  in  hand.  '  He  lights  on  lids  un- 
sullied by  a  tear':  but  I  warrant  he  squeezed  one  out.  P.  175.  'Pene- 
trated the  uttermost  recesses  ' :  he  means  the  innermost.  '  Between  vanity, 
methodism,  and  love ' :  between  is  only  for  two,  by  and  twain.  '  Neither 
seen,  heard,  nor  felt ' :  here  again,  neither  applies  to  two,  not  more.  You 
see  I  have  been  carrying  the  cross  you  laid  upon  my  shoulders.  I  must 
now  run  to  Dickens  for  refreshment.  He  is  a  never-failing  resource ;  and 
what  an  astonishing  genius  he  is !  " 


'a  &^ 


Of  the  Edinburgh  Revieiv  on  his  Hellenics. 

"  You  know  with  what  feeling  I  read  a  review  in  the  Edinburgh  four 
years  ago,  and  hare  is  another  which  makes  me  proud  of  being  reviewed 
by  such  a  writer  "  (April,  1850).  "  Yet  I  could  not  but  smile  at  the  impu- 
tation of  mannerism.  Whose  manner  ?  I  resemble  none  of  the  ancients, 
and  still  less  the  moderns.  My  merits,  if  I  have  any  at  all,  are  variety  and 
simplicity.  Cowper  is  the  only  modern  poet  who  is  so  little  of  a  manner- 
ist as  I  am ;  and  even  he  has  somewhat  of  it.  A  little  of  sweet  bile  rises 
up  in  his  stomach  from  the  crudity  of  his  religion.  I  am  obscure  ;  this  is 
too  certain ;  everybody  says  it.  But  are  Pindar  and  ^Eschylus  less  so  ?  I 
am  unable  to  guess  what  proportion  of  their  poetry  the  best  poets  have 
cancelled.  Wordsworth  and  Byron,  and  most  now  living,  leave  no  traces 
of  erasure  :  I  wish  they  had.  I  have  rejected  quite  as  much  as  I  have  ad- 
mitted, and  some  of  it  quite  as  good.  Order  and  proportion  always  were 
my  objects.  My  real  strength,  I  believe,  lies  in  the  dramatic,  and  I  think  I 
could  have  composed  a  drama  suitable  for  the  stage,  if  I  had  willed  it :  but 
intricacy,  called  plot,  undermines  the  solid  structure  of  well-ordered  poetry. 
There  is  nothing  of  it  in  the  Iliad,  or  in  iEschylus ;  once  only  in  Sopho- 
cles is  there  much  of  it.  The  Spaniards  are  known  for  little  else ;  and  they 
brought  over  to  England  these  instruments  of  mental  torture  in  their 
poetical  Armada.  Only  think  that  I  am  suspected  of  undervaluing  Dante ! 
The  proportion  of  bad  poetry  to  good  in  him  is  vast  indeed ;  but  never  was 
man,  excepting  Shakespeare  alone,  so  intensely  a  poet.  Another  objection 
made  to  me,  not  in  this,  but  another  review  I  have  been  reading  of  my 
Hellenics,  is  that  allusions  may  be  found  in  them  to  modern  men  and 
events.*     In  ancient  poets  we  find  many  such  allusions,  and  wish  for  more. 

*  Such  allusions,  I  need  hardly  remark,  were  common  in  his  Imaginary  Gmversa- 
tions,  and  in  former  pages  I  have  noticed  several.  I  will  here  add,  for  the  reader's 
amusement,  another  to  which  my  attention  was  drawn  by  himself  on  the  occasion  of 
Sir  Charles  Eastlake  (in  August,  1852)  having  carried 'off  his  coat  from  my  house  in 
mistake  for  his  own.  "  On  my  return  from  Spain  an  officer  took  my  great-coat,  as  our 
friend  Eastlake  has  done,  and  left  me  his.  I  have  mentioned  this  event  in  my 
iEschines  and  Phocion,  together  with  the  address  I  put  on  the  letter  which  1  wrote  to 
him  at  Portsmouth."  The  passage,  which  is  placed  in  the  mouth  of  Phocion,  is  worth 
quoting  :  — 

"  Singularity,  when  it  is  natural,  requires  no  apology;  when  affected,  it  is  detestable. 
Such  is  that  of  our  young  people  in  bad  handwriting.  On  my  expedition  to  Byzan- 
tium, the  city  decreed  that  a  cloak  should  be  given  me  worth  forty  drachmas :  and 
when  I  was  about  to  return  I  folded  it  up  carefully,  in  readiness  for  any  service  in 
which  I  might  be  employed  hereafter.  An  officer,'  studious  to  imitate  my  neatness, 
packed  up  his  in  the  same  manner,  not  without  the  hope  perhaps  that  I  might  remark 
it;  and  my  servant,  or  his,  on  our  return,  mistook  it.  I  sailed  for  Athens;  he  with  a 
detachment  for  Heraclea;  whence  he  wrote  to  me  that  he  had  sent  my  cloak,  request- 
ing his  own  by  the  first  conveyance.  The  name  was  quite  illegible,  and  the  carrier, 
whoever  he  was,  had  pursued  his  road  homeward.  I  directed  it  then,  as  the  only  safe 
way,  if  indeed  there  was  any  safe  one,  to  the  officer  who  writes  worst  at  Heraclea." 


638  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  ^iI^-m"' 

In  Virgil  the  palace  of  Caesar  is  the  palace  of  Latinus :  '  Arboribusque 
obtecta  fecessit,'  And  the  most  august  praise  ever  conferred  on  man  is 
conferred  here  l(quis  deus  incertum  est)  habitat  deus.'  Put  one  thing  is 
quite  certain,  and  you  know  it  well.  I  shall  have  as  many  readers  as  I  de- 
sire to  have  in  other  times  than  ours.  I  shall  dine  late ;  but  the  dining- 
room  will  be  well  lighted,  the  guests  few  and  select.  1  neither  am,  nor 
ever  shall  be,  popular.  Such  never  was  my  ambition.  Thousands  of 
people,  for  centuries  to  come,  will  look  up  at  the  statues  of  the  Duke  of 
York,  George  III.,  Canning,  Pitt,  and  others  of  that  description  ;  but  in  no 
centuries  to  come  will  fifty  in  any  one  generation  feast  their  eyes  in  silent 
veneration  on  the  marbles  from  the  Parthenon." 

0/ the  Quarterly  on  Steele.     (1855.) 

"  I  would  rather  have  written  what  is  here  quoted  froiji  Steele  than  all 
the  criticism  and  philosophy  of  all  the  Edinburgh  Reviewers.  What  a  good 
critic  he  was!  I  doubt  if  he  has  ever  been  surpassed.  Somehow  I  cannot 
but  connect  Steele  and  Goldsmith,  as  I  do  Cowper  and  Southey.  Of  all 
our  literary  men,  they  interest  me  the  most.  .  .  .  Dear  good  faulty  Steele  ! 
The  Quarterly  was  not  sent  to  me  before  nine  last  night.  I  would  not,  I 
could  not,  go  to  bed  until  I  had  read  it  through.  My  eyes  are  the  weaker 
for  it  this  morning." 

Of  the  Dramatists  of  Elizabeth  and  James. 

"  I  have  been  reading  what  Lamb  and  Ilazlitt  say  of  these  men,  and  try- 
ing vainly,  once  more,  to  read  steadily  some  of  their  writings.  I  call  them 
circum-circa  Shakespearians,  and  find  them  to  be  as  unlike  as  possible  to 
Shakespeare.  There  is  crudeness  on  one  side  of  the  fruit,  and  rottenness 
or  overripeness  on  the  other,  in  almost  every  one.  A  wineglassful  of  pure 
water  for  me,  rather  than  a  bucket  of  turbid :  one  scazon  of  Catullus  rather 
than  all  the  poetry  of  the  Shakespearian  age  —  beside  Shakespeare's!  Yet 
there  are  strong  throbs  in  the  breasts  that  heave  in  those  tarnisht  spangles, 
and  there  are  crevices  that  let  fresh  air  into  those  barns  and  brothels.  But 
Shakespeare  I  who  can  speak  of  him!  Antiquity  lades  away  before  him, 
and  even  Homer  is  but  a  shadow." 

After  reading  some  recent  Poems.     (1S5G.) 

"  We  are  living  in  a  poetical  world  where  atoms  are  flying  up  and  down  : 
where  explosions  arc  incessant:  where  bright,  buttons  and  unthreaded  epau- 
lettes, and  laces  of  pantaloons,  and  broken  limbs  in  minute  particles,  are 
scattered  through  the  air.  Granular  sparkles  in  profusion,  but  nowhere  a 
cubic  inch  of  solid  poetry.  I  venture  to  say  this  to  you:  to  others  I  am  a 
sad  dissembler,  and  put  on  my  sweetest  smiles  and  prettiest  behavior." 

Of  Sir  Cloudesley  Shovel. 

"  I  was  reading  in  the  Old  Judge,  the  other  clay,  of  Sir  Cloudesley 
Shovel,  ami,  while  1  remember  it,  I  will  repeat  to  you  a  story,  a  piece  of 
biography,  which  only  this  very  morning  "  (8th  December,  L854)  "Iheard 
through  a  Rochester  man,  whose  father  was  formerly  Dean  ofBath.  There 
is,  it  appeals,  iii  Rochester  cathedral  a  monument  to  Sir  Cloudesley.  Long 
before  his  time  an  old  gentleman  named  Cloudesley  was  an  inhabitant  of 
the  city.  He  was  a  man  of  extensive  charities,  but  kept  only  one  servant, 
an  old  woman.  Early  one  morning  she  observed  the  scavenger  (then'  was 
but  one  in  the  place)  tearing  up  a  bundle  he  had  just  shovelled  out  of  the 
dirty,   but  dry,   kennel.      Curiosity  kept  her   close    by,   until   in   another 


^ET.  6l-82.]  SILENT    COMPANIONS.  G39 

minute  an  infant  was  discovered  fast  asleep  within  it.  '  Lord  a'  mercy !  ' 
cried  the  old  maiden.  '  What  the  devil  is  to  be  done  with  the  brat  ?  '  ex- 
claimed the  scavenger.  Mr.  Cloudesley  came  down  stairs,  and  saw  house- 
keeper and  scavenger  in  his  hall  in  debate.  He  ordered  the  infant  to  be 
taken  care  of,  made  frequent  visits  to  its  nurse,  had  it  schooled  for  a 
few  years,  and  then  sent  it  to  sea.  But  the  marrow  of  the  story  is  yet 
lying  in  the  bone.  When  the  child  was  to  be  baptized,  he  would  not  be 
persuaded  to  let  it  be  called  Cloudesley.  The  scavenger  was  present :  no 
information  about  the  parentage.  'Odd!'  said  the  old  gentleman;  'we 
must  divide  it  between  us.     You  give  Shovel,  and  I  will  give  Cloudesley.'  " 

A  strange  Story.     (1850.) 

"This 'amusing  book"  (Mr.  Halliburton's  Old  Judge)  "reminds  me  of 
what  actually  happened  in  the  life  of  an  old  acquaintance  of  mine,  Sir 
Edwin  Stanhope,  who  inherited  the  Duchess  of  Norfolk's  estate  at  Home 
Lacy.  He  got  drunk  at  Boston  when  he  was  a  lieutenant,  just  before  the 
American  war.  The  '  Select  Men '  of  that  puritanical  port  had  him  arrested 
thereon  and  sentenced  to  be  flogged.  Nine  years  afterwards  he  had  com- 
mand of  a  frigate  on  the  same  coast.  Neter  was  there  a  more  polite  man, 
or  one  who  lookt  more  gentle.  He  called  on  the  Select  Men,  formerly  his 
judges,  complimented  them  on  the  happy  termination  of  hostilities,  and 
himself  on  becoming  a  reformed  man,  entirely  through  their  instrumentality. 
He  could  hardly  hope  that  persons  of  their  dignity  would  condescend  to 
honor  him  on  board  his  vessel  by  their  company  to  dinner,  and  even  in  that 
case  he  should  be  able  to  express  his  gratitude  but  incompletely.  They 
accepted  his  invitation.  He  received  them  most  courteously,  he  treated 
them  most  splendidly,  and  a  day  of  much  enjoyment  was  passed.  As  the 
time  approached  for  their  departure,  a  servant  entered  the  cabin  and  whis- 
pered to  the  Custos,  the  leader  of  the  select,  that  a  gentleman  above  desired 
urgently  to  speak  to  him.  As  soon  as  the  justice  appeared  on  deck,  he 
was  seized,  stripped,  tied  up,  and  had  a  dozen  lashes  from  the  boatswain. 
Each  of  the  others  were  severally  summoned  and  similarly  punished.  After 
which  they  were  set  ashore,  the  anchor  lifted,  and  the  vessel  put  under 
way  for  England.  Stanhope  was  reprimanded  and  deprived  of  his  ship 
as  soon  as  the  incident  became  known,  and  only  by  great  interest  was  he 
permitted  to  continue,  in  the  service.  He  died  an  admiral  not  many  years 
ago.  Indeed  I  think  he  was  an  admiral  when  I  first  became  acquainted 
with  him,  in  the  very  beginning  of  this  century.  Interest  in  those  days, 
even  more  scandalously  than  in  ours,  gave  extremely  young  men  com- 
mands. My  cousin  Sam  Arden  commanded  a  ship,  and  lost  an  arm,  before 
he  was  two-and-twenty." 

Of  the  Apple  of  Discord :  suggested  by  reading  a  Review. 

"  I  have  been  reading"  (January,  1851)  "the  notice  of  Southey;  and  it 
brought  a  reflection  into  my  mind  which  I  shall  put  into  Hare's  mouth  in  a 
Conversation  I  am  writing.  Here  it  is.  '  Envy  of  pre-eminence  is  univer- 
sal and  everlasting.  Little  men,  whenever  they  find  an  opportunity,  follow 
the  steps  of  greater  in  this  dark  declivity.  The  Apple  of  Discord  was  full- 
grown  soon  after  the  Creation.  It  fell  between  the  two  first  brothers  in  the 
garden  of  Eden  :  it  fell  between  two  later  on  the  plain  of  Thebes.  Narrow 
was  the  interval,  when  again  it  gleamed  portentously  on  the  short  grass  of 
Ida.  It  rolled  into  the  palace  of  Pella,  dividing  Philip  and  "  Philip's  god- 
like son  " :  it  followed  that  insatiable  youth  to  the  extremities  of  his  con- 
quests, and  even  to  his  sepulchre ;  then  it  broke  the  invincible  phalanx  and 


G40  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT    BATH.  IBS§£sj?t 

scattered  the  captains  wide  apart.  It  lay  in  the  gates  of  Carthage,  so  that 
they  could  not  close  against  the  enemy :  it  lay  between  the  generous  and 
agnate  families  of  Scipio  and  Gracchus.  Marius  and  Sulla,  Julius  and  Pom- 
peius,  Octavius  and  Antonius,  were  not  the  last  who  experienced  its  fatal 
malignity.  King  imprisoned  king,  emperor  stabbed  emperor,  pope  poisoned 
pope,  contending  for  God's  vicegerency.  The  roll-call  of  their  names,  with 
a  cross  against  each,  is  rotting  in  the  lumber-rooms  of  history.'  Perhaps 
you  may  think  this  too  grave.  Well,  then,  here  is  something  lighter  for 
you,  touching  upon  the  same  subject. 

Poets  hate  poets  the  world  over. 
Wisely  will  Clio's  favored  lover 
Keep  to  the  woods,  nor  dream  of  clover. 

Rash,  rash,  to  offer  such  advice ! 
Did  ever  housewife  teach  the  mice 
To  keep  from  sugar  and  from  rice  ? 

'  Tennyson.'    True;  him  none  can  hate, 

Yet  all  are  envious  of  his  state 

And  wish  he  were  not  quite  so  great." 

Of  Mm.  Barbauld  on  Collins.    (8  July,  1851.) 

"  I  have  lately  been  reading  an  edition  of  Collins,  with  notes  by  Mrs. 
Barbauld.  Some  of  them  are  just;  others  are  unsatisfactory  and  even 
absurd.  Of  his  best  poem,  his  ode  to  Evening,  she  says  it  will  'probably 
be  considered  rather  as  a  literary  curiosity  than  as  a  sucessf  id  pattern  of  a 
new  mode  of  versification.'  She  had  forgotten  Milton's  translation  of 
Horace's  ode  to  Pyrrha.  Her  remarks  on  blank  verse  arc  miserably 
feeble.  She  says,  '  we  may  venture  to  pronounce  it  far  from  prol  (able  that 
the  mode  in  which  the  great  masters  of  English  versification  from  Pope  to 
Darwin '  (she  forgets  Dryden  here,  as  she  had  forgotten  Milton  before) 
'  wrote,  should  be  discovered  to  be  the  offspring  of  tasteless  caprice  or  the 
blind  compliance  with  unmeaning  custom.  Our  common  blank  verse  is  so 
extremely  easy  to  compose  that  it  tempts  a  young  author  to  negligence.' 
The  negligence  of  young  authors  or  old  ones  offers  no  argument  on  either 
side.  Italian  rhymes  are  extremely  easy  to  compose,  and  both  young  au- 
thors and  old  ones  have  been  negligent  about  it;  but  Ave  can  read  Ari- 
osto  and  Tasso  and  Dante.  Our  Milton  in  his  blank  verse  is  much  less 
negligent  than  in  his  rhymed;  he  has  rejected  rhyme  in  his  Lycidas,  as 
Tasso  had  done  in  his  Pastor  Fido  ;  and  so  far  from  either  of  these  poems 
being  the  less  harmonious  for  the  omission,  no  rhymed  poem  in  any  lan- 
guage is  half  so  harmonious  as  either.  Blank  verse  in  some  of  our  later 
popular  poets  may  be  diffuse:  so  much  greater  is  the  merit  of  those  who 
have  screwed  up  the  chords  of  their  instrument.  In  their  high  festivals  the 
sweet  wine  is  poured  out  for  the  ladies:  men  sit  around  the  austerer  of 
ancient  vintages." 

Of  CobbeWs  Register,  and  other  Newspapers,  in  1808. 

"  I  have  found  my  three  letters  to  Riguelme,*  who  commanded  the  third 
division  of  the  Gallician  army  when  I  went  out  to  Spain  ;  and  I  send  you 
the  passage  from  the  second  of  them  that  you  wished  to  see.  It  was  writ- 
ten from  Bilbao  on  the  22d  of  September,  1808.  'It  surprises  me  ex- 
tremely, that  so  few  of  our  newspapers  have  been  yet  translated  into  your 

*  See  ante,  p.  144.  The  render  will  be  amused  by  observing  the  remark  about  Livy 
and  recollecting  what  was  said  by  Mr.  Cobden  of  the  Times  and  Thucydides. 


JET.  61-82.]  SILENT    COMPANIONS.  641 

language  ;  and  that  you  should  require  from  me  the  sentiments,  real  or  re- 
puted, of  individuals  high  in  office.  No  form  of  history  can  draw  characters 
to  the  life  and  at  full  length  so  perfectly  as  these  newspapers.  Even  the 
most  stupid  among  them  detail  the  speeches  delivered  by  the  principal  mem- 
bers of  our  Parliament,  fairly  and  impartially.  Perhaps  in  proportion  to  their 
deficiency  of  shrewdness  and  minuteness,  —  in  proportion  as  they  distrust 
their  ingenuity  and  aptitude  at  investigating  the  origin  of  events,  —  they 
exhibit  clearly  and  broadly  our  sentiments  and  feelings.  Those  which 
aspire  to  more  literary  distinction  are  usually  in  the  interests  of  a  party ;  and 
hence  especially  you  may  collect  the  arguments  by  which  government  is 
defended  or  assailed.  By  reading  these  in  the  coffee-houses  or  in  their 
families,  and  by  conversing  long  after  dinner  with  perfect  freedom,  English- 
men acquire  more  general  knowledge,  more  propriety  and  power  of  argu- 
ment, than  any  other  people.  It  has  been  asserted  that  we  have  no  con- 
stitution, because  it  has  not  been  in  every  part  defined.  You  might  as 
easily  hope  to  persuade  a  man  of  landed  property  that  he  has  no  estate, 
because  he  has  not  a  map  of  it.  But  to  confess  the  truth,  as  our  wealth 
lies  chiefly  in  public  credit,  so  our  constitution  rests  principally  on  the 
national  good  sense.  They  tell  us  we  have  no  representation.  But  if  the 
king  were  to  impose  an  arbitrary  tax,  or  to  continue  one  against  the  recla- 
mations of  the  people,  he  would  cease  to  reign.  A  paper  is  published  by  a 
man  named  Cobbett,  so  remarkable  for  its  vigor  of  style,  for  its  boldness  of 
disquisition  and  originality  of  thought,  that  it  may  be  said  in  some  meas- 
ure to  control  the  ministry  and  dictate  to  the  opposition.  He  favors  your 
cause  :  and  a  single  man  of  genius  is  greater,  not  only  in  the  eye  of  God,  of 
reason,  and  of  posterity,  but,  by  controlling  and  directing  the  public  mind, 
is  actually  more  potent,  than  three  dozen  princes.  I  wish  I  could  collect, 
from  their  earliest  date,  a  series  of  newspapers.  It  would  be  better  to  pos- 
sess it  than  the  lost  books  of  Livy.  Hopes,  fears,  and  surmises  —  the 
growth,  the  gradations,  the  vicissitudes  of  opinion  —  assume  the  most 
interesting  forms,  the  most  vivid  and  natural  colors,  appear  in  their  proper 
time,  and  occupy  their  proper  places.  The  court  is  thrown  open  ;  the  peo- 
ple pass  to  and  fro  with  all  their  humors ;  the  courtiers  are  discovered  in 
their  various  trimmings  ;  the  insects  are  classed  and  labelled  and  pinned  to 
the  very  leaf.  History  hopes  to  confer  a  greater  durability  by  giving  lines 
and  light  where  nature  has  given  none.'  " 

Of  Swift  s  Tale  of  a  Tub.     (1858.) 

"  I  am  reading  once  more  "  (he  was  now  eighty-three  years  of  age)  "  the 
work  I  have  read  oftener  than  any  other  prose  work  in  our  language.  I 
cannot  bring  to  my  recollection  the  number  of  copies  I  have  given  away, 
chiefly  to  young  Catholic  ladies.  I  really  believe  I  converted  one  by  it  un- 
intentionally. What  a  writer !  not  the  most  imaginative  or  the  most  sim- 
ple, not  Bacon  or  Goldsmith,  had  the  power  of  saying  more  forcibly  or 
completely  whatever  he  meant  to  say  1  " 

Of  Shelley  and  himself. 

"  I  have  been  looking  "  (26th  April,  1858)  "  into  the  life  of  Shelley.  I 
could  not  help  smiling  at  Shelley's  praise  of  me,  and  at  his  Hogg's  tossing 
up  Gebir  into  the  fire.*     Poor  Shelley  got  into  a  scrape  about  me  with 

*  See  ante,  p.  69,  and  also  p.  419,  note.  It  was  my  intention,  when  the  latter  note 
was  written,  to  have  made  allusion  to  the  effect  produced  on  Landor  by  a  detailed  nar- 
rative (I  found  it  among  his  papers)  of  all  the  circumstances  of  Shelley's  first  mar- 

41 


642  TWENTY-OXE   YEARS   AT   BATH.  1?°?*  v»-' 

1S36  •  57. 

Byron.  Yet,  ardent  as  he  was  in  my  favor,  I  refused  his  proffered  visit 
His  conduct  towards  his  first  wife  had  made  me  distrustful  of  him.  Yet, 
with  perhaps  the  single  exception  of  Burns,  he  and  Keats  were  inspired 
with  a  stronger  spirit  of  poetry  than  any  other  poets  since  Milton.  I  some- 
times fancy  that  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  comes  next  But  I  must 
confess  I  turn  more  frequently  to  Goldsmith.  A  very  little  of  what  is 
strange  estranges  me.  I  hate  new  dresses,  though  they  fit  close.  Never 
tell  me  again  of  any  one  who  either  praises  or  dispraises  me.  I  know 
what  I  am.  Shelley  and  Southey  know  it  also.  When  poets  extol  a  poet, 
be  sure  it  is  not  too  highly." 

Of  Sir  Robert  PeeT s  posthumous  Memoir.     (1853.) 

"  I  am  reading  Peel's  Memoir.  I  think  him  the  wisest  politician  since 
Walpole.  Shall  we  ever  have  a  third  Sir  Robert?  This  second  of  them 
knew  business  better,  and  had  a  finer  scent,  than  any  other  of  either  pack 
foxhound  or  beagle.  He  starts  the  old  question,  Is  fame  worth  having? 
No,  say  I;  but  we  are  born  with  an  appetite  for  it,  and  at  worst  there'is 
no  great  harm  in  its  indulgence.  It  is  certainly  well  that  statesmen  should 
desire  it.  Many  grave  men  and  most  politicians  think  of  lame  as  Castle- 
reagh  did,  and  aim  only  at  the  expedients  of  the  hour.  Entertaining  no 
passion  for  glory,  he  looked  at  the  future  with  indifference,  and,  armed 
against  himself,  he  leapt  across  its  boundary-line.  After  all,  unless  we 
deem  posthumous  glory  a  promise  made  in  earnest  to  our  labors  and  aspi- 
rations, nothing  is  there  true  and  real  beyond  the  immediate  grasp  of  our 
fingers.  It  is  impossible  that  a  great  man  should  be  contented  with  the 
greatness  which  a  less  man  can  confer,  or  that  a  prudent  one  should  think 
the  best  fortune  consists  in  a  life-annuity.  Nothing  is  less  selfish  than  a 
desire  of  fame,  since  its  only  sure  acquisition  is  by  laboring  for  others. 
And  yet  I  will  still  add,  for  myself,  that  I  care  not  for  it :  though  the  good 
Southey  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  literary  fame  was  the  only  fame  of 
which  a  wise  man  ought  to  be  ambitious.  Whatever  works  of  imagination 
I  have  composed  might  have  perished  the  next  hour  without  a  regret.  My 
pleasure  was  in  the  conception  and  formation  :  excitement,  not  hope,  interior 
glory,  not  external,  animated  and  sustained  me.  True  indeed  is  what  you 
have  often  told  me,  that  I  shall  have  to  wait  long  before  I  get  my  higher 
audience,  and  rule  over  the  See  appointed  for  me.  My  indifference  about 
it  is  therefore  fortunate  for  me  ;  and  being  so,  to  this  effect  I  give  you  my 
benediction,  and  pray  God  to  have  you  in  his  holy  keeping, 

"  Walter  Episcopus." 

The  remark  as  to  fame  there  quoted  from  Southey  was  one  of  the 
points  made  by  the  Quarterly  lievieiv  against  him  in  the  paper  re- 
ferred to  in  the  last  section.  It  is  only  half  given  by  Landor,  the 
entire  passage  standing  thus  :  "  Literary  fame  is  the  only  fame  of 
which  a  wise  man  ought  to  be  ambitious,  because  it  is  the  only  last- 
ing and  living  fame."  This  the  reviewer  turned  into  a  declaration  by 
Southey  of  his  belief  that  literature  is  "by  far  the  grandest  object 
of  human  concern,"  and  laughed  at  him  for  having  expressed  such 
an  opinion.     Southey  did  not  say  so,  but  gave  his  reason  for  thinking 

ringc,  and  its  disastrous  issue,  communicated  from  a  source  unhappily  only  too  au- 
thentic. Later  reflection  has.  however,  convinced  me  that  no  good  can  now  be  done  by 
reviving  a  subject  so  inexpressibly  painful. 


/ET.  61-82.]  SILENT   COMPANIONS.  643 

that  literary  fame  was  the  only  fame  of  which  a  wise  man  ought  to 
be  ambitious.  And  is  it  so,  or  is  it  uot  1  What  is  the  fame  that  the 
majority  of  sensible  men  perceive  to  be  the  most  durable  1  Would 
the  reviewer  himself  have  chosen  to  be  Augustus  or  Horace  1  Is  the 
fame  of  Elizabeth  or  Essex  preferable  to  that  of  Shakespeare  or 
Bacon  1  Who  now  would  not  rather  have  been  De  Foe  than  the 
statesman  who  put  him  in  the  pillory  1  Is  it  Johnson  or  Lord 
Chesterfield  who  at  present  stands  waiting  in  the  anteroom  1 
Southey's  proposition  is  as  surely  right  and  indisputable  as  the  re- 
viewer's construction  of  it  is  very  far  from  either.  A  man  who 
rightly  values  literary  fame  does  not  value  it  for  the  empty  and 
noisy  applause  it  reverberates,  but  for  the  solid  and  silent  good  it 
represents.  The  notion  that  literature  is  by  far  the  grandest  object 
of  human  concern,  which  is  the  expression  of  the  reviewer,  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  the  belief,  which  was  that  of  Southey,  that  the 
grandest  objects  of  human  concern  can  have  no  promoter  so  effectual 
as  literature,  nor  any  monument  so  enduring.  To  such  a  man  litera- 
ture is  the  means,  and  not  the  object  or  the  end.  Milton  had  no 
thought  of  personal  vanity  when  he  spoke  of  the  perpetuity  of  praise 
which  God  and  good  men  had  consented  should  be  the  reward  of 
those  whose  published  labors  had  advanced  the  good  of  mankind. 
Great  winters  who  understand  their  vocation  are  entitled  to  speak  as 
the  world's  unacknowledged  legislators  ;  and  even  the  reviewer  has 
to  admit,  of  Southey,  that  he  gave  the  first  effective  impulse  to  not 
a  few  of  the  most  marked  ameliorations  of  recent  years. 


On  the  subject  of  orthography  and  language,  supremely  Landor's 
favorite,  which  he  kept  steadily  before  him  in  all  his  reading,  and 
which  entered  very  largely  into  almost  all  his  letters  in  later  life,  I 
have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  add  many  illustrations  to  the  re- 
marks on  a  former  page.*  But  some  further  allusions  to  it  may  be 
not  unamusing,  and  they  will  show  his  whimsical  resentment  when 
anything  like  comparison  was  irreverently  made  between  his  and  the 
phonetic  style  of  spelling.  Of  the  latter,  Bath  was  in  some  sort  the 
head-quarters  at  this  time,  its  most  intelligent  advocate  residing 
there  ;  and  Hartley  Coleridge  had  this  much  excuse  for  a  statement 
he  made  that  Landor  had  become  a  convert  to  "  this  foolery."  But 
it  was  about  as  well  founded  as  Landor's  reply  that  there  were  not 
three  words'  in  all  his  proposed  new  spellings  unauthorized  in  their 
formation.  "  I  appeal  to  Ben  Jonson.  He  is  a  magistrate  in  lan- 
guage, and  I  only  wish  a  few  of  our  street-walking  ladies  and  gentle- 
men were  brought  before  him,  and  obliged  to  undergo  his  sentence." 
I  have  already  sufficiently  shown  that  this  appeal  would  not  have 
availed  my  old  friend  much,  and  that  with  all  his  toil  and  pains  he 

*  See  ante,  pp.  351  -  355. 


G44  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT   BATH.  'Tb^-™' 

has  gone  but  a  little  way  towards  the  correction  of  anomalies  very 
gravely  disconcerting  to  foreigners  as  well  as  to  all  intelligent  Eng- 
lishmen ;  but  it  was  nevertheless  this  firm  belief  that  in  the  changes 
he  proposed  he  was  only  restoring  the  legitimate  forms  of  the  lan- 
guage, added  to  his  knowledge  of  English  literature,  and  guided  by 
his  unusual  mastery  of  the  ancient  as  well  as  of  many  modern 
tongues,  which  enabled  him,  even  while  arguing  for  the  maintenance 
of  principles  and  positions  the  most  unstable  and  untenable,  to  make 
sound  and  important  contributions  in-  aid  of  what  he  so  much  de- 
sired. The  language  is  indebted  to  him  for  suggestions  of  the  great- 
est value  ;  and  the  character  of  them  is  intimated  more  or  less  in 
such  passages  as  I  am  now  about  to  quote  from  his  letters,  especially 
in  those  having  reference  to  the  system  of  spelling  after  sound,  or  of 
so  remodelling  orthography  that  it  should  follow  pronunciation. 

Of  Grote's  History. 

"  I  am  reading  "  (October,  1852)  "  Grote's  History.  "Wonderful  it  seems  to 
mo  that  a  writer  so  fresh  from  the  Attic,  and  particularly  so  conversant  with 
Thueydides,  should  stand  up  to  his  chin  among  the  green-grocery  of  Covent 
Garden !  It  would  however  be  ungrateful  to  collect  blemishes  of  language 
from  an  author  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  so  much  diligence  and  infor- 
mation, so  much  learning  and  wisdom.  The  days  of  pure  English  were 
over  with  Southey,  bright  as  they  had  been  with  Sterne,  Goldsmith,  and 
Mrs.  Inchbald.  We  now  break  loose  and  get  among  '  ambitions  '  and  '  peo- 
ples,' and  many  other  such  formidable  features,  repulsive  as  those  which 
jEneas  met  on  entering  the  gates  of  hell.  But  everybody  now  is  playing 
with  these  frightful  cobras,  and  putting  them  into  his  bosom.  As  people 
do  not  perceive  the  loss  of  freedom  until  it  is  utterly  gone,  neither  do  they 
the  loss  of  language :  nor  would  they  be  persuaded  though  such  a  prophet 
as  Milton  rose  from  the  dead." 

Of  Parts  of  Speech. 

"  I  have  been  reading  "  (1853)  "  a  clever  book,  A  Month  in  the  Camp 
"before  Sebaxtupo/,  and  would  have  given  five  pounds  rather  than  have  dis- 
covered in  it  such  a  word  as  traps.  Surely  this  word  ought  to  signify  only 
the  instruments  of  ratcatchers,  molecatchers,  and  such  like.  Alas  that  we 
are  sunk  into  the  sludge  of  slang  up  to  the  very  chin!  I  did  think  that  we 
never  could  sink  lower  after  we  had  discussed  a  dinner  with  the  undergrad- 
uates. How  the  gravy  flew  about !  and  do  not  you  sigh  over  the  stains  of  soup 
and  of  lolistcr-sauce  on  your  velvet  waistcoat  ?  I  beg  pardon:  there  is  no 
such  habiliment  in  modern  use :  vest  is  the  name.  I  still  wear  breeches  :  no 
other  man  alive  dares  to  appear  in  them :  there  are  inexpressibles,  unmen- 
tionables, pantaloons,  continuations,  shorts,  and  probably  several  more  in  the 
same  department  of  wardrobe.  We  certainly  are  in  these  matters  the  most 
vulgar  nation  upon  earth,  excepting  the  Americans,  who  are  our  continua- 
tions. And  how  poor  we  must  be.  We  run  to  borrow  a  shirt  from  a 
Frenchman,  calling  it  a  chemise  ;  and  the  lady  we  love  takes  refuge  in  the 
same  quarter  for  what  lies  nearest  to  her  heart,  and  gives  it  the  same  name. 
Whatever  is  graceful,  and  whatever  is  disgraceful,  we  borrow  from  our 
neighbor  ;  and  keep  for  ourselves  that  only  which  lies  between,  and  comes 
into  ordinary  and  homely  use." 


MT.  61-82.]  SILENT   COMPANIONS.  C45 

Of  Corruptions  of  Language. 

"  Here  is  a  gentleman  at  Bath,  Mr.  Ellis,  an  excellent  and  most  intelligent 
man,  I  hear,  who  has  published  a  book  recommending  us  to  spell  phonetically. 
Elphinstone,  seventy  or  eighty  years  ago,  wrote  in  this  fashion.  Imagine 
my  surprise  at  being  told  that  a  work  was  composed  on  my  principles  of 
spelling.  All  my  principles  are  merely  the  adoption  of  the  best  spellings 
of  the  best  writers,  and  the  rejection  of  the  fopperies  introduced  with 
Charles  the  Second.  The  cavaliers  (as  fops  were  called)  wished  to  make 
the  ladies  believe  that  they  or  their  fathers  had  emigrated  to  France,  and 
thought  it  as  glorious  to  be  unruly  in  their  language  as  in  their  conduct. 
Cowfey  and  Dryden  were  courtiers.  Pope  hated  kings,  who  really  were 
hateful;  but  he 'imitated  the  spelling  of  ladies,  beautiful  as  his  language  is; 
and  before  he  died  he  had  read  and  ridiculed  Middleton,  some  of  whose 
peculiarities,  good  and  bad,  I  also  have  noted.  For  several  years  subse- 
quently there  were  but  few  innovations.  People  threw  into  the  lumber- 
room  their  old  bandy-legged  chairs,  and  would  have  nothing  that  was  not 
stuffed  with  Latin  and  quilted  into  stiffness.  It  was  hardly  to  be  expected 
that  dons  and  doctors  would  go  into  a  dame's  school ;  but  Mrs.  Inchbald 
and  Mrs.  Barbauld  made  themselves  greater  authorities  than  all  Oxford  and 
Cambridge.  We  have  rarely  had  two  better  writers  of  English  in  the  best 
of  times.  What  I  had  in  view  when  I  began  my  letter  is  this.  You  have 
the  power  of  a  sanitary  commissioner,  and  can  command  the  stopping  up 
of  several  open  sewers  in  our  language.  Do  order  that  paling  to  be  re- 
moved which  shuts  up  perhaps,  indeed,  and  too  when  too  means  also.  This 
has  no  parallel  in  any  other  language  ;  and  even  those  who  commit  the  folly 
would  abstain  from  it  in  writing  French  or  Italian  or  Greek  or  Latin.  The 
last  innovation  every  where  and  no  where  in  two  words,  as  if  -where  were  a 
substantive.  I  find  also  every  body  :  while  body  is  inviolate,  why  should 
everybody  be  sawed  asunder,  like  St.  Bartholomew  ?  I  have  now  said  my 
say  and  filled  my  sheet ;  so  adieu." 

Of  his  own  proposed  Amendments. 

"  I  have  read  attentively  "  (1854)  "  Mr.  Ellis's  observations  on  orthog- 
raphy. Different  authors  have  given  different  reasons  for  varieties.  Southey 
told  me  when  he  visited  me  at  Clifton,  now  some  twenty  years  since,  that 
it  would  ruin  him  to  spell  right,  for  that  fifty  copies  of  his  book  would 
never  sell.  Archdeacon  Hare,  not  inferior  to  Archbishop  Whately  in  purity 
of  style  and  correctness  of  thought,  had  the  courage  to  follow  my  preterites 
and  participles  and  other  words.  In  my  Last  Fruits  off  an  Old  Tree.  I  have 
added  high  authorities  ;  in  fact  I  never  have  spelt  differently  from  the  ladies 
and  gentlemen  now  flourishing  without  high  authority  or  strict  analogy. 
Our  language  was  first  corrupted  by  the  euphuists :  it  had  reached  perfection 
under  the  compilers  of  our  Church  service.  It  fell  prostrate  in  the  slipperi- 
ness  and  filth  about  Charles  II.,  when  every  gentleman  wisht  it  to  be 
thought  that  he  had  been  an  exile  for  his  adherence  to  royalty  so  long  as  to 
have  forgotten  his  mother  tongue.  Cowley  and  Dryden,  and  South  him- 
self, were  rudely  slovenly.  The  sublime  sanctity  of  Milton  was  as  pure  in 
utterance  as  in  thought;  he  never  was  seized  by  the  private  influenza,  he 
never  went  into  places  where  it  could  be  caught.  Spenser,  Bacon,  Raleigh, 
Algernon  Sydney,  and  De  Foe  are  leaders  '  sermone  pedestri '  ;  but  they 
varied  in  the  spelling  of  several  words.  The  French  were  no  less  ambitious 
of  polishing  their  language  than  their  manners.  Montaigne  and  Charron 
had  been  contented  with  simplicity ;   Madame  de   Sevigne  and  Menage 


G-46  TWENTY-ONE    YEARS    AT   BATH.  ^J,*- 57."" 

added  grace  ;  but  what  even  these  had  failed  to  supply  came  with  Voltaire. 
Francais  the  king  was  separated,  as  kings  usually  are,  from  Francois  the 
people;  and  the  people,  and  children,  were  taught  to  write  aimait  and 
aimaient.  Mr.  Ellis  quotes  a  learned  gentleman  who  reproves  his  son  lor 
ill  orthography.  What  is  ill  orthography  but  ill  right-spelling?  He  tells 
us  that  we  no  longer  use  ill  as  an  adjective.  The  ill  is  ill-used.  Do  we  not 
continue  to  say  an  ill-turn  ?  and  ill-recompensed  ?  and  ill-taught '?  and  ill- 
managed  ?  In  the  same  line  he  adds,  'nor  insert  do.'  Surely  we  do  insert 
it  when  we  desire  to  lay  stress  on  what  we  say.  I  do  love;  I  do  hate. 
In  the  next  line  he  objects  to  th  as  the  final  letters  of  the  present  tense 
in  the  third  person,  where  s  would  serve.  Generally  such  a  termination 
should  be  avoided,  but  never  or  very  rarely  when  the  next  word  begins 
with  8.  I  dissent  altogether  from  Mr.  Ellis's  proposition,  that  there  is  no 
one  who  would  dream  of  altering  a  great  writer's  language.  'Yet  we  ex- 
pect to  find  the  spelling  of  the  new  hook  somewhat  different  from  that  of 
the  old.'  Rusticus,  and  only  Rusticus,  expectat.  Scholars  and  sound  labo- 
rious critics  have  been  careful  in  collating  the  editions  of  both  ancient  and 
more  recent  authors.  Aulus  Gellius  tells  us  that  Virgil  wrote  differently 
the  same  word.  He  wrote  but  twenty  years  after  Catullus,  yet  although 
they  were  also  of  the  same  province,  their  spelling  was  unlike.  Virgil 
never  wrote  qtwi,  as  Catullus  did  uniformly  ;  and  although  he  wrote  ver- 
nacularly in  the  person  of  a  peasant,  he  wrote  cvjum,  not  quorjum.  Catul- 
lus employed  the  language  of  Cicero  and  Julius  Caesar;  Virgil  that  of 
Augustus  and  his  court.  Fortunately  we  possess  the  comedies  of  Terence 
and  of  Plautus,  the  richest  treasures  of  Latinity.  We  there  see  the  very 
handwriting  of  the  Scipios  and  the  Gracchi.  I  much  commend  the  pub- 
lisher of  Milton's  works  who  observed  his  orthography.  The  same  had 
already  been  done  by  Tyrwhitt  in  his  Chaucer;  and  Spenser  has  been 
thought  as  capable  of  spelling  as  Dyche.  Paradise  Lost  was  never  indeed 
seen  printed  by  the  author,  who  had  lost  his  sight  before  its  publication  : 
but  there  is  little,  doubt  that  he  ordered  his  daughter  to  observe  the  spell- 
ing of  a  few  particular  words,  such  as  sovran,  in  which  he  adopted  the 
Italian  type  preferably  to  the  French.  Mr.  Ellis  asks,  'Does  not  common 
sense  revolt  against  Tillotson's  alterations  of  Bacon  to  make  him  more 
eloquent?'  But  change  of  spelling  can  produce  no  such  effect ;  and  it  is 
laughable  to  think  of  Tillotson  working  such  a  miracle.  Mr.  Ellis  also 
speaks  of  Wordsworth ;  but,  though  a  poet  of  the  highest  claims,  it  is 
neither  in  the  same  kind  nor  in  the  same  degree  as  Chaucer,  whose  inven- 
tion, spirit,  and  variety  are  equalled  by  Shakespeare  and  by  Milton  only. 
Some  sonnets  Wordsworth  has  written  that  Milton  might  have  owned,  but 
he  could  no  more  have  written  the  Canterbury  Tales  than  he  could  have 
written  Paradise  Lost,  the  Samson  Agonistes,  the  Allegro,  the  Penseroso, 
the  sonnet  to  Cromwell,  or  that  sublimest  of  psalms,  the  Invocation  to  God 
on  his  murdered  saints  in  Piedmont.  Is  it  not  perilous,  Mr.  Ellis  asks,  to 
let  our  spelling  change  with  every  generation  ?  Yes  indeed.  Therefore  I 
would  set  my  foot  against  these  changes  as  the}'  are  rolling  on  and  accumu- 
lating. He  'puts  it  to  the  mass  of  writers  even  among  ourselves,  whether 
they  would  wish  to  have  their  own  punctuation  preserved  in  their  printed 
works.'  I  know  little  about  the  mass  of  writers.  I  can  only  say  that,  to 
my  certain  knowledge,  those  who  are  not  the  mass  have  complained  to  me 
that  theirs  was  not  preserved;  Southey  in  particular,  and  our  English 
Thucydides,  the  illustrious  historian  of  the  Peninsular  War:  I  will  add 
myself;  for  you  know,  my  dear  Porster,  that  I  yielded  to  you  in  the  prep- 
aration of  my  collected  works.     In  punctuation  we  differ  from  all  other 


JET.  61-82.]  LAST   DATS   IN   BATH.  647 

nations.  We  think  we  are  never  safe  without  a  sentinel  on  each  side  of 
our  perhaps,  of  too,  of  however,  &c.  In  fact  I  think  too  many  stops  stop 
the  way,  and  that  every  sixth  or  seventh  is  uncalled  for.  I  have  gone 
further  into  these  questions  than  any  of  my  countrymen  has  gone  before ; 
whether  in  a  right  direction  will  be  decided  in  another  age.  I  call  upon 
no  one  to  follow  me,  but  to  be  obedient  to  grave  authority,  and  never  re- 
calcitrant against  strict  analogy." 


XIV.    LAST  DAYS  IN  BATH,  AND  FINAL  DEPARTURE  FROM 

ENGLAND. 

• 

"  I  have  been  out  of  doors,"  Landor  wrote  to  me  in  the  autumn  of 

1856,  "  not  more  than  twice  in  fifty-nine  days,  a  few  minutes  in  each. 
I  think  I  will  go  and  die  in  Italy,  but  not  in  my  old  home.  It  is 
pleasant  to  see  the  sun  about  one's  death-bed."  It  was  only  a  passing 
wish  he  thus  expressed,  but  it  was  destined  to  have  sad  fulfilment. 

Knowing  the  condition  of  health  in  which  he  was  at  the  opening  of 

1857,  it  was  a  great  shock  to  me  to  find  that  he  had  been  summoned 
to  give  evidence  in  the  Bath  county  court  upon  a  miserable  squabble 
about  a  governess.  The  case  came  on  in  January,  when,  in  spite  of 
a  doctor's  certificate  of  his  unfitness  to  appear,  he  was  brought  to  the 
court ;  and  such  was  the  excitement  that  followed  and  the  exhaustion 
consequent  upon  it,  that  there  was  for  some  time  reason  to  apprehend 
a  very  grave  result.  He  could  hardly  have  put  any  part  of  this  affair 
into  a  conversation  that  should  pair  off  with  his  Epicurus,  Ternis- 
sa,  and  Leontion ; #  and  yet,  with  all  its  miserable  sequel,  it  must 
be  said  to  have  had  its  origin  in  desires  and  tastes  closely  akin  to 
those  expressed  in  that  dialogue,  where  the  love  of  the  very  old  for 
the  society  of  the  very  young  is  made  enchanting  by  all  that  the 
Graces  can  surround  it  with.  Poor  Landor  had  always  the  belief, 
that,  after  the  fashion  of  the  ancient  philosopher,  and  with  the  same 
sort  of  charming  help,  he  might  be  able  to  adora  and  smoothen,  for 
himself  also,  the  declivity  of  age ;  and  if  for  the  moment,  to  avoid 
mention  of  the  names  of  the  ladies  who  now  make  brief  appearance 
in  his  story,  I  borrow  for  them  the  old  Greek  names,  they  at  least 
will  have  no  cause  to  complain.  It  is  not  the  reality,  but  the  fiction, 
which  such  a  comparison  wTill  place  at  disadvantage  ;  for,  disastrous 
as  the  end  was  here,  it  does  not  therefore  follow  that  Epicurus  was 
wrong.  Unhappily  everything  depends  in  such  a  case  upon  the 
choice  of  your  Ternissa  and  Leontion. 

This  was  nearly  the  first  year  in  which  we  failed  to  meet  on  the 
30th  of  January.  Landor  had  found  himself  able  however  to  write 
to  his  brother  Henry  on  that  day.  Some  question  as  to  the  burning 
down  of  a  barn  at  Llanthony  had  been  referred  to  him  ;  to  which  he 
replied,  wuth  even  more  than  his  usual  unreason  as  to  such  things, 
that  neither  his  cousin  Walter   Landor  of  Rugely  (co-trustee  with 

*  See  ante,  p.  429. 


648  TWENTY-ONE   TEARS   AT   BATH.  ^il^i^"' 

Henry  of  the  Llanthony  estate  since  his  brother  Charles's  death)  nor 
the  manager  of  the  property,  Mr.  Edwards,  had  mentioned  the  inci- 
dent to  him,  knowing  well  his  wish  never  to  hear  anything  about  his 
estate,  and  acting  upon  his  repeated  instructions  that  they  should 
tell  him  nothing.  He  added  that  before  he  left  England  seventy-two 
thousand  pounds  had  been  sunk  on  Llanthony,  and  in  the  last  thirty 
years  three  hundred  a  year  on  an  average,  including  a  small  part  on 
Ipsley ;  and  that  there  was  nothing  he  now  so  little  desired  as  that 
any  more  money  should  be  laid  out  on  any  part  of  it  in  future. 
"  Three  months  hence  I  shall  once  more  purchase  a  landed  property, 
situated  in  the  parish  of  Widcombe,  and  comprising  by  actual  admeas- 
urement eight  feet  by  four,  next  adjoining  the  church  tower  in  said 
parish.  No  magpie  drapery,  no  lead,  no  rascals  in  hatbands,  no 
horses  in  full  feathers'  for  me.  Six  old  chairmen  are  sufficient.  I 
thought  once  of  complying  with  your  kind  wish  that  I  shoidd  lie  at 
Tachbrooke,*  but  I  am  not  worth  the  carriage  so  far."  He  alluded 
then  to  the  illness  that  had  borne  down  upon  him  so  heavily ;  men- 
tioned a  bequest  from  Kenyon  of  a  hundred  pounds  ;  and  grieved 
that  so  hearty  and  genial  a  man,  thirteen  years  younger  than  himself, 
should  have  died  before  him.  "  And  now  again  about  dying.  Out 
of  my  hundred  pounds,  when  I  get  it,  I  will  reserve  ten  for  my 
funeral,  with  strict  orders  that  the  sum  may  not  be  exceeded;  and  the 
gravestone  and  grave  will  amount  to  nearly  or  qtute  ten  more.  As  I 
can  live  without  superfluities,  surely  I  can  die  without  them." 

Not  long  after  this  letter  was  written  I  sent  him  the  legacy,  and 
soon  discovered  that  even  as  much  as  ten  pounds  of  it  had  not  been 
reserved  to  himself,  either  for  festivity  or  funeral.  The  whole  of  it 
went  as  a  "  new-year's  gift "  to  the  youthful  Ternissa,  by  whom  one 
half  of  it  was  subsequently  transferred,  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
original  giver,  to  the  less  youthful  Leontion,  for  part  payment  of 
costs  incurred  at  the  trial  about  the  governess  ;  and  some  differences 
arising  thereon  took  afterwards  a  character  of  bitterness  such  as  never 
can  possibly  belong  to  any  but  a  woman's  quarrel.  Hardly  had  the 
strife  broken  out  when  Landor  flung  himself  headlong  into  it ;  not  by 
any  means,  wildly  inconsiderate  at  all  times  as  his  conduct  was,  out  of 
any  impulse  at  the  time  to  be  called  unworthy.  Though  the  part  he 
took  could  not  at  any  stage  of  it  be  pronounced  right,  there  were 
many  excuses  to  be  suggested  for  it  until  he  had  himself  rendered  it 
ignoble.  He  chose  to  assume,  gratuitously  enough,  but  less  so  in  the 
particular  case  than  his  custom  ordinarily  was,  not  merely  that  he 
himself  had  suffered  wrong  (on  which  point  there  was  a  great  deal  to 
have  been  said,  if  he  had  not  taken  from  his  friends  all  power  of  say- 
ing it),  but  that  a  very  young  lady  who  had  claims  on  his  friendly 
protection  had  been  made  the  victim  of  injustice  by  another  lady  not 
bo  young  :  and  that  upon  him,  in  such  circumstances,  devolved  the 
duty  of  hurling  vengeance  at  her  oppressor.     An  obligation  of  which 

*  Ante,  p.  443,  note. 


JET.  61-82.]  LAST   DAYS   IN   BATH.  G49 

he  straightway  proceeded  to  discharge  himself,  after  no  other  than  his 
most  ordinary  method. 

Believing  here,  as  at  every  quarrel  in  which  he  had  ever  been  en- 
gaged, that  he  saw  on  one  side  a  fiend  incarnate  and  on  the  other  an 
angel  of  light,  he  permitted  that  astounding  credulity  to  work  his 
irascibility  into  madness ;  and  there  was  then  as  much  good  to  be  got 
by  reasoning  with  him  as  by  arguing  with  a  storm  off  Cape  Horn.  It 
was  vain  to  point  out  to  him  that  he  had  nothing  himself  to  gain 
from  so  sordid  a  dispute  ;  that  what  he  had  lost  was  gone  irrecover- 
ably ;  and  that  there  was  no  such  mighty  difference  between  the 
cause  he  championed  and  that  which  he  assailed,  to  justify  or  call  for 
interference.  Why  should  I  once  more  repeat  what  this  narrative 
has  told  so  often  \  He  rejected  every  warning,  rushed  into  print, 
and  found  himself  enmeshed  in  an  action  for  libel. 

On  hearing  this  I  proceeded  to  Bath,  and  he  was  extricated  for  a 
time  ;  but  I  quitted  the  place  with  a  sorrowful  misgiving  that  the 
last  illness  of  the  old  man,  while  it  had  left  him  subject  to  the  same 
transitory  storms  of  frantic  passion,  had  permanently  also  weakened* 
him,  mentally  yet  more  than  bodily  ;  and  that,  even  when  anger  was 
no  longer  present  to  overcloud  his  intellect,  there  had  ceased  to  be 
really  available  to  his  use  such  a  faculty  of  discrimination  between 
right  and  wrong,  or  such  a  saving  consciousness  of  evil  from  good,  as 
is  necessary  to  constitute  a  responsible  human  being.  He  had  not 
now  even  memory  enough  to  recollect  what  he  was  writing  from  day 
to  day ;  and  while  the  power  of  giving  keen  and  clear  expression  to 
every  passing  mood  of  bitterness  remained  to  him,  his  reason  had 
too  far  deserted  him  to  leave  it  other  than  a  fatal  gift.  He  could 
apply  no  gauge  or  measure  to  what  he  was  bent  on  either  doing  or 
saying  ;  he  seemed  no  longer  to  have  the  ability  to  see  anything  not 
palpably  before  him ;  and  of  the  effect  of  any  given  thing  on  his 
own  or  another's  reputation,  he  was  become  wholly  powerless  to 
judge.  Changes  in  him  there  also  were  which  otherwise  painfully 
affected  me.  He  had  so  long  and  steadily  consented  to  act  on  my 
advice  exclusively  in  the  publication  of  his  writings,  that  here  I  be- 
lieved I  had  still  some  efficient  control.  Unhappily  it  proved  to  be 
not  so.  There  had  come  to  be  mixed  up  with  the  miserable  quarrel 
a  question  as  to  a  portfolio  containing  a  great  many  scraps  of  his 
poetry,  either  of  very  old  or  of  very  recent  date,  in  effect  little  more 
than  the  mere  sweepings  and  refuse  of  his  writing-desk  ;  which  he 
had  lent  to  one  of  the  parties  in  the  squabble  for  transcription  of 
some,  portion  of  its  contents,  and  which  he  professed  to  have  been 
unable  to  get  back  until  he  had  publicly  advertised  its  unauthorized 
detention.  The  whole  of  this  collection  of  pieces,  for  the  most  part 
entirely  unworthy  of  him,  I  left  him  determined  to  put  into  print, 
against  my  earnest  and  repeated  remonstrance.  It  was  his  plan  to 
publish  them  as  dry  leaves  ;  and  they  became  ultimately  the  book 
called  Dry  Sticks.     He  grieved  to  do  anything  in  the  teeth  of  my 


G50  TWENTY-ONE   TEAKS   AT   BATH.  ^.836*™' 

advice,  he  said  ;  but,  if  he  did  not  publish  the  poems,  others  would. 
He  had  for  the  time  persuaded  himself  that  he  had  really  no  other 
motive  ;  vet  I  could  not  hut  suspect  that  another,  quite  unconsciously 
to  himself,  lurked  behind  ;  and  that  he  thought  he  might  thus  find 
excuse  for  occasional  covert  allusion  to  occurrences  which  the  result 
of  my  interference  had  bound  him,  not  indeed  by  express  agreement 
on  my  part  (as  erroneously  supposed  at  the  time),  but  by  honorable 
understanding  on  his,  no  longer  to  notice  openly. 

1  left  Bath  in  the  September  of  1857,  and  to  the  close  of  that  year 
he  never  recovered  strength.  "  My  weakness,"  he  wrote  to  me  in  the 
middle  of  October,  "  is  excessive.  With  extreme  difficulty  do  I  weigh 
myself  up  from  my  arm-chair.  My  good  and  most  intelligent  friend, 
Dr.  Watson,  is  very  attentive  to  me,  and  says  my  constitution  will 
bear  me  through.  I  doubt  whether  this  is  good  intelligence.  The 
same  spasms,  in  that  case,  will  come  over  again  some  other  time,  and 
I  wish  it  were  all  at  an  end  now."  He  had  nevertheless  persisted  in 
his  determination  to  print  what  I  thought  so  worthless  as  well  as  so 
•objectionable,  having  found  a  publisher  to  undertake  it  in  Edinburgh, 
on  my  declining  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it  in  London  ;  he  had 
further  availed  himself  of  my  continued  opposition  to  withhold  any 
sight  of  the  proofs ;  and  by  the  merest  accident  it  came  to  my 
knowledge  that  the  publication  would  be  unworthy  of  him  in  more 
senses  than  one,  for  that  allusion  would  certainly  be  made  in  it  to 
what  he  should  have  felt  himself  bound  never  to  reopen.  I  wrote 
upon  this  to  his  solicitors,  and  to  a  kindly  and  zealous  friend  (Captain 

B )  ;  by  whom  again  the  case  was  stated  to  him,  with  all  that 

a  persistence  in  his  disastrous  course  would  involve  ;  and  from  them 
came  an  assurance  to  me  shortly  afterward  that  everything  wrong 
would  he  erased.  Never  at  any  previous  period  of  our  twenty-two 
years  of  uninterrupted  intercourse  had  it  occurred  to  me  to  doubt 
him,  when  once  his  word  had  been  given  ;  often  as  I  had  seen  him 
put  passion  before  reason,  there  was  yet  a  nobler  part  of  his  char- 
acter which  as  often  had  asserted  itself;  and  the  foreboding  calamity 
which  now  pressed  itself  upon  me,  against  all  the  comforting  reassur- 
ances I  received,  arose  simply  from  a  feeling  it  was  impossible  to  re- 
sist, that  age  and  illness  had  conquered  him  at  last,  and  left  him 
other  than  the  Landor  I  had  known.  It  was  a  sorry  satisfaction 
afterwards  to  feel  that  nothing  had  happened  to  him  which  had  not 
been  foretold,  nor  anything  in  the  way  of  warning  omitted  that 
could  possibly  have  saved  him.  But  this  undoubtedly  was  the  case, 
and  1  had  only  to  guard  myself  then  against  other  consequences. 
"  I  bear  von  no  ill-will,  Lizzy,"  says  Mr.  Bennet  in  Miss  Austen's  de- 
lightful novel,  "for  being  justified  in  the  warning  you  gave  me. 
Considering  how  matters  turned  out,  I  think  this  shows  magna- 
nimity."  Whether  my  old  friend  was  ever  to  have  enough  of  his  old 
self  restored  to  enable  him  to  show  this  magnanimity,  will  in  due 
time  be  seen. 


JET.  61-82.]  IAST  DAYS   IN   BATH.  651 

Let  the  reader  meanwhile  take  this  additional  evidence  of  the 
strange  state  of  Landor's  mind  at  the  moment.  He  persisted  for 
some  time  in  making  it  a  condition  with  his  new  publisher,  Mr. 
Nichol  of  Edinburgh,  that  his  name  should  appear  on  the  title-page 
of  his  book  as  "  the  late  W.  S.  Landor."  I  learn  this  from  the  very 
earnest  remonstrance  of  Mr.  Nichol.  "  I  take  the  liberty,"  that  gen- 
tleman wrote  (December  17,  1857),  "of  begging  you  to  allow  me  to 
make  the  title  stand  thus,  Dry  Sticks,  Faggoted  by  W.  S.  Landor,  and 
not,  as  you  still  continue  to  write  it,  the  late  W.  S.  Landor.  It  will 
sufficiently  pain  many,  when,  in  God's  good  time,  you  will  be  spoken 
of  as  the  late :  and  I  think  the  expression  would  jar  on  the  ear  of  all 
your  friends,  as  it  does  on  mine."  The  good  publisher  carried  his 
point,  and  it  was  well  that  he  should  ;  but  in  the  strange  suggestion 
so  persistently  made,  there  was,  alas,  some  truth,  for  much  that  had 
constituted  the  Landor  known  to  his  friends  had  for  the  present  de- 
parted. Whether  it  was  destined  ever  to  return,  none  might  say ; 
but  it  had  become,  at  this  time,  a  thing  of  the  past. 

I  had  greatly  desired  to  visit  him  in  the  January  of  1858,  but  the 
character  and  tone  of  his  letters  dissuaded  me  ;  and  the  book  to 
which  I  had  so  strongly  objected  was  at  last  on  the  eve  of  its  ap- 
pearance when  he  thus  wrote  :  "All  this  illness  is  too  surely  coming 
over  again.  What  a  pity  that  Death  should  have  made  two  bites 
of  a  cherry  !  He  seems  to  grin  at  me  for  saying  so,  and  to  shake 
in  my  face  as  much  of  a  fist  as  belongs  to  him.  But  he  knows  I 
never  cared  a  fig  for  his  menaces,  and  am  now  quite  ready  to  let  him 
have  his  way.  Alas,  alas  !  as  we  have  talked  together  for  so  many 
years,  we  shall  never  talk  again.  Why  cannot  this  swimming  of  the 
head  carry  me  to  the  grave  a  little  more  rapidly  1  This  is  the  only 
thing  I  now  desire.  I  remember  faces  and  places,  but  their  names  I 
totally  forget.  Verses  of  the  Odyssea  and  Iliad  run  perpetually  into 
my  mind,  after  the  better  part  of  a  century,  and  there  seems  to  be 
no  longer  room  there  for  anvthing  else."  I  believe  him  now  indeed 
to  have  become,  for  the  mere  time  at  least,  impatient  for  the  close, 
and  to  have  had  the  sense  that  it  might  have  been  happier  for  him 
to  have  seen  it  earlier.     As  he  so  finely  said  in  his  ode  to  Southey, 

"  We  hurry  to  the  river  we  must  cross, 

And  swifter  downward  every  footstep  wends;     • 
Happy  who  reach  it  ere  they  count  the  loss 
Of  half  their  faculties  and  half  their  friends !  " 

Soon  I  was  told  what  occasioned  me  no  surprise,  that  the  book 
just  published  contained  in  other  forms  the  objectionable  passages  on 
whose  erasure  I  had  insisted,  as  well  as  all  the  scrapings  and  rubbish 
of  his  desk  ;  the  only  skadow  of  an  excuse  made  for  the  appearance 
of  such  "  levities  "  being  a  notification  at  the  back  of  the  title-page 
that  "  none  would  have  been  collected  but  that  a  copy  of  the  greater 
number  was  without  the  knowledge  or  consent  of  the  author  pro- 
cured from  a  person  who  had  engaged  to  transcribe  them,"  thereby 


652  TWENTY-ONE  TEARS  AT  BATH.  ^xStfitf!1' 

rendering  necessary  such  precaution  as  only  publication  could  afford 
"  against  subtraction,  or  what  is  worse,  addition."  It  is  hardly  ne- 
cessary to  add  that  very  shortly,  with  even  less  surprise,  I  learnt  that 
friends  of  my  own  in  Bath  had  already  heard  whispers  of  another 
contemplated  action  for  libel.  But  a  graver  announcement  made  to 
me  only  a  few  days  later  threw  everything  else  into  the  shade.  On 
the  28th  of  March  one  of  Landor's  nieces  wrote  to  me  that  she  had 
been  called  suddenly  to  her  uncle  Walter.  He  had  been  found  in- 
sensible on  the  previous  morning,  and  had  continued  in  that  state 
twenty-four  hours.  During  the  four  hours  previous  to  her  writing  he 
had  begun  very  slightly  to  rally,  but  his  condition  continued  to  lie 
extremely  precarious.  During  the  next  week  accounts  were  sent  me 
daily  ;  skilful  physicians,  Dr.  Watson  and  Dr.  M'Dermott,  and  his  kind 
good  nieces,  were  in  constant  attendance  ;  and  few  dared  to  hope  against 
hope  in  such  a  case.  But  the  struggle  was  short  though  sharp  ;  the  grim 
visitor  was  beaten  off  once  more ;  and  his  first  letter  to  me  after  get- 
ting again  into  his  drawing-room  was  in  the  old  characteristic  vein. 
It  told  me  of  books  he  had  been  reading,  of  Shelley's  life,  and  of  his 
old  favorite  Swift ;  and  closed  thus  :  "  I  take  it  uncivil  in  Death  to 
invite  and  then  to  balk  me.  It  was  troublesome  to  walk  back,  when 
I  found  he  would  not  take  me  in.  I  do  hope  and  trust  he  will  never 
play  me  the  same  trick  again.  We  ought  both  of  us  to  be  graver." 
I  had  expressed  a  wish  that  he  would  as  soon  as  possible  try  change 
of  scene,  and,  by' way  of  bringing  round  us  some  old  and  pleasant 
memories,  had  told  him  of  a  cottage  I  proposed  to  take  at  Wimble- 
don. With  such  quickness  he  replied,  and  in  such  genial  temper, 
that  I  began  to  understand  what  was  told  me  by  those  around  him  in 
his  illness,  that  this  last  attack,  bringing  him  as  it  did  to  the  very 
verge  of  the  grave,  had  yet  seemed  in  its  retreat  to  have  left  his 
mind  less  clouded  than  at  any  time  during  the  two  years  preceding. 
I  could  hardly  expect  that  he  would  come  ;  but  his  refusal,  and  the 
kindly  bit  of  doggerel  verse  sent  with  it,  very  pleasantly  told  me  that 
old  simple  scenes  and  enjoyments  had  been  again  in  his  thoughts. 

"  I  nevermore  shall  have  the  luck 
To  feed  apain  the  lonely  duck 

Upon  the  lake  of  WimMcdon. 
Forster,  as  jovial  and  as  kind 
As  Kenvon,  finds  me  less  inclined, 

Now  he  and  health  alike  are  gone. 

"  Here  you  see  all  T  can  do.  Yesterday  "  (the  letter  is  dated  in  the 
middle  of  June,  1858)  "I  drove  out  for  the  first  time,  and  was  less 
fatigued  than  I  expected.     My  object  was  my  burial-ground.     It  has 

been  fixt  on,  near  the  church  tower  at  Widcombe.  Napier's  father  lies 
buried  there,  he  told  me.  Sixty  years  ago,  in  this  season,  I  promised 
a  person  I  dearly  loved  it  should  be  there.  We  were  sitting  under 
some  old  elders,  now  supplanted  by  a  wall  of  the  churchyard."  At 
the  end  of  the  same  month  I  had  further  proof  of  how  strongly  his 


JET.  61-82.]  FINAL   DEPARTURE   FROM   ENGLAND.  G53 

thoughts  were  bent  in  this  direction.     He  sent  me  an  epitaph  he  had 
written  for  himself. 

"  Ut  sine  censura,  sine  laude  inscripta,  sepulcro 
Sint  patris  ac  matris  nomina  sola  meo: 
At  puro  invidiam,  sua  gloria  rara,  poetae 
Incumbeute  rosa  laurus  obumbret  liumum." 

"  But  then,"  he  added,  "  you  see  the  verses  are  not  fitted  for  a  stone. 
Nor  do  I  care  a  straw  whether  a  rose  and  laurel  cover  my  bones. 
Sandford  will  see  them  run  to  earth."  He  had  no  consciousness  as 
yet  that  others  were  already  in  hot  pursuit  of  him,  with  quite  other 
than  roses  or  laurels  in  their  hands ;  and  that  the  chase  would  only 
end  when  his  bones  had  been  run  to  earth  in  an  Italian  burial-ground. 
The  blow  fell  at  last  so  suddenly  that  I  only  heard  of  what  had 
been  determined  after  the  resolution  was  taken.  Told  by  his  law 
advisers  that  the  matter  complained  of  was  such  that  an  adverse  ver- 
dict must  be  expected,  and  that  the  damages  would  necessarily  be 
heavier  because  of  the  breach  of  an  undertaking  which  they  had 
themselves  given  in  his  name  upon  my  interference  in  the  previous 
year,  —  a  plan  at  that  time  started,  and  only  then  at  my  suggestion 
abandoned,  was  at  the  same  interview  put  before  Landor,  and  eagerly 
assented  to.  This  was,  that  he  should  place  his  property  beyond 
seizure  for  damages,  break  up  his  house  in  Bath,  sell  his  pictures,and 
return  to  Italy.  There  was  no  time  to  lose  if  such  a  scheme  were 
to  be  carried  out  successfully  ;  and  it  was  with  supreme  astonishment 
I  received  an  intimation,  telegraphed  at  midday  from  Bath  on  the 
12th  of  July,  1858,  that  Landor  would  be  at  my  house  in  London 
that  night,  accompanied  by  one  of  his  nieces.  Some  friends  were 
dining  with  me,  among  them  Mr.  Dickens,  who,  on  the  arrival  of  the 
old  man  too  fatigued  by  his  journey  to  be  able  to  join  the  dinner- 
table,  left  the  room  to  see  him ;  and  from  another  friend,  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Elwin,  who  was  also  one  of  the  party,  I  received  very  lately  a 
letter  reminding  me  of  what  occurred.  "  I  thought  that  Landor 
would  talk  over  with  him  the  unpleasant  crisis  ;  and  I  shall  never 
forget  my  amazement  when  Dickens  came  back  into  the  room  laugh- 
ing, and  said  that  he  found  him  very  jovial,  and  that  his  whole  con- 
versation was  upon  the  character  of  Catullus,  Tibullus,  and  other 
Latin  poets."  He  crossed  to  France  four  days  later,  on  the  morning 
of  the  15th  of  July ;  and  I  never  saw  him  again. 


BOOK    EIGHTH. 

1858-1864.     Mt.  83-89. 

LAST  SIX   YEARS   IX   ITALY. 

I.   In  his  Old  Home. —  II.   At  Siena.  —  III.   In  Florence.  —  IV.   Five  Unpub- 
lished Scenes,  being  the  last  Imaginary  Conversations.  —  V.   The  Close. 

I.    IN  HIS   OLD   HOME. 

Landor  went  first  to  Genoa,  and  there  it  was  his  intention  to  have 
stayed ;  but  considerations  urged  by  members  of  his  family  pre- 
vailed, and  he  decided  to  move  on  to  his  old  home  in  Fiesole. 

Before  he  left  Genoa  the  advice  on  which  he  quitted  England  had 
been  embodied  in  legal  forms,  and  he  had  assigned  over  to  others  the 
property  reserved  to  his  use  under  the  trust-deeds  of  Llanthony.  It 
was  his  own  wish  that  the  assignment  should  have  been  made  to  one 
of  his  nieces  ;  but  this  was  overruled,  and  everything  over  which  any 
control  bad  been  retained  to  him  passed  to  the  ownership  of  Arnold 
Landor,  his  eldest  son. 

There  are  matters  as  to  which  I  have  thus  far  imposed  silence  on 
myself,  and  intend  as  much  as  possible  to  continue  to  do  so ;  but  it 
is  quite  necessary,  at  this  point  of  my  narrative,  that  I  should  briefly 
state  the  position  in  which  this  deed  of  transfer  left  what  had  been 
Lander's  worldly  estate.  When  he  separated  from  his  family  in 
1835,  Llanthony  and  Ipsley  may  be  said,  at  a  rough  calculation,  to 
have  been  yielding  very  certainly  more  than  three  thousand  a  year 
rental,  the  deductions  for  mortgages  and  insurances  at  that  time 
being  a  little  over  fourteen  hundred  a  year,  and,  of  the  balance,  not 
more  than  from  six  to  seven  hundred  a  year  being  taken  by  Landor,  who 
left  the  rest  to  accumulate  for  casual  expenses,  repairs,  and  as  a  sur- 
plus fund  for  younger  children.  Of  this  six  hundred,  upon  quitting 
Italy,  he  left  two  thirds  to  Mrs.  Landor,  at  the  same  time  transfer- 
ring absolutely  to  his  eldest  son  the  villa  and  farms  where  the  family 
lived,  and  of  which  the  farm  produce  went  far  towards  their  expenses 
of  living;  while  he  took,  for  his  own  maintenance  in  London,  only 
the  remaining  third.  This  proved  however  to  he  too  little,  and  after 
a  year  or  two  it  was  raised,  out  of  the  surplus  at  Llanthony,  to  four 
hundred  a  year  ;  trenching  by  so  much  on  the  reserved  fund  for 
younger  ehijdren.  But  they  had  meanwhile  profited  by  legacies 
l'r"iu  other  members  of  the  family  ;  and  upon  Arnold's  visit  to  Eng- 
land in  18-12,  sufficient  had  been  raised  to  pay  the  debt  to  Ablett  for 


JET.  83-89.]  IN    HIS    OLD    HOME.  655 

Fiesole,  an  insurance  of  equal  amount  indemnifying  Arnold.  The 
result  was  that  when  Landor,  now  on  the  eve  of  his  return  to  his  old 
home,  executed  a  further  deed  of  transfer  to  his  son,  whereby  the 
latter  became  entitled  to  everything  arising  from  Llanthony,  the 
property  which  had  once  been  entirely  his  (not  a  shilling  of  it  having 
been  derived  from  other  sources  than  those  which  his  mother  *  had 
so  vigilantly  protected  and  improved  for  his  use)  was  wholly  and  ex- 
clusively at  the  disposal  of  others.  His  son  Arnold,  standing  next  in 
the  entails  of  Llanthony  and  of  Ipsley,  which  he  was  sure  very  soon 
to  inherit  free  from  all  encumbrance,  was  meanwhile  invested,  by  the 
just-executed  deed  of  transfer,  with  the  rights  over  them  \ip  to  this 
time  possessed  by  his  father.  He  had  also,  by  his  father's  free  gift, 
the  absolute  ownership  of  the  villa  and  farms  at  Fiesole  ;  and,  by  a 
legacy  from  the  Landor  family,  the  interest  of  a  thousand  pounds. 
By  similar  legacies  his  sister  had  a  hundred  a  year  to  her  exclusive 
use,  and  each  of  his  two  younger  brothers  eighty  pounds  a  year ; 
while  his  mother,  whose  four  hundred  a  year,  secured  in  1835,  had 
been  raised  to  five  hundred  upon  the  resettlement  in  1842,  had  this 
larger  annuity  secured  to  her  for  life  on  her  husband's  death  by 
charge  on  the  Llanthony  estate.  Landor  himself  was  now  travelling 
to  Florence  with  a  few  pictures,  a  few  books,  a  small  quantity  of 
silver  plate,  and  something  short  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  as 
the  sum  of  all  his  earthly  possessions.  This  had  been  the  amount 
realized  in  Manchester  by  the  sale  of  the  pictures  that  did  not 
accompany  him. 

Before  he  reached  Fiesole  a  thousand  pounds'  damages  had  been 
awarded  against  him,  and  proceedings  begun  to  compel  the  payment. 
The  deed  of  transfer,  as  I  well  knew,  was  little  likely  to  stand 
against  resolute  and  determined  efforts  to  overthrow  it.  The  court 
of  chancery,  on  application,  granted  an  injunction  against  receiving 
the  rents  until  the  case  should  be  argued  ;  practically  the  deed  of 
transfer  was  defeated  ;  and  before  Landor  died  the  entire  amount 
of  damages  and  costs  had  been  paid  under  order  of  the  court.  Of 
course  this  affected  only  the  sum  reserved  to  Landor's  use,  and  every- 
thing else  remained  as  I  have  stated. 

On  his  way  to  Italy,  and  after  his  arrival,  he  wrote  to  me  continu- 
ally ;  but  one  subject  mainly  occupied  his  letters,  and  I  could  give  to 
it  but  one  reply.  As  to  other  matters,  it  became  very  soon  obvious 
that  the  only  result  that  was  reasonably  to  have  been  expected  was 
not  far  distant,  and  that  his  old  home  could  be  a  home  to  him 
no  more.  "  Red  mullets  compensated  Milo  for  Rome.  We  have 
them  daily,  with  ortolans  of  late,  and  beccaficos.  But  these  do  not 
indemnify  me  for  Bath,  the  only  city  I  could  ever  live  in  comfortably. 
I  have  been  in  Floi-ence  twice  only  since  I  came  here  eleven  weeks 
ago."  This,  in  October,  1858,  was  the  most  favorable  aspect  of 
things.     But  before  the  end  of  that  month  he  announced  to  me  that 

*  Ante,  pp.  256  and  314. 


G5 6  LAST   SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^Sp-a?*' 

his  health  was  such  as  to  admit  of  no  chance  of  his  surviving,  and 
that,  by  means  of  the  small  remnant  of  the  pittance  he  had  taken 
with  him,  he  had  so  arranged  that  he  should  sleep  his  last  sleep  in 
the  graveyard  of  the  little  church  near  Bath,  where  already  he  had 
choseu  his  place  of  rest. 

"  Widcomre!  few  seek  with  thee  their  resting-place; 
But  I.  when  I  have  run  my  weary  race, 

Will  throw  my  bones  upon  thy  churchyard  turf; 
Although  malignant  waves  on  foreign  shore 
Have  stranded  me,  ami  1  shall  lift  no  more 
My  hoary  head  above  the  hissing  surf." 

I  was  nevertheless  not  unprepared  for  what  followed  in  little  more 
than  a  fortnight,  when,  in  the  middle  of  December,  he  wrote  to  me 
from  Florence  that  he  had  left  Fiesole  ;  that  he  was  somewhat  less 
unhappy  ;  that  twice  in  five  weeks,  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
he  had  walked  out  in  the  sun  ;  and  that  his  principal  misery,  which 
indeed  he  now  dwelt  upon  as  the  very  worst  that  ever  had  befallen 
him,  was  the  continued  and  inexplicable  delay  in  the  publication  of 
his  enlarged  Hellenics.  But  while  in  consultation  with  his  relatives 
in  England  as  to  what  step  for  providing  him  a  new  home  it  might 
be  advisable  to  take,  we  heard  that  he  was  again  at  Fiesole. 

It  will  not  be  supposed,  after  all  which  has  been  said  in  this  book 
of  the  defects  of  Landor's  character,  that  my  object  now  is  to  throw 
exclusively  on  others  the  blame  of  what  occurred  during  the  first  ten 
months  after  his  return  to  Italy.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  his  let- 
ters themselves,  as  may  be  seen  even  in  the  foregoing  favorable  speci- 
mens of  them,  continued  to  confirm  the  impression  as  to  his  mental 
state,  made  upon  me  by  the  incidents  described  in  the  last  section. 
That  he  was  irritable,  difficult  to  manage,  intemperate  of  tongue, 
subject  to  all  kinds  of  suspicions,  fancies,  and  mistakes ;  that  even 
when  treated  most  considerately  he  was  often  unjust,  but,  when  met 
by  any  kind  of  violence,  was  apt  to  be  driven  wild  with  rage  ;  that, 
in  a  word,  choleric  as  he  had  always  been,  he  was  now  become  very 
old,  —  is  not,  I  fear,  to  be  doubted.  Knowing  all  this  only  too  well, 
I  abstain  from  even  a  mention  of  the  character  of  the  complaints  in 
his  letters  ;  and  from  all  formal  expression  of  opinion,  decided  as  is 
that  which  I  hold,  on  the  way  in  which  those  with  whom  he  was  now 
attempting  to  live  should  have  discharged  the  duty  they  were  under 
every  natural  and  human  obligation  to  render,  and  from  which  they 
could  not  be  released  by  any  amount  of  mad  irritability  on  his  part, 
or  any  number  of  irrational  demands  upon  their  patience.  The  at- 
tempt to  live  at  the  villa  I  knew  from  the  first  must  fail.  In  itself 
to  the  last  degree  unpromising,  the  time  and  the  accompaniments 
of  the  unhappy  trial  made  it  hopeless  and  impossible.  Not  however 
by  him,  but  by  those  who  should  have  seen  that  there  was  at  least 
nothing  insane  in  his  desire  to  have  such  other  provision  made  as 
they  might  easily  have  arranged  for  him,  was  the  miserable  torture 
prolonged.     Thrice  during  those  ten  months  he  left  Fiesole  to  seek  a 


JET.  83-89.]  IN   HIS   OLD   HOME.  657 

lodging  in  Florence  ;  thrice  he  was  brought  back ;  and  it  was  on  the 
fourth  occasion,  when,  in  the  first  week  of  July,  1859,  he  had  taken 
refuge  "  in  the  hotel  on  the  Arno  with  eighteen-pence  in  his  pocket," 
that  the  gravity  of  the  situation,  and  the  absolute  necessity  at  last 
of  doing  what  should  have  been  done  at  first,  were  put  before  me  by 
my  old  friend  Mr.  Browning,  at  that  time  living  in  Florence. 

Was  it  possible,  he  asked,  that  "from  Mr.  Landor's  relatives  in 
England  the  means  of  existence  could  be  afforded  for  him  in  a  lodg- 
ing at  Florence  ] "  To  which  I  had  to  reply,  that,  several  times 
during  the  progress  of  these  dreary  months,  the  same  question  had 
been  put  from  England  to  Mr.  Landor's  nearer  relatives  at  Fiesole, 
on  whom  he  had,  quite  apart  from  any  natural  duty,  such  claims  for 
help  by  way  of  money  as  I  have  just  described  ;  and  that  the  same 
answer  had  invariably  come.  The  trouble  had  been  got  rid  of  by 
Landor's  return  to  the  villa.  Now  however  he  would  not  return  ;  the 
question  had  resolved  itself  into  his  living  upon  means  to  be  fur- 
nished from  England,  or  the  alternative  of  his  not  living  at  all ;  and 
what  the  old  man's  fate  might  have  been,  during  even  the  brief  inter- 
val required  to  determine  this,  it  would  be  difficult  to  say,  if  the 
zealous  aid  of  the  good  Mr.  Kirkup  had  failed  him,  or  if  he  had  not 
found  a  friend  so  wise  and  kind  as  Mr.  Browning.  "  You  will  have 
heard,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  the  6th  of  August,  "  that  I  am  now  in  a 
cottage  near  Siena,  which  I  owe  to  Browning,  the  kind  friend  who 
found  it  for  me,  whom  I  had  seen  only  three  or  four  times  in  my  life, 
yet  who  made  me  the  voluntary  offer  of  what  money  I  wanted,  and 
who  insists  on  managing  my  affairs  here,  and  paying  for  my  lodgings 
and  sustenance.  Never  was  such  generosity  and  such  solicitude  as 
this  incomparable  man  has  shown  in  my  behalf." 

Two  davs  after  the  date  of  that  letter  Mr.  Brownin<r  had  heard 
from  myself  the  result  of  the  application  to  Landor's  brothers.  They 
asked  only  to  know  what  sum  was  wanted,  and  they  engaged  at  once 
to  supply  it  as  long  as  their  brother  might  live.  From  this  time  up 
to  the  day  of  his  death,  I  handed  over  on  their  behalf  to  Mr.  Brown- 
ing two  hundred  pounds  every  year  by  quarterly  payments,  to  which 
an  additional  sum  of  fifty  pounds  was  held  always  in  reserve  for 
special  wants  arising ;  and  the  money  continued  to  be  applied  to 
Landor's  use  under  Mr.  Browning's  immediate  direction,  even  after 
the  event  which  plunged  so  many  besides  himself  into  mourning,  and 
occasioned  his  departure  from  Italy  in  1861.  With  a  few  extracts 
from  the  letter  to  myself  which  wili  explain  these  arrangements,  and 
will  describe  the  way  in  which,  to  the  very  last,  they  were  strictly 
and  successfully  carried  out,  I  quit  this  distasteful  subject  forever. 

"  I  agree  absolutely  with  you,"  Mr.  Browning  wrote  from  Siena  on 
the  13th  of  August,  1859,  "  in  your  appreciation  of  the  character  of 
Landor  and  its  necessities  now  and  for  the  future  in  this  untoward 
position,  —  so  absolutely  that  I  shall  not  go  into  minute  justification 
of  any  opinion  I  may  give  you  about  what  is  to  be  done,  but  take  for 

42 

4 


C58  LAST   SIX   YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^sB-sI"' 

almost  granted  that  you  will  understand  it :  subject  to  questioning 
from  you,  should  that  not  be  the  case.  Your  plan  is  the  only  proper 
one  for  obtaining  the  end  we  aim  at.  Mr.  Landor  is  wholly  unfit  to 
be  anything  but  the  recipient  of  the  necessary  money's  worth,  rather 
than  the  money  itself.  Fortunately,  he  professes  to  have  the  same 
conviction,  and  prefers  such  an  arrangement  to  any  other.  He  re- 
quires a  perpetual  guardian  in  the  shape  of  a  servant ;  one  to  be  ever 
at  hand  to  explain  away  the  irritations  and  hallucinations  as  they 
arise.  They  come  and  go,  and  leave  no  trace,  treated  so;  otherwise 
the  effect  is  disastrous.  ...  I  propose  to  take  an  apartment  as  near 
my  own  residence  in  Florence  as  can  be  found,  and  establish  him  there 
as  comfortably  and  as  economically  as  possible.  1  will  endeavor  to 
induce  my  wife's  old  servant  Wilson,  who  married  Ferdinando  (Ro- 
magnoli)  still  in  our  service,  to  devote  herself  to  the  care  of  our  friend. 
I  may  say,  after  our  fourteen  years'  experience  of  her  probity,  truthful- 
ness, gentleness,  and  assiduity,  that  he  can  be  placed  in  no  better 
hands  ;  and  were  he  bestowed  on  a  person  one  whit  less  trustworthy, 
I  shoidd  expect  some  melancholy  result  the  next  clay.  I  can  depend 
on  Wilson's  acting  for  me  in  all  respects,  and  not  simply  complying 
with  his  fancies  or  profiting  by  his  mistaken  generosities.  I  will  re- 
ceive the  two  hundred  pounds  in  quarterly  payments,  as  you  propose  ; 
and  will  transmit  to  you,  at  the  end  of  every  quarter,  a  detailed 
account  of  Landor's  expenses  duly  examined  and  certified  by  Kirkup." 
This  last  condition  was  the  only  one  to  which  I  refused  assent ;  and 
Landor's  niece,  to  whom  it  was  then  proposed  to  transmit  such  ac- 
count, also  as  strongly  objected.  I  believe  that  Mr.  Browning  did 
nevertheless,  against  renewed  protest,  continue  to  render  it  to  the 
close. 

II.    AT  SIENA. 

While  the  arrangements  for  his  future  life  in  Florence  were  in 
progress  Landor  remained  quietly  at  Siena,  occupying  a  pleasant 
little  cottage  in  a  vineyard  inhabited  only  by  the  contadino,  or  farm- 
ing-gardener,  and  his  wife.  Subsequently  he  became  the  guest  of  an 
accomplished  American  then  staying  at  Siena,  who  lor  years  has 
made  Italy  his  home,  and  has  connected  his  name  with  Italian  art  by 
works  not  unworthy  of  its  happiest  time. 

"  Landor  has  to-day,"  Mr.  Browning  wrote  to  me  at  the  close  of 
August,  "  completed  a  three  weeks'  stay  with  the  Storys.  They  de- 
clare most  emphatically  that  a  more  considerate,  gentle,  easily  satisfied 
guest  never  entered  their  house.  They  declare  liis  visit  has  been  an 
unalloyed  delight  to  them  ;  and  this,  quite  as  much  from  his  gentle- 
manliness  and  simple  habits,  and  evident  readiness  to  be  pleased  with 
the  least  attention,  as  from  his  conversation,  which  would  be  attractive 
under  any  circumstances.  An  intelligent  friend  also,  on  a  visit  to  them, 
bears  witness  to  the  same  effect.  They  perceive  indeed,  though  not 
affecting  themselves,  inequalities  of  temper  in  him  ;  but  they  all  agree 


^T-  83-89.]  AT   SIENA.  659 

that  he  may  be  managed  with  the  greatest  ease  by  '  civility '  alone." 
Such  always  was  Landor,  when  he  would  consent  to  submit  himself  to 
friendly  influences. 

Again  Mr.  Browning  wrote  to  me  from  Siena  on  the  5th  of  Septem- 
ber. "At  present  Landor's  conduct  is  faultless.  His  wants  are  so 
moderate,  his  evenness  of  temper  so  remarkable,  his  gentleness  and 
readiness  to  be  advised  so  exemplary,  that  it  all  seems  too  good ;  as  if 
some  rock  must  lurk  under  such  smooth  water.  His  thankfulness  for 
the  least  attention,  and  anxiety  to  return  it,  are  almost  affecting  under 
all  circumstances.  He  leads  a  life  of  the  utmost  simplicity."  From 
Florence  also,  to  anticipate  a  very  little  the  days  immediately  after 
their  return,  Mr.  Browning  wrote  to  me  in  the  middle  of  October, 
being  then  himself  on  the  eve  of  going  to  winter  in  Rome,  that  he 
should  be  grieved  indeed  to  lose  sight  for  a  while  of  the  wonderful  old 
man,  whose  gentleness  and  benignity  had  never  been  at  fault  for  a  mo- 
ment in  their  three  months'  intercourse.  They  had  walked  together 
for  more  than  an  hour  and  a  half  only  two  days  before.  His  health 
had  been  perfect,  his  mind  apparently  at  ease.  "  He  writes  Latin 
verses ;  few  English,  but  a  few  ;  and  just  before  we  left  Siena  an  im- 
aginary conversation  suggested  by  something  one  of  us  had  said  about 
the  possible  reappearance  of  the  body  after  death.  He  looks  better 
than  ever  by  the  amplitude  of  a  capital  beard,  most  becoming  we  all 
judge  it."  "  If,"  Mrs.  Browning  at  the  same  time,  wrote  to  me,  —  "  if 
you  could  only  see  how  well  he  looks  in  his  curly  white  beard  !  " 

From  his  own  letters  to  myself  during  the  stay  at  Siena  I  should 
hardly  have  dared  to  judge  so  favorably,  though  there  were  some 
allowances  to  be  made.  His  great  immediate  trouble  being  removed,  he 
had  now  again  unhappily  set  his  heart  on  obtaining,  through  me,  some 
means  of  making  public  reply  to  what  had  been  publicly  said  of  him 
in  England  in  connection  with  the  trial  at  Bath  ;  and  I  had  no  alter- 
native but  to  tell  him  plainly  that  the  thing  was  quite  impossible.  He 
did  not  take  this  so  well  as  the  condition  of  mind  above  described  might 
have  led  me  to  anticipate  :  but  the  case  as  affecting  him  involved,  in 
many  particulars,  so  much  real  hardship,  it  was  so  impossible  to  speak 
of  what  had  been  to  him  the  original  provocation,  and  all  that  followed 
had  given  to  his  punishment  a  propoilion  so  exceeding  his  offence  judged 
even  at  its  very  worst,  that  any  wrong  arising  out  of  it  incident  to  my- 
self seemed  but  a  part  of  a  wretched  complication  not  avoidable  by 
either  of  us.  Landor  was  very  shortly  to  apply  to  his  friend  what  the 
reader  has  seen  shrewdly  applied  by  Mr.  Bennet  in  Pride  and  Prejudice 
to  a  friend  in  similar  circumstances  ;  and  I  was  not  to  have  the  benefit 
of  the  same  magnanimity.  It  is  however  the  more  incumbent  on  me 
to  say,  on  the  eve  of  our  only  estrangement  in  a  quarter  of  a  century 
of  friendship,  that  the  impression  left  with  me  altogether  was  exactly 
what  Mr.  Browning  and  Mr.  Story  depict  in  the  foregoing  letters,  for 
that  reason  here  introduced.  The  drawbacks  have  been  described 
already.     There  were  always  those  occasional  outbreaks,  very  unwar- 


6G0  LAST   SIX   YEARS   IN    ITALY.  ^s-™1' 

rentable  because  generally  unjust  to  others,  which  in  so  many  instances 
I  have  shown  to  be  as  little  rational  as  reducible  to  reason.  Indeed  I 
should  say,  on  the  whole,  that  in  Landor's  affections  at  their  best,  just 
as  more  rarely  in  even  the  finest  parts  of  his  books,  there  was  a  certain 
incoherency.  But,  in  several  leading  qualities,  his  character  was  also 
quite  as  tine  as  his  books,  and  the  letters  quoted  do  only  justice  to  it. 
He  had  a  disposition  largely  generous  ;  an  anger  easily  placable  ;  and 
an  eagerness  to  return,  in  quite  chivalrous  excess,  whatever  courtesy 
or  attention  he  received,  which  was  at  all  times  delightful  to  witness,. 

The  conversation  above  referred  to  was  not  the  only  one  written  at 
Siena.  I  received  another  from  him  at  the  same  date,  with  earnest 
appeal  that  I  should  endeavor  by  means  of  it  to  get  some  help  for 
Garibaldi's  wounded  ;  and  with  this  he  sent  me  several  pieces  of  writ- 
ing having  the  same  common  drift,  to  recommend  such  a  settlement  of 
Italian  affairs  as  might  leave  Venice  and  Florence  independent  re- 
publics, and  King  Victor  Emanuel  protector  and  president  of  the  Ital- 
ian states  in  union.  I  need  hardly  add  that  in  this  1859  year  the 
promise  had  gone  suddenly  forth,  backed  by  French  legions,  of  a  free 
Italy  from  the  Alps  to  the  Adriatic  ;  and  the  conclusion  to  which  Lan- 
dor  at  once  had  rushed  he  expressed  in  that  form. 

There  appears  to  have  been  some  difficulty  in  getting  him  back  to 
Florence,  increased  by  the  effect  produced  upon  him  by  some  new  step 
in  the  chancery  proceedings  consequent  on  the  injunction  against  him 
recently  obtained.  He  wrote  to  tell  me  that  the  object  of  ail  that  was 
going  on  could  be  no  other  than  to  drive  him  mad ;  that  the  publica- 
tion of  his  defence  alone  could  save  him ;  and  that  until  this  could  be 
accomplished  he  must  retire  into  utter  solitude.  His  friends  were 
about  to  leave  Siena,  and  he  should  himself  go  into  some  cottage  or 
hut  at  Viarreggio.  Alas,  what  could  I  reply  1  I  could  only  wait  until 
a  few  days'  later  post  brought  me  word  that  to  the  arguments  em- 
ployed to  induce  his  return  to  Florence  he  had  thought  it  right  to 
yield.  "  Nothing,"  he  added  in  this  letter  to  me,  "  can  exceed  Mr. 
Browning's  continued  kindness.  Life  would  be  almost  worth  keeping 
for  that  recollection  alone." 


III.    IN  FLORENCE. 

The  lodgings  found  for  Landor  in  Florence,  and  where  he  remained 
until  his  death,  were  in  a  little  house  under  the  wall  of  the  city  direct- 
ly back  of  the  Carmine,  in  a  by-street  called  the  Via  Nunziatina,  not 
far  from  that  in  which  the  casa  Guidi  stands  :  a  quarter  always  liked 
by  the  Florentines  for  its  antiquity  and  pictures! pieness,  and  having 
higher  associations  since  both  for  them  and  for  English  visitors;  to 
whom  a  marble  slab  upon  the  wall  in  its  last-mentioned  street,  placed 
by  order  of  the  municipality  of  Florence,  now  indicates  the  house  in 
which  a  great  English  poetess  made  Italy  the  subject  of  her  latest 
song. 


/ET.  83-89.I  IN    FLORENCE.  661 

"  He  is  in  a  small  comfortable  apartment,"  Mr.  Browning  wrote  to 
me,  "  newly  papered  and  furnished  ;  a  sitting-room,  dining-room,  bed- 
room, and  book-room  communicating  with  each  other,  on  the  first  floor. 
Below  are  rooms  for  Mrs.  Wilson  and  a  maid-servant.  There  is  a  small 
garden  attached.  He  professes  himself  quite  satisfied  with  all  our  at- 
tempts to  make  him  comfortable,  and  seems  to  like  Mrs.  Wilson  much  : 
but  there  is  some  inexplicable  fault  in  his  temper,  whether  natural  or 
acquired,  which  seems  to  render  him  very  difficult  to  manage.  He  for- 
gets, misconceives,  and  makes  no  endeavor  to  be  just,  or  indeed  ra- 
tional ;  and  this  in  matters  so  infinitely  petty  that  there  is  no  provid- 
ing against  them."  This  letter  was  written  from  Rome  (9th  December, 
1859),  and  only  told  what,  knowing  the  condition  of  mind  in  which 
Landor  still  continued*  I  expected  to  hear,  as  soon  as  the  personal  in- 
fluences and  restraints  should  be  withdrawn  under  which  he  had  been 
living  lately.  In  the  same  month  I  also  heard  from  himself  (Decem- 
ber 21),  that  for  the  first  time  since  his  return  to  Italy  it  had  been 
snowing  all  night,  and  that  this  alone  was  like  England  to  him. 
"  Bath  has  no  resemblance  on  earth,  and  I  never  have  been  happy  in 
any  other  place  long  together.  If  ever  I  see  it  again,  however,  it  must 
be  from  underground  or  above.  I  am  quite  ready  and  willing  to  go, 
and  would  fain  lie  in  Widcombe  churchyard,  as  I  promised  one  who  is 
no  more.  It  may  cost  forty  pounds  altogether.  I  cannot  long  survive 
the  disgrace  of  my  incapacity  to  prove  the  character  of  those  who  per- 
secute me,  and  this  you  only  can  relieve  me  from.  When  I  think  of 
it,  I  feel  the  approach  of  madness ;  and  so  adieu."  There  was  much 
else  in  this  letter  which  I  do  not  quote,  but  to  which  I  found  it  abso- 
lutely necessary  so  to  reply  as  to  put  clearly  before  him,  without  any 
kind  of  doubt,  that  what  he  desired  could  not  be  done.  This  led  to 
the  suspension  of  our  correspondence.  I  continued  to  write  to  him 
for  some  time,  but  my  letters  were  unanswered ;  and  he  did  not  write 
to  me  again  until  a  year  before  his  death. 

In  June,  1860,  Mr.  Browning  had  returned  to  Florence,  and  from 
him,  in  a  letter  dated  the  15th,  I  had  once  more  personal  report  of  my 
old  friend.  "  I  find  him  very  well,  satisfied  on  the  whole,  busy  with 
verse-making,  and  particularly  delighted  at  the  acquisition  of  three 
execrable  daubs  by  Domenichino  and  Gaspar  Poussin,  most  benevo- 
lently battered  by  time.  He  has  a  beautiful  beard,  foam-white  and 
soft.  He  reads  the  Odyssey  in  the  original  with  extraordinary  ease. 
When  he  alludes  to  that  other  matter,  it  is  clear  that  he  is,  from  what- 
ever peculiarity,  quite  impervious  to  reasoning  or  common  sense.  He 
cannot  in  the  least  understand  that  he  is  at  all  wrong,  or  injudicious, 
or  unwary,  or  unfortunate  in  anything,  but  in  the  being  prevented 
by  you  from  doubling  and  quadrupling  the  offence.  He  spent  the 
evening  here  the  night  before  last.  Whatever  he  may  profess,  the  thing 
he  really  loves  is  a  pretty  girl  to  talk  nonsense  with ;  and  he  finds 
comfort  in  American  visitors,  who  hold  him  in  proper  respect." 

To  even  such  a  visitor,  a  young  lady  who  saw  him  frequently  in 


GG2  LAST   SIX   TEARS   IN    ITALY.  V***-™ 

this  and  the  following  year,  we  are  indebted  for  one  or  two  addition- 
al glimpses  of  him  in  his  last  Florence  home.*  Describing  the  little 
two-story  casa,  No.  2671,  as  half-way  down  the  street,  with  its  bed- 
room, dining-room,  and  sitting-room  opening  into  each  other,  she 
su\  s  that  in  the  latter  he  was  always  to  be  found,  in  a  large  arm-chair, 
surrounded  by  paintings  which  he  declared  he  could  not  live  without 
(all  of  them  very  bad  for  the  most  part,  excepting  one  genuine  small 
Salvator),  his  hair  snowy  white  and  his  beard  of  patriarchal  propor- 
tions, his  gray  eyes  still  keen  and  clear,  his  grand  head  not  unlike 
Michael  Angelo's  Moses,  and  at  his  feet  a  pretty  little  Pomeranian 
dog  called  Gaillo,  the  gift  of  Mr.  William  Story.  Another  likeness 
the  old  man's  look  reminded  her  of  which  she  was  emboldened  one 
day  to  name  to  him.  "  Mr.  Landor,  you  do  look  like  a  lion."  To 
which  the  reply  came,  "  You  are  not  the  first  who  has  said  so.  One 
day  when  Napier  was  dining  with  me,  he  threw  himself  back  in  his 
chair  with  a  hearty  laugh  to  tell  me  he  had  just  discovered  that  I 
looked  like  an  old  lion."  "  And  a  great  compliment  you  must  have 
thought  it,"  says  the  young  lady,  "  for  the  lion  is  king  of  beasts." 
"  Yes,"  he  rejoined,  "  but  only  a  beast  after  all." 

Of  this  young  lady's  recollections  generally  it  must  be  said  that, 
though  the  kindliest  feeling  and  very  delicate  perceptions  character- 
ize them  throughout,  there  are  not  many  facts  in  them  that  were 
worth  recording.  They  are  too  truly  what  they  profess  to  be  ;  "  the 
old  man  of  Florence  in  1859,  18G0,  and  1861  ;  just  before  the  intel- 
lectual light  began  to  flicker  and  go  out."  His  courtly  manners,  his 
memory  for  things  of  the  past,  and  his  humorous  quickness  in  put- 
ting odd  little  sayings  into  verse,  seem  most  to  have  impressed  her. 
Reference  having  been  made  one  morning  to  Monk  Lewis's  poem  of 
Alonzo  the  Brave,  he  recited  it  in  cadences  from  beginning  to  end  with- 
out the  slightest  hesitation  or  the  tripping  of  a  word,  remarking  that 
he  had  not  even  thought  of  the  thing  for  thirty  years.  He  undertook 
to  teach  Latin  to  his  young  friend ;  gave  her  a  great  many  lessons 
with  much  zeal ;  and  entered  the  room  on  each  appointed  clay  with  a 
bouquet  of  camellias  or  roses,  the  products  of  his  little  garden. 

Some  fruit,  too,  the  old  tree  had  yet  to  shed.  Calling  upon  him 
one  morning,  she  found  him  at  work  on  some  dramatic  scenes  dealing 
with  a  time  of  Greece  before  history  was  ;  introducing,  by  a  some- 
what daring  stretch  of  chronology,  Homer  himself  upon  a  visit  to 
the  father  of  Ulysses  ;  and  closing  with  the  poet's  death  on  a  top- 
most peak  above  the  palace  overlooking  all  the  kingdom  of  Ithaca. 
With  an  exception  hitherto  unpublished  which  I  shall  presently  lay 
before  the  reader,  these  scenes  were  the  last  in  which  Landor's  genius 
showed  itself  undimmed  by  age.  Ee  had  carried  out  to  perfection 
in  them  that  old  Greek  simplicity  of  which  I  have  formerly  spoken, 
and  of  which  in  modern  writing  I  really  do  not  know  another  instance 

*  Papers  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  entitled  "  Last  Days  of  Walter  Savage  Landor."  I 
have  already  quoted  them,  ante,  pp.  105,  106. 


^lT.  83-S9.]  IN   FLORENCE.  663 

so  entirely  true.  It  is  the  simplicity,  not  of  baldness,  but  of  the 
youth  of  the  world.  The  king  bids  his  guest  to  supper  while  yet  the 
dainties  that  are  to  compose  it  are  still  themselves  enjoying  life. 

At  hand  is  honey  in  the  honeycomb, 
And  melon,  and  those  blushing  pouting  buds 
That  fain  would  hide  them  under  crisped  leaves. 
Soon  the  blue  dove  and  party-colored  hen 
Shall  quit  the  stable-rafter  caught  at  roost, 
And  goat  shall  miss  her  suckling  in  the  morn; 
Supper  will  want  them  ere  the  day  decline. 

He  orders  afterward  a  bath  to  be  prepared  for  their  guest,  and,  as  he 
does  so,, the  thought  of  his  lost  Ulysses  arises  to  him. 

Now  leave  us,  child, 
And  bid  our  good  Melampos  to  prepare 
That  brazen  bath  wherein  my  rampant  boy 
Each  morning  lay  full  length^  struggling  at  first, 
Then  laughing  as  he  splasht  the  water  up 
Against  his  mother's  face  bent  over  him. 
Is  this  the  Odysseus  first  at  quoit  and  bar? 
Is  this  the  Odysseus  called  to  counsel  kings, 
He  whose  name  sounds  beyond  our  narrow  sea? 

I  may  not  quote  more,  but  here  is  enough  to  throw  light  on  what 
the  writer  said  to  his  young  lady  visitor.  "  It  will  be  thought  auda- 
cious, and  most  so  by  those  who  know  the  least  of  Homer,  to  repre- 
sent him  as  talking  familiarly.  He  must  often  have  done  it,  as 
Milton  and  Shakespeare  did.  There  is  homely  talk  in  the  Odyssey. 
Fashion  turns  round  like  Fortune.  Twenty  years  hence  perhaps, 
this  conversation  of  Homer  and  Laertes,  in  which  for  the  first  time 
Greek  domestic  manners  have  been  represented  by  any  modern  poet, 
may  be  recognized  and  approved.  Our  sculptors  and  painters  fre- 
quently take  their  subjects  from  antiquity ;  are  our  poets  never  to 
pass  beyond  the  mediaeval  ]  At  our  own  doors  we  listen  to  the  af- 
fecting song  of  the  shirt ;  but  some  few  of  us,  at  the  end  of  it,  turn 
back  to  catch  the  song  of  the  sirens." 

Landor's  American  friends  quitted  Florence  in  the  autumn  of  1861, 
but  during  that  spring  and  summer  they  had  taken  frequent  drives 
in  its  neighborhood,  and  not  forgetful  in  the  least  things,  the  old 
man,  in  spite  of  his  years,  would  always  insist  upon  taking  the  front 
seat,  and  was  more  active  than  many  a  younger  man  in  assisting  us 
in  and  out  of  the  carriage."  During  one  of  their  excursions,  as  they 
passed  on  a  summer's  day  along  the  north  side  of  the  Arno,  Landor 
gazed  long  and  sadly  at  a  terrace  overlooking  the  water  and  forming 
part  of  the  casa  Pelosi,  occupied  of  old  by  the  Blessingtons.  The  de- 
scription of  another  of  these  drives  carries  with  it  a  painful  interest. 
"  Once  we  drove  up  to  aerial  Fiesole ;  and  never  can  I  forget  Landor's 
manner  while  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  former  home.  It  had  been 
proposed  that  we  should  turn  back  when  only  half-way  up  the  hill. 
Ah,  go  a  little  farther,  Landor  said  nervously  ;  I  should  like  to  see  my 
villa.  Of  course  his  wish  was  our  pleasure,  and  so  the  drive  was  con- 
tinned.     Landor  sat  immovable,  with  head  turned  in  the  direction  of 


GG-i  LAST   SIX    TEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^Ss^-eJ"' 

the  villa  Gherardesca.  At  first  sight  of  it  he  gave  a  sudden  start, 
and  genuine  tears  filled  his  eyes  and  coursed  down  his  cheeks.  There 
is  where  I  lived,  he  said,  breaking  a  long  silence  and  pointing  to  his 
old  estate.  Still  we  mounted  the  hill,  and  when  at  a  turn  in  the 
road,  the  villa  stood  out  before  us  clearly  and  distinctly,  Landor  said, 
Let  us  give  the  horses  a  rest  here  !  We  stopped,  and  for  several  minutes 
Laudor's  face  was  fixed  upon  the  villa.  There  noiv,  we  can  return  to 
Florence,  if  you  like,  he  murmured  finally  with  a  deep  sigh.  /  have 
seen  it  probably  for  the  last  time.  Hardly  a  word  was  spoken  during 
the  drive  home.  Landor  seemed  to  be  absent-minded."  A  tragedy 
lies  underneath  those  few  sentences  of  which  every  scene  had  been 
bitterly  acted  out,  though  not  a  line  of  it  can  be  written  here. 

After  1861,  the  year  when  Mr.  Browning  left  Italy  and  in  which 
Landor  also  lost  his  American  friends,  he  more  rarely  quitted  the 
house.  But  he  busied  himself  still  with  writing  of  various  kinds. 
He  printed  an  imaginary  dialogue  in  Italian  (whether  the  purest  Tus- 
can may  be  doubted)  between  Savonarola  and  the  pi-ior  of  Florence, 
devoting  its  equally  imaginary  profits  to  the  help  of  Garibaldi's 
wounded  ;  he  wrote  many  occasional  verses  of  no  great  worth  ;  and, 
to  the  same  English  journal  which  had  published  three  new  Imagina- 
ry Conversations  by  him  during  the  year  just  passed,  the  Athenaeum, 
he  sent  over  a  fourth  which  appeared  in  the  autumn  of  1862.  Dur- 
ing this  time  he  also  brought  together  some  old  and  new  Latin  verses 
which  he  was  very  anxious  that  I  should  publish.  They  came  to  me 
in  the  following  year  with  a  prefatory  note  in  which  his  old  feeling  as 
to  France,  more  imbittered  by  recent  events,  received  characteristic 
expression.  "  Several  of  the  Latin  verses  here  collected  were  written 
fourscore  years  ago,  when  the  youths  of  England  were  set  afire  by  the 
French  Revolution.  France  is  now  safely  locked  up,  with  her  hands 
tied  behind  her,  and  whipped  when  she  hoots  too  loud  for  the  ears  of 
her  keeper." 

The  speakers  in  the  first  conversation  printed  in  the  Athenaeum  (in 
1861)  were  Virgil  and  Horace,  on  the  road  to  Brundusium;  and  of  the 
character  of  both  poets,  in  their  generous  praise  of  each  other,  a 
pleasing  impression  is  left.  The  second  had  for  its  speakers  Macchia- 
velli  and  Guicciardini,  their  subject  being  Italy.  Her  unity  under  a 
prince  of  Savoy  is  predicted,  as  well  as  the  quarter  from  which  the 
worst  obstruction  to  it  will  come.  Often  had  Landor  made  his  young 
American  friend  laugh  at  his  comments  on  the  preti;  as  plentiful  as 
fleas,  he  would  say,  and  an  even  greater  curse,  because  they  were 
"  fleas  demoralized"  ;.and  in  this  dialogue  there  are  capital  hits  much 
to  the  same  purpose.  "  Nothing  can  be  hoped  for,"  says  Macchia- 
velli,  "where  priests  and  monks  swarm  in  all  seasons.  Other  grubs 
and  insects  die  down,  these  never  do.  Even  locusts,  after  they  have 
consumed  the  grain  and  herbage,  take  flight  or  are  swept  away,  and 
leave  no  living  progeny  on  the  ground  behind  them.  The  vermin 
between  skin  and  flesh   are  ineradicable."     "  But  what,"  says  the 


/ET.  83-89.] 


IN   FLORENCE.  665 


other,  "  can  we  do  with  the  religious  1 "  to  which,  from  Macchiavelli, 
there  is  a  terse  reply  with  a  wide  application  :  "  Teach  them  religion." 
The  third  and  fourth  of  these  Conversations,  the  latter  printed  in 
August,  1862,  had  in  both  the  same  interlocutors,  his  old  favorites 
Milton  and  Marvell.  The  theme  of  the  first  was  chiefly  poetry,  and 
that  of  the  second  matters  connected  with  English  history  or  social 
life  ;  but  neither  of  them  added  anything  to  what  on  both  subjects 
he  had  said  better  before.  The  same  remark  is  indeed  to  be  made  of 
nearly  all  he  now  wrote  up  to  the  time  of  his  death.  It  was  all  very 
wonderful  for  a  man  verging  on  his  ninetieth  year  ;  and  though  it 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  have  other  value,  1  shall  even  yet  have 
to  make  exception  for  one  or  two  pieces  to  be  published  in  these  final 
pages  for  the  first  time,  where,  at  the  very  close  and  on  the  eve  of 
total  darkness,  the  light  about  to  be  extinguished  flashes  brightly 
forth  once  more. 

The  contents  of  the  volume  of  Heroic  Idyls  published  in  1863  had 
been  brought  to  London  during  the  same  year  by  Mr.  Twisleton, 
who  had  carried  out  to  Landor  an  introduction  from  Browning,  and 
whose  visits  to  the  old  man  that  summer  were  perhaps  nearly  his  last 
intellectual  pleasure.  "  He  found  me,"  said  Landor,  "  I  will  not  say 
on  my  last  legs,  but  really  and  truly  on  no  legs  at  all.  These  last 
three  days  I  have  been  extremely  ill,  totally  deaf  and  almost  insensi- 
ble during  two  of  them,  half  deaf  and  just  alive  the  third.  But  Mr. 
Twisleton  has  tolerated  my  half-deafness,  and  has  nearly  cured  the 
other  half.  How  refreshing  it  is  to  find  a  well-bred  man  anywhere  ! 
And  what  rare  good  sense  Mr.  Twisleton  adds  to  good-humor 
and  fine  scholarship  !  "  The  new  book  was  dedicated  to  this  new 
friend. 

At  the  same  date,  and  in  the  midst  of  these  infirmities,  it  is  pleas- 
ant to  be  able  to  add  that  Landor  was  receiving  also  other  personal 
attentions  ;  as  well  from  his  fast  ally  Mr.  Kirkup,  as  from  his  younger 
sons  Walter  and  Charles,  the  latter  of  whom  especially  had  become 
frequent  in  attendance  on  him.  But  it  was  at  this  time  Colonel 
Stopford's  death  occurred,  and  I  can  understand  him  to  have  been 
greatly  shaken  by  it ;  as  well  for  the  regard  his  friend  had  himself 
inspired,  as  for  Mrs.  Stopford's  sake.  She  was  his  wife's  younger 
sister,  and  never,  in  any  part  of  his  life,  had  her  unwearied  affection 
failed  him.*  Her  letters  had  been  a  solace  when  everything  around 
him  was  unpropitious ;  and  the  last  of  them,  written  from  under  the 
roof  of  the  mother  of  the  empress  of  France,  who  had  always  been 
her  friend,  with  whom  she  had  been  living  during  much  of  the  past 
few  years,  and  who  gave  her  a  home  after  Stopford's  death,  was  among 
the  papers  sent  by  Landor  shortly  before  his  own  death  to  me.  He 
had  written  just  before  receiving  it  his  lines  to  the  empress. 

*  He  enjoyed  also  through  life  the  friendliest  regard  of  another  of  his  wife's  rela- 
tives, the  youngest  of  her  brothers,  his  godson  and  called  Walter  after  him,  who  became 
a  most  distinguished  engineer  officer  in  India. 


6G6 


LAST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY. 


[Book  vnr. 
1858-64. 


Although  I  neither  love  nor  hate 
Those  whom  the  vulgar  cull  the  great, 
My  heart  is  raised  as  bends  my  knee, 
Bright  lodestar  of  thy  sex,  to  'thee. 
She  whom  my  Stopford  boasts  for  his 
Thy  girlish  smile  afar  must  mi-s. 
On  high  Castilia's  breezy  plains 
Loved  by  thy  mother  she  remains, 
And  makes  her  at  some  hours  forget 
Her  loss,  and  find  a  daughter  yet. 

Besides  the  very  interesting  scenes  of  Homer  and  Laertes,  the  best 
parts  of  the  volume  dedicated  to  Air.  Twideton  were  six  other  classic 
dialogues  in  blank  verse,  entitled  Hippomenes  and  Atalanta  ;  Sappho, 
Alcseus,  Anacreon,  and  Phaon;  Theseus  and  Hippolyta;  the  Trial  of 
.Eschylus ;  Aurelius  and  Lucan  ;  and  Damocles  and  Hiera.  It  con- 
tained also  a  brief  scene,  more  masterly  than  any  of  these  but  the 
Laertes  and  Homer,  in  which  the  murder  of  the  fine  old  Scottish  king, 
the  second  James,  in  the  Dominican  convent  of  Perth,  is  not  only 
represented  with  force  and  distinctness,  but  with  a  quiet  power  of 
silent  pathos  which  is  deeply  tragical. 

Anticipating  my  narrative  by  but  a  few  months,  I  have  now  to 
add,  of  the  last  writings  of  this  wonderful  old  man,  five  scenes  or  dia- 
logues brought  to  me  by  Mr.  Twisleton  from  Landor,  written  at  a 
later  date  than  even  any  of  the  above,  and  printed  below  exactly  as  I 
received  them,  in  accordance  with  his  urgent  desire. 

IV.    FIVE  UNPUBLISHED  SCENES,  BEING  THE  LAST  IMAGI- 
NARY  CONVERSATIONS. 


I.  PYTHAGORAS    AND   A    PRIEST    OF    ISIS. 

Pythagoras.     Thou  hast  inquired  of  me,  and  thou  hast  heard 
All  I  could  tell  thee  of  our  Deities; 
With  patience  bear  me  yet  awhile,  nor  deem  me 
Irreverent,  if  I  ask  to  know  of  yours 
Which  are  around  me  on  these  sacred  walls. 

Priest.  Willingly  granted;  hesitate  no  more; 

Speak. 

Pythagoras.  Yonder  is  an  ape,  and  there  a  dog, 

And  there  a  cat. 

Priest.  Think  not  we  worship  these, 

P>ut,  what  is  holier  even  than  worshipping, 
Gratitude,  mindful  through  obscuring  years, 
Urgeth  us  to  look  up  to  them. 

0  guest ! 
Now  tell  me  what  indweller  of  a  town 
But  -hares  his  substance,  nor  unwillingly, 
With  his  protectress  from  invader  mouse; 
What  child  but  fondles  her  and  is  carest : 
What  aged  dame  but  sees  her  likeness  there 
More  Btrikingly  than  in  her  dearest  child? 

Now  to  another  of  these  images. 
None  are  such  friends  as  dogs;  they  never  leave 
The  side  of  those  who  only  stroke  the  head 
Or  speak  a  kindly  word  to  them. 

Pythagoras.  'T  is  true. 

But  may  I  ask  of  thee  without  offence, 
What  good  do  apes  to  any,  young  or  old, 


JET.  83-89.] 


FIVE   UNPUBLISHED    SCENES.' 


GG7 


What  service  render  they,  what  fondness  show  ? 
Thou  smilest;  I  rejoice  to  see  that  smile. 
I  wish  all  teachers  could  bear  questioning 
So  quietly.     Religious  men  bear  least. 
Priest.  Pythagoras,  they  rightly  call  thee  wise, 

Yet,  like  thy  countrymen,  thou  knowest  not 

Thy  origin  and  theirs,  and  all  on  earth. 

Some  of  you  think,  nor  quite  absurdly  so, 

That,  when  the  deluge  drowned  all  creatures  else, 

One  only  woman  was  there  left  alive, 

And  she  took  up  two  stones  and  cast  behind 

Her  back  those  two,  whence  men  and  women  sprang. 

Scraps  of  the  stones  seem  clinging  to  the  heart 

Of  that  primordial  pair. 

We  priests  of  Isis 
Acknowledge  duly  our  progenitor. 
Whose  moral  features  still  remain  unchanged 
In  many,  through  all  times. 

Did  ever  ape, 
As  kindred  nations  have  been  doing  since, 
Tear  limb  from  limb  the  brother,  grin  to  see 
His  native  bush  and  his  blue  babes  enwrapt 
In  flames  about  the  crib  for  winding-sheet? 

There  live  in  other  lands,  from  ours  remote, 
The  intolerant  and  ferocious  who  insist 
That  all  shall  worship  what  themselves  indite; 
We  never  urge  this  stiff  conformity. 
Forms  ever  present  are  our  monitors, 
Nor  need  they  flesh  and  blood,  nor  spill  they  any. 
We  leave  each  man  his  choice,  the  pictured  plank 
Or  hammered  block,  nor  quarrel  over  ours. 


II.  ENDYMION    AND    SELENE. 

(An  old  discontented  love-affair.') 

Selene.  Endymion !  sleepest  thou,  with  heels  upright 

And  listless  arms  athwart  a  vacant  breast? 
Endymion !  thou  art  drowsier  than  thy  sheep, 
And  hecdest  me  as  now  thou  heedest  them. 
I  come  to  visit  thee,  and  leave  a  home 
Where  all  is  cheerful,  and  I  find  a  face 
If  not  averted,  yet  almost  as  bad. 
Rise;  none  are  here  to  steal  away  thy  reeds. 

Endymion.       Thou  art  immortal ;  mortal  is  Endymion, 

Nor  sleeping  but  through  weariness  and  pain. 

Selene.  What  pains  thee  ? 

Endymion.  Love,  the  bitterest  of  pains. 

Selene.  Hast  thou  not  mine  ?  ungrateful ! 

Endymion.  Thine  I  have, 

0  how  less  warm  than  what  a  shepherdess 
Gives  to  a  shepherd ! 

Selene.  Cease  thy  plaint,  rash  boy; 

1  give  no  warmer  to  the  Blest  above, 
Yet  even  the  brightest  every  day  pursues 
My  path,  and  often  listens  to  my  praise, 
And  takes  up  his  own  harp  and  aids  the  song. 
Few  are  the  youths  whose  finger  never  trilled 
An  early  oat  or  later  lyre  for  me. 

Haply  thou  too,  Endymion,  shalt  be  sung 
Afar  from  Latinos  if'thou  meritest, 
Nor  thy  name  severed,  as  't  is  here,  from  mine. 
Silence  is  sweeter  at  the  present  hour 
Than  voice  or  pipe,  or  sleep;  so  pay  my  due 


CG8  LAST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  ^^-a-il"' 


Ere  Morn  come  on,  for  Morn  is  apt  to  blush 
When  she  sees  kisses ;  let  her  not  see  ours. 


III.  THE    MARRIAGE    OF    HELENA    AND    MENELAOS. 

Mounted  upon  a  tall  Thessalian  steed 

Between  two  purely  white  rode  Menelaos, 

The  sons  of  Leda  were  his  company. 

On  drove  they  swiftly  to  where  stood,  above 

Eurotas,  a  large  mansion,  large  but  low; 

There  they  dismounted,  two  of  them  well  known, 

The  third  was  never  seen  that  way  before. 

Under  the  shelter  of  the  house's  roof 

Sat  with  an  idle  spindle  in  the  hand 

Two  seeming  equal-aged,  and  yet  was  one 

A  mother,  one  her  daughter:  both  sprang  up. 

"  0  Polydeukes !  "  the  fond  mother  cried 

(He  had  embraced  her  first).  "  0  Kastor!  come 

Both  of  you  to  my  bosom ;  long,  how  long 

Have  ye  been  absent ! 

Helena !  no  word 
Of  welcome  to  your  brethren?  " 

From  the  neck 
Of  Kastor,  whereto  she  had  clung,  she  turned 
Her  eyes  a  moment  on  the  stranger's  face, 
Whispering  in  Kastor's  ear,  "  Whom  bring  ye  back? 
Mild  as  he  looks  he  makes  me  half  afraid." 
But  Kastor,  without  answering,  ran  where  stood 
His  mother  and  their  guest;  to  her  he  said: 
"  Here,  my  sweet  mother,  we  have  brought  to  thee 
The  son  of  Atreus,  brother  of  that  king 
Who  rules  the  widest  and  the  richest  realm 
In  all  this  land.     Our  guest  is  Menelaos." 
Extending  her  right  arm  and  open  hand, 
"Enter,"  said  she,  "  a  humble  domicile, 
Which  Gods  have  entered  and  vouchsafed  to  bless." 
Whereto  with  due  obeisance  he  replied: 
"  0  Leda,  where  thou  art  the  Gods  indeed 
May  well  have  entered,  and  have  left  behind 
Their  blessing,  and  to  such  I  bend  my  brow; 
Thy  sons  announced  the  welcome  thou  hast  given." 

"And  not  one  word  to  me  I "  said  Helena, 
With  a  low  sigh,  which  Kastor  caught  and  broke, 
Thus  chiding  her:  "  Come  thou  too,  unabasht, 
Bid  my  friend  welcome;  speak  it." 

"  I  must  not 
Until  our  mother  tells  me,"  said  the  maid. 
"Then  I  do  tell  thee,"  Leda  said;  whereon 
Helena  raised  her  head,  but  timidly, 
And  bade  him  welcome:  gazing  on  his  face 
More  confidently  now  by  slow  degrees 
She  questioned  him  about  the  world  abroad, 
And  whether  there  were  rivers  bright  and  cool 
As  her  Eurotas,  on  whose  stream  were  swans, 
"Until  rude  children  moekt  their  hoarser  tones, 
And  pelted  them  with  egg-shells  if  they  hissed. 
My  trentle  mother  could  but  ill  endure 
To  see  them  angry,  stretching  out  their  necks 
Ruffled,  as  they  are  never  till  provoked; 
For  she  love.l  Bwafts,  the  tamest  one  the  most, 
So  tame  that  he  would  let  her  hold  his  beak 
Between  her  lips  and  stroke  his  plumage  down: 
This  fondler  was  her  favorite  long  before 
1  saw  the  light,  when  she  was  of  my  age. 
Ah !  we  have  no  such  now,  I  wish  we  had. 


JET.  83-89.I  FIVE    UNPUBLISHED    SCENES.  669 

There  still  are  birds  of  red  and  aznre  wing, 

Beautiful  to  behold;  and  here  are  heard 

Among  the  willows  some  who  sing  all  night, 

Unsociable  and  shy,  and  shun  the  feast 

Of  other  birds  upon  the  sunny  field. 

Are  any  such  elsewhere  ?  these  you  shall  hear 

When  sleep  hath  carried  off  the  weariness 

Which  that  proud  prancing  creature  must  have  caused." 

Night  came,  but  slumber  came  not  quite  so  soon 
To  four  faint  eyes :  the  lark  was  up  in  air 
When  Helena  arose ;  the  mother  first 
Had  left  her  chamber,  and  the  board  was  spread 
With  fruits  and  viands  ready  for  the  guest. 
Presently  he  and  his  two  friends  sat  down; 
But  Helena  was  paddling  listlessly 
In  the  fresh  river,  with  unbraided  hair 
And  vesture  cast  aside ;  some  irksomeness 
She  felt  which  water  could  not  all  remove. 
The  cool  and  spacious  hall  she  entered  soon, 
Where  Menelaos  and  her  brethren  sat ; 
The  guest  was  seated  at  her  mother's  right, 
And  she  was  bidden  to  the  left,  close  by. 
Often  did  she  look  forward,  to  drive  off 
The  flies  that  buzzed  about  the  stranger's  head  .  .  . 
Flies  never  were  so  troublesome  before. 
Complacently  saw  Leda  the  device, 
But  Menelaos  saw  the  care  alone 
Of  a  young  maiden  hospitably  kind. 
The  brothers  were  impatient  of  delay 
Until  thev  both  could  urge  their  parent  on 
To  give  their  sister  to  a  man  so  brave: 
Such  too  was  Leda's  wish  when  she  had  learnt 
How  throughout  Argos  honored  and  beloved 
Was  Menelaos;  she  warned  Helena 
More  earnestly  than  ever,  more  profuse 
Of  sage  advice  and  proverbs  from  the  depth 
•    Of  ancient  lore,  how  youth  runs  fast  away, 
And  beauty  faster;  sixteen  years  had  flown 
Unwaringly,  and  had  she  never  thought 
Towed? 

"  0  mother !  I  am  but  a  child," 
Cried  she;  ''  do  any  marry  at  sixteen?  " 
The  mother  shook  her  head  and  thus  pursued: 
Remember  how  few  moons  have  risen  since 
A  wild  Cecropian  carried  thee  from  home, 
And  well  bethink  thee  that  another  time 
Thy  brothers  may  be  absent,  in  the  chase 
Or  far  in  foreign  lands,  as  now  of  late." 

Helena  made  excuses,  and  the  more 
She  made  the  more  she  wished  them  overcome ; 
But  if  her  mother  and  her  father  Zeus 
So  willed  it,  't  is  her  duty  she  must  yield. 
She  ran  aci'oss  the  court  wherein  three  steeds 
Were  standing  loose;  there  Polydeukes  trimmed 
His  courser's  mane,  there  Kastor  drew  his  palm 
Down  the  pink  nostril  of  his  dapple-gray, 
And  just  beyond  them  the  Thessalian  steed 
Stampt  at  neglect,  for  Menelaos  lay 
Sleepless  past  sunrise,  which  was  not  his  wont. 
Incontinent  the  brothers  raised  their  heads 
And  shouted, 

"  Here,  thou  sluggard !  here  before 
Our  busy  sister  come  to  pat  the  necks 
Or  throw  arm  round  them." 

Scarcely  were  these  words 
Spoken  ere  Menelaos  was  at  hand. 


G70  LAST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  '"Stf-*;11, 


Helena,  who  had  watcht  him  thus  advance, 
I)re\v  back  as  one  surprised,  and  Beemed  intent 
To  turn  away,  but  Polydeukes  sprang 
And  caught  her  arm  and  drew  her,  struggling  ill, 
To  where  his  brother  with  their  comrade  stood. 
At  first  she  would  have  turned  her  face  aside, 
But  could  not:  Menclaos  gently  toucht 
Her  shrinking  arm  ;  little  it  shrank,  nor  long. 
Then  he  entreated  her  to  hear  the  words 
Of  true  and  ardent  Live,  for  such  was  his 
He  swore;  .she  shook  her  head,  with  brow  abased. 
'•What  ardent  love  can  mean  I  never  heard; 
My  brothers,  if  they  knew  it,  never  told  me," 
Said  she,  and  lookt  amazed  into  his  face. 
"Simplicity  and  innocence!  "  exclaimed 
The  wondering  Argive.     "  What  a  prudent  wife 
Will  skt  be,  when  Twin  her,  as  I  hope, 
Diffident  as  she  is  nor  prone  to  trust: 
Yet  hope  I,  daughter  though  she  be  of  Zeus, 
And  1  but  younger  brother  of  a  king." 
Day  after  day  he  grew  in  confidence, 
And  gave  her  all  he  gained  in  it  and  more. 
Hymen  was  soon  invoked,  nor  was  averse; 
Eros  had  long  been  ready,  the  light  winged, 
And  laught  at  his  slow  step  who  marcht  behind. 
Chanted  were  hymns  to  either  Deity 
By  boys  and  maidens,  though  they  understood 
No  word  they  sang:  serious  was  Hymen's  face 
When  Eros  laught  up  into  it  and  twitcht 
The  saffron  robe,  and  heeded  no  reproof. 
'T  is  said  they  sometimes  since  have  disagreed 
Wore  seriously:  but  let  not  me  report 
The  dissidence  and  discord  of  the  Gods. 


IV.  AN    OLD    MAN    AND    A    CHILD. 

A  child  pickt  up  a  pebble,  of  the  least 
Among  a  myriad  on  a  flat  sea-shore; 
And  tost  it  back  again. 

"What  hast  thou  done?" 
Said  mildly  an  old  man. 

"  Nothing  at  all," 
Replied  the  child;  "  it  only  was  a  pebble, 
And  not  worth  carrying  home,  or  looking  at, 
Or  wetting,  though  I  did  it,  with  my  tongue: 
Though  it  was  smooth,  it  was  not  large  enough 
To  copy  on  when  I  begin  to  write, 
Nor  proper  in  the  winter  to  strike  fire  from, 
Or  puss  to  pat  and  roll  along  the  floor." 

Then  said  the  elder:  « 

"  Thoughtful  child  art  thou, 
And  mightest  have  learnt  from  it  some  years  hence 
What  prouder  wise  ones  never  have  attained. 
The  wisest  know  not  yet  how  many  suns 
Have  bleacht  that  stone,  how  many  waves  have  rolled 
Above  it  when  upon  its  mountain's  breast; 
How  once  it  was  no  stone  nor  hard,  but  lapt 
Amid  the  tender  herbage  of  the  field." 

The  child  stared  up.  frightened:  then  ran  away. 
Before  she  bail  run  far  she  turned  her  face 
To  look  at  that  strange  man. 

"He  seemed  so  calm, 
He  may  not  be  quite  mad  nor  mischievous. 
I  shall  not  mind  him  much  another  time; 
But,  0,  what  random  stories  old  men  tell!  " 


JET.  3" -89.]  FIVE   UNPUBLISHED    SCENES.  671 

V.  ANDREW    MARVELL   AND    HENRY    MARTEN. 

Marvell.     Glad  to  see  thee  once  more,  my  good  Harry !  how  art  thou  ? 

Marten.  You  see  how  I  am  by  seeing  where  I  am.  Prisons  are  but  indifferent  con- 
servatories of  health.  Cold  air  penetrates  the  closest  of  them,  and  friendship  is  the 
only  matter  it  shuts  out.  But  here  you  are,  Andrew,  to  disprove  my  saying.  God 
knows  how  grateful  I  feel  for  this  visit. 

Marvell.  The  breezes  from  the  Welsh  mountains,  and  from  the  estuary  under  the 
castle,  have  kept  the  color  fresh  on  thy  cheek.  .         „ 

Marten.  When  I  mount  upon  the  table  I  can  catch  them  as  they  pass,  yet  1  would 
willingly  barter  the  best  of  them  against  the  smoke  of  London  and  the  fogs  of  the 
Thames.  Oliver's  pen  across  my  muzzle  would  not  mightily  discompose  me  ou  a  like 
occasion. 

Marvell.     Never  sigh,  my  man ! 

Marten.  Pleasure  hath  her  sighs,  though  shorter  than  those  of  sorrow,  and  you 
brins;  them  out  with  you. 

Marvell.  Even  here  there  may  be  occasionally  a  glimpse  of  happiness.  When  we 
enjoy  it  we  wish  for  more,  never  quite  contented.  If  we  kiss  a  fair  maiden  on  one 
cheek  we  press  for  the  other.  We  change  our  mantles  when  they  have  lost  their  gloss. 
Even  in  the  solitude  of  this  royal  enclosure  thou  enjoyest  a  privilege  granted  to  few 
outside. 

Marten.     Whatmavitbe?  .  .  . 

Marvell.  Memorv^justlv  proud.  Hast  thou  not  sat  convivially  with  Oliver  Crom- 
well ?  Hast  thou  hot  conversed  familiarly  with  the  only  man  greater  than  he,  John 
Wilton '?  One  was  ambitious  of  perishable  'power,  the  other  ot  imperishable  glory ;  both 
have  attained  their  aim.  Believe  me,  it  is  somewhat  to  have  lived  in  fellowship  with 
the  truly  great,  and  to  have  eschewed  the  falsely. 

Marten.  A  prodigiously  great  one,  in  a  black  apron  and  white  lawn  sleeves,  puffy 
and  fresh  and  fragrant  from  his  milliner,  came  some  time  ago  to  instruct  me  in  my  duty 
and  to  convert  me  into  righteousness.  He  was  announced  by  the  governor  as  my 
Lord.  I  recollected  one  only  whom  I  ever  called  so.  I  bowed  however,  and  sat  down, 
after  he  had  done  the  like. 

Marvell.  These  gentry  usually  set  their  day-laborers  at  the  work  of  edification.  My 
Lord  himself,  I  hope,  got  nothing  out  of  you  worth  carrying  to  court. 

Marten.  He  looked  on  the  table  and  saw  there  a  book  I  had  received  the  day  before, 
and  was  reading;  it  was  Hudibras.     That  is  all  he  saw,  and  all  he  got  out  of  me. 

Marvell.  I  perceive,  by  thy  smile,  that  humor  is  not  yet  parched  up  in  thee,  my 
pleasant  Hal ! 

Marten.  There  are  strokes  of  the  wand  that  can  open  fresh  springs  in  the  barren 
rock.  I  can  enjoy  fun  in  a  poet,  although  I  am  none  myself,  and  the  better  perhaps  for 
that  reason.     Are  there  any  of  our  other  poets  yet  living? 

Marvell  Plenty,  plenty;  but  they  ride  without  girths  to  their  nags,  and  often  roll 
off  the  saddle.  Waller,  the  smoothest  and  most  graceful  of  them,  is  growing  old  at 
Beaconsfield.  Even  the  courtiers  jeer  at  his  versatility.  Dryden  is  living.  He  bears 
no  hatred  to  Milton,  though  he  would  have  rhymed  Paradise  Lost!  Butler  was  less 
mischievous.  Cowley  has  written  one  unaffected  piece,  an  Anacreontic  on  his  imagi- 
nary mistresses.  Good  fellow!  he  died  suddenly;  drunk  after  dinner  with  Bishop 
Sprat  of  Rochester,  he  was  found  dead  in  a  wet  ditch. 

Marten.  Poor  Abraham !  He  was  my  chokepear.  They  called  him  metaphysical: 
does  metaphysical  mean  fantastical?  What  people  feel,  they  surely  can  speak  out,  and 
not  run  into  dark  corners  to  be  looked  for. 

Marvell.  Ostriches  hide  their  heads  under  their  wings  in  the  sands  of  the  desert,  and 
are  followed  for  their<  plumage.  But  you  are  right,  Harry.  A  poet  loses  nothing  by 
being  clear  and  bright,  provided  his  readers  are  not  dull  or  cloudy.  There  is  a  prodi- 
gious quantity  of  thought  in  Butler,  and  its  brightness  makes  the  inconsiderate  doubt  its 
depth. 

Marten.  Butler,  I  hear,  is  a  great  favorite  with  the  king,  who  has  paid  four  groats 
for  the  poem,  but  never  one  to  the  poet;  poor  as  Job,  they  tell  me,  or  as  Milton.  Yet 
Milton,  at  least,  is  free. 

Marvell.  He  is  free  from  all  sores  but  an  inconstant  and  incurable  wife.  Solitary  in 
his  city  garden,  if  there  be  any  flower  he  stoops  for  it  in  vain ;  he  has  no  eyes  to  find  it. 
I  visit'him  now  and  then;  but  they  who  most  want  comfort  most  avoid  society. 


672  LAST   SIX   TEARS   IN    ITALT.  ^s^-™1' 

V.    THE   CLOSE. 

Implored  so  long  in  vain,  at  last  is  come 
The  hour  that  leads  me  to  a  peaceful  home. 

These  lines,  with  others  that  spoke  of  the  burden  of  life,  and  its 
heaviness  at  last  even  when  we  have  only  years  to  carry,  were  in  a 
letter  from  Landor  brought  to  me  by  Mr.  Twisleton  at  the  close  of 
1863.  During  the  decline  of  that  year  he  is  described  by  those  liv- 
ing in  Italy  to  have  become  but  the  wreck  of  himself ;  and  yet  the 
pieces  which  have  just  been  given  were  its  product.  Exceptional  in- 
deed, and  very  wonderful,  such  a  lot,  —  to  be  carrying  the  weight  of 
ninety  years  with  so  little  loss  of  intellectual  power,  after  so  much 
self-achieved  greatness  and  self-inflicted  misery.  A  friend  in  writing 
to  him  at  this  date  very  aptly  compared  him  to  one  of  the  "  Jbtuns  " 
of  his  early  poem  of  Gunlaug*  in  a  note  to  which  it  is  said  that  in 
the  North  at  all  times  had  existed  men  of  enormous  stature ;  that 
we  ourselves  had  seen  them,  our  fathers  had  seen  them,  and  our 
children  (perhaps)  might  see  them  ;  but  that  ordinary  people  were 
apt  to  fear  these  higher  sort  of  men,  and  would  lie  in  ambush  for 
them,  and  would  persecute  them  ;  until  at  last  mothers  came  again 
to  produce  children  only  or  nearly  of  the  common  size  ;  and  yet,  for 
all  that,  one  of  the  old  stock  would  occasionally  reappear.  "  To 
change  your  words,"  the  letter  went  on,  "  to  add  to,  or  omit  them,  is 
of  course  to  wrong  you  and  one's  self;  but  I  remember,  as  I  now  think 
of  what  you  have  been  and  are,  thus  much  of  a  passage  you  may 
long  ago  have  forgotten.  There  will  be  plenty  however  to  learn  it, 
and  many  an  utterance  of  yours,  in  days  when  we  shall  both  of  us 
be  otherwhere  lodged  and  otherwise  employed.  I  hope  you  take  the 
due  comfort  out  of  your  wonderful  amount  of  achievement,  and  keep 
up  the  old  heroic  heart  usque  ad  finem,  postfinem  !  And  so,  all  hap- 
piness to  you  from  God,  and  all  honor  from  men." 

Without  comment,  and  requesting  only  that  the  reader  will  consid- 
erately forgive  some  expressions  retained  in  them  favorable  to  my- 
self which  I  could  not  wholly  erase,  1  now  print,  exactly  as  they 
came,  Landor's  last  letters.  They  carry  my  narrative  very  nearly  to 
its  close,  relating  what  it  would  be  difficult  otherwise  to  express,  yet 
hardly  desirable  to  omit  altogether  ;  and  here,  at  the  end  of  life,  as 
invariably  at  its  beginning,  they  were  signed  simply  "  Walter  "  Lan- 
dor. 

14TH   DECEMBER,  18G3. 

"  Well  do  T  know  the  friendship  you  had  for  me,  and  have  grieved  over 
its  interruption.  I  would  not.  now  -write  but  for  the  promise  you  once  held 
out  to  me  that  you  might  consent  to  be  my  biographer.  Last  week  I  re- 
ceived a  most  insolent  letter  from  a  Mr. ,  containing  a  note  from  a  per- 
son connected  with  him  informing  me  that  he  was  writing  my  life.  He 
gave  me  a  specimen,  full  of  abuse  and  falsehood.     This  I  communicated  to 

*  See  ante,  pp.  111-113. 


XT.  83  -89.] 


THE    CLOSE.  C73 


my  excellent  friend  Mr.  Twisleton.  If  you  still  retain  a  thought  of  becom- 
ing my  biographer,  I  hope  you  will  protect  me  from  this  injustice.  How 
often  have  I  known  you  vindicate  from  unmerited  aspersions  honest  liter- 
ary men  !  Unhappily  no  friend  has  been  found  hitherto  who  takes  any 
such  interest  in  Walter  Lakdor." 

4th  January,  1864  (with  order  for  copies  of  the  Heroic  Idyls). 

"  My  dear  Forster  :  I  write  instantly  on  receiving  your  generous  and 
manly  letter  Severe  sciatica  has  deprived  me  both  of  locomotion  and  of 
sleep,  but  not  of  gratitude.  I  have  been  able  to  write  what  I  am  now  writ- 
ing with  great  difficulty.  Were  it  possible,  I  would  answer  at  the  same  time 
Browning's  ever-kind  letter.  Will  you  send  this  to  him,  which  says  all  I 
could  say.  Excessive  pain  at  every  movement  withholds  me  from  it.  May 
both  of  you  enjoy  as  many  happy  new-years  as  I  have  endured  of  unhappy 
ones  and  may  you  ever  believe  that  no  man  is  more  affectionately  yours 
than'  Walter  Landor." 

2D    FEBRUARY,  1864. 

"  My  dear  Forster  :  Your  kind  letter  has  almost  made  me  well  again. 
It  will  be  with  renewed  pleasure  that  I  receive  your  book.  Browning  will 
give  you  the  address  of  his  correspondent  in  Florence,  through  whom  I 
may  receive  it.  Many  are  the  kind  letters  on  my  last  birthday,  for  last  it 
must  be,  —  but  yours  the  kindest.  So,  good  by,  with  every  blessing  from 
your  grateful  Walter  Landor." 

18TH    FEBRUARY,  1864. 

"  My  dear  Forster  :  It  is  to  you  I  write  the  last  letter  that  perhaps  I 
may  ever  write  to  any  one.  Several  days  I  have  been  confined  to  my  bed 
by  a  sciatica,  and  could  neither  write  nor  read.  I  hope  I  may  live  long 
enough  to  read  your  Life  of  Eliot.  Our  friend  Browning  has  my  address. 
He  lives  where  you  know  in  London.  My  head  and  eyes  are  confused  so 
that  I  cannot  find  his  letter,  which  I  laid  by.     He  has  a  banker  here  whose 

name  I  sent  for  Mrs. "  [lie  means  Mrs.  Wilson]  "  to  tell  me,  which  she 

did  one  moment  agone,  and  I  have  now  forgotten.  But  not,  nor  ever  shall, 
your  unwearied  kindness  to  W.  Landor." 

22D   FEBRUARY,    1864. 

"  Dear  Forster  :  Tear  off  the  opposite  page,  and  send  it  to  Dickens.  I 
am  anxious  to  read  the  book  you  so  kindly  promise  me.  Your  bookseller 
will  have  a  correspondent  here  by  whom  it  can  come.  Ever  affectionately 
yours,  W.  Landor." 

21st    march,   1864. 

"My  dear  Forster:  Your  book  reached  me  yesterday  and  kept  me 
awake.  To-day  comes  your  kind  letter.  While  I  have  any  of  my  senses 
about  my  head  I  will  attempt  to  write  of  both.  *****  There 
has  long  been  a  sickly  season  in  all  countries  for  the  growth  of  men  to 
greatness.  How  few  have  been  bred  in  England  that  could  compare  with 
Eliot  and  Pym!  Alas,  I  cannot  write  more.  Adieu  then,  and  believe  me 
ever  your  affectionate  W.  Landor." 

43 


674:  last  six  teaks  in  italy.  ^ssf  vi"' 

4th   may,   1804. 

"Dear  Forster:  My  kind  friend  Mr.  Twish  ton  will  convey  to  you  some 
papers  and  a  small  bundle  of  letters,  the  last  I  received.  They  show  that  I 
have  yet  friends,  and  am  grateful  ever  as  your  old  friend,       W.  Landor." 


9th    MAY,     1804. 


',  your 
ever  atiectionate  W.  Landor's. 

li  I  have  been  utterly  deaf  and  almost  dumb  these  last  five  weeks.  I  am 
grateful  for  your  promise  that  you  will  give  to  the  world  the  last  things  the 
old  man  has  dune." 


9TH     SEPTEMBER,    18G4. 


"  Mv  dear  Forster  :  Nothing  could  give  me  greater  pleasure  than  the 
letter  I  receive  from  you  to-day.  I  lost  my  senses  for  five  days  and  nights 
in  consequence  of  a  verdict  obliging  me  to  pay  so  vast  a  sum'  for  exposing 
...  I  must  leave  off.  My  head  is  splitting.  You  will  print  what  I  sent 
you.     Ever  affectionately  yours,  W.  Landor." 

Shortly  before  the  letters  were  written  immediately  preceding  this 
last,  which  brings  the  end  very  near  to  us,  an  incident  is  said  to  have 
occurred,  which,  upon  the  relation  of  a  friend  in  Florence,  the  Amer- 
ican lady  describes  in  her  recollections.  On  the  night  before  the  1st 
of  May,  Landor  became  very  restless,  as  during  the  year  had  hap- 
pened frequently,  and  at  about  2  o'clock  in  the  morning  he  rang  for 
Mrs.  Wilson,  and  insisted  on  having  his  room  lighted,  and  its  win- 
dows thrown  open.  He  then  asked  for  pen,  ink,  and  paper,  and  the 
date  of  the  day.  Being  told  that  it  was  the  dawn  of  the  1st  of  May, 
he  wrote  a  few  lines  of  verse,  and,  leaning  back,  said,  "  I  shall  never 
write  again.  Put  out  the  lights  and  draw  the  curtains."  The  paper 
on  which  he  had  written  was  not  afterwards  found,  and  his  house- 
keeper supposed  it  was  destroyed  by  him.  She  described  him,  during 
what  remained  of  life,  as  gradually  more  and  more  indifferent  to  out- 
ward things  ;  for  the  most  part  reading,  or  at  all 'events  with  a  book 
in  his  hand  ;  physically  not  deafer,  but  so  much  more  heedless  of  ex- 
ternal impressions  that  she  had  to  write  down  every  question  she 
asked  him  ;  and  hardly  any  one  crossing  his  threshold  but  his  two 
a  qunger  sons. 

"I  did  not  give  up  visiting  him,"  Mr.  Eirkup  says  in  a  letter  to 
me  :  "but,  as  he  had  complained  of  the  fatigue  of  talking  to  me,  who 
am  deaf,  I  went  just  enough  to  show  that  I  did  not  take  offence,  and 
I  made  my  visits  short  ones.  Another  cause  of  my  keeping  away 
was  that  he  had  reconciled  himself  to  two  of  his-soiis,  who  were  al- 
ways there,  and  he  felt  uneasy  at  my  seeing  them  after  all  that  had 
formerly  passed  with  me  and   Mr.  Browning.     The  last  time  I  saw 


XT.  83-89.]  THE    CL0SE' 


675 


him  was  in  a  chair  drawn  by  Carlino,  who  stopped  to  speak  to  me ; 
but  his  father  hardly  noticed  me.  Since  that  I  have  kept  away,  but 
w,as  glad  to  hear  that  the  young  men  continued  to  live  with  him  and 
to  sleep  at  his  house.  Carlino  had  told  me  that  he  went  every  even- 
ing to  put  him  to  bed,  and  afterwards  that  they  both  slept  there  be- 
cause their  father  was  afraid  of  their  returning  at  night  to  the  villa 
on  account  of  brigands."  Landor  himself  confirmed  this  account  in 
one  of  his  last  letters  to  another  friend.  "  Kirkup  comes  often  to 
visit  me.  I  can  hardly  wish  it.  We  are  both  as  deaf  as  posts,  and 
it  brings  me  the  bronchitis  to  speak  audibly." 

One  more  incident  remains  to  be  mentioned,  which  in  writing  to 
me  some  time  later  Mr.  Kirkup  referred  to.  "Young  Algernon 
Swinburne,  whose  mother  I  knew  thirty  years  ago,  came  out  from 
England  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  see  Landor,  without  knowing 
him,  a  few  weeks  before  his  death.  He  afterwards  dedicated  to  him, 
in  Greek,  his  beautiful  tragedy  of  Atalanta  in  Cali/don.  Landor  was 
much  gratified  by  his  enthusiasm,  and  brought  him  to  me."  The 
visit  happily  was  made  not  quite  so  late,  or  it  could  hardly  have 
yielded  the  gratification  it  gave.  The  young  poet's  announcement  of 
his  arrival  in  Florence  was  among  the  letters  sent  me  by  Landor  in 
May.  He  had  indeed,  he  wrote  to  him,  travelled  as  far  as  Italy  with 
the  sole  object  and  desire  of  seeing  him.  He  carried  to  him  a  letter 
from  an  old  friend  ;  *  from  many  others  of  his  countrymen,  who 
might  never  hope  to  see  him,  he  was  the  bearer  of  infinite  homage 
and  thankfulness ;  and  for  himself  he  had  the  eager  wish  to  lay  at 
his  feet,  what  he  could  never  hope  to  put  into  adequate  words,  pro- 
found gratitude  and  life-long  reverence.  It  was  but  natural  that  all 
this  should  give  pleasure  to  the  old  man,  in  the  sense  of  fame  it 
brought  so  closely  home  to  him ;  and  with  it  may  also  have  come 
some  foretaste  of  a  higher  pleasure  and  happier  fame  awaiting  him 
in  the  future. 

In  the  present  there  was  little  more  left  to  him.  His  last  note  to 
me  was  dated  on  the  8th  of  September,  and  on  the  17th  he  had 
ceased  to  live.  He  had  so  weakened  himself  by  abstaining  from  food 
during  three  preceding  days,  that  a  fit  of  coughing  killed  him. 
There  was  no  other  suffering.  It  was  a  buona  morte,  said  the  Italian 
who  was  present ;  as  brief  as  it  wap  unexpected  and  sudden.  He 
was  laid  in  the  English  burying-ground,  and  a  stone  placed  over  the 
grave.  On  this  had  been  cut  correctly  his  name,  and  the  dates  of  his 
birth  and  death  ;  but  the  Florentine  stone-cutter's  English  was  imper- 
fect, and  the  word  "  wife,"  which  should  have  appeared  in  the  "  last 
sad  tribute  "  of  the  rest  of  the  inscription,  had  taken  the  quite  unin- 
telligible form  of  "  coife."  But  as  there  was  no  conscious  irony  in 
this,  so  neither  was  there  much  inappropriateness  ;  and  Landor  was 
not  to  pass  away  without  a  worthier  written  epitaph.  It  came  from 
the  young  poet  who  visited  him  so  lately,  and  needs  only  to  be  pref- 

*  See  ante,  p.  470. 


G76 


LAST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY. 


(Book  VIII. 

1858-64. 


aced  by  the  remark  that  the  convention  by  which  Florence  became 
the  capital  of  Italy  had  been  signed  two  days  before  Landor  died. 


IN    MEMORY    OF    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 


Back  to  the  flower-town,  side  by  side, 

The  bright  months  bring 
Newborn  the  bridegroom  and  the  bride, 

Freedom  and  spring. 

The  sweet  land  laughs  from  sea  to  sea. 

Filled  full  of  sun; 
All  things  come  back  to  her,  being  free; 

All  things  but  one. 

In  many  a  tender  wheaten  plot 

Flowers  that  were  dead 
Live,  and  old  suns  revive;  but  not 

That  holier  head. 

By  this  white  wandering  waste  of  sea, 

Far  north,  1  hear 
One  face  shall  never  turn  to  me 

As  once  this  year: 

Shall  never  smile  and  turn  and  rest 

On  mine  as  there, 
Nor  one  most  sacred  hand  be  prest 

Upon  my  hair. 

I  came  as  one  whose  thoughts  half  linger, 

Half  run  before; 
The  youngest  to  the  oldest  singer 

That  England  bore. 

I  found  him  whom  I  shall  not  find 
Till  all  grief  end, 


In  holiest  age  our  mightiest  mind, 
Father  and  friend. 

But  thou,  if  anything  endure, 

If  hope  there  be, 
0  spirit  that  man's  life  left  pure, 

Man's  death  set  free, 

Not  with  disdain  of  days  that  -were 

Look  earthward  now; 
Let  dreams  revive  the  reverend  hair, 

The  imperial  brow ; 

Come  back  in  sleep,  for  in  the  life 

Where  thou  art  not 
We  find  none  like  thee.     Time  and  strife 

And  the  world's  lot 

Move  thee  no  more ;  but  love  at  least 

And  reverent  heart 
May  move  thee,  royal  and  released 

Soul,  as  thou  art. 

And  thou,  his  Florence,  to  thy  trust 

Receive  and  keep, 
Keep  safe  his  dedicated  dust, 

His  sacred  sleep. 

So  shall  thy  lovers,  come  from  far, 

Mix  with  thy  name 
As  morning-star  with  evening-star 

His  faultless  fame. 


The  only  perfect  poet  is  he  who  makes  no  man  perfect.  Landor's 
fame  very  surely  awaits  him,  but  it  will  not  in  any  sense  be  faultless. 
To  the  end  we  see  him  as  it  were  unconquerable.  He  keeps  an  un- 
quailing  aspect  to  the  very  close,  has  yielded  nothing  in  the  duel  he 
has  been  fighting  so  long  single-handed  with  the  world,  and  dies  at  last 
with  harness  on  his  back.  But  he  is  only  unvanquished  ;  he  is  not 
the  victor.  Victorious  he  cannot  at  any  time  be  said  to  have  shown 
himself;  either  over  the  circumstances  from  which  he  suffered,  or  the 
genius  by  which  he  achieved,  so  much.  Greatness  there  was  always  ; 
a  something  of  the  heroic  element  which  lifted  him,  in  nearly  all  that 
he  said  and  very  much  that  he  did,  considerably  above  ordinary  stat- 
ure ;  but  never  to  be  admitted  or  described  without  important  draw- 
backs. What  was  wanting  most,  in  his  books  and  his  life  alike,  was 
the  submission  to  some  kind  of  law.  To  this  effect  a  remark  was 
made  at  the  opening  of  this  biography,  which  has  had  confirmation 
in  almost  every  page  of  it  written  since.  Hut,  though  he  would  not 
accept  those  rules  of  obedience  without  which  no  man  can  wisely  gov- 


jet.  83-S9.]  the  close.  677 

ern  either  himself  or  others  ;  and  though  he  lived  far  beyond  the 
allotted  term  of  life  without  discovering  what  was  true  in  the  pro- 
found old  saying,  that  all  the  world  is  wiser  than  any  man  in  the 
world  ;  his  genius,  which  the  possession  of  such  additional  knowledge 
would  have  rendered  more  complete,  was  yet  in  itself  so  commanding 
and  consummate  as  to  bring  into  play  the  nobler  part  of  his  character 
only  ;  and  by  this  his  influence  will  remain  over  others,  while  for  all 
that  was  less  noble  he  will  himself  have  paid  the  penalty.  I  am  not 
going  now  to  preach  any  homily  over  my  old  friend.  Whatever  there 
was  to  say  has  been  said  already  with  as  much  completeness  as  I 
found  to  be  open  to  me.  Attempt  has  been  honestly  made  in  this 
book  to  estimate  with  fairness  and  candor  Landor's  several  writings, 
as  each  of  them  successively  appeared  ;  and  judgment  has  been 
passed,  with  an  equal  desire  to  be  only  just,  on  all  the  qualities  of  his 
temperament  which  affected  necessarily  not  his  own  life  only.  But, 
now  that  the  story  is  told,  no  one  will  have  difficulty  in  striking  the 
balance  between  its  good  and  ill ;  and  what  was  really  imperishable 
in  Landor's  genius  will  not  be  treasured  less,  or  less  understood,  for 
the  more  perfect  knowledge  of  his  character. 

What  indeed  was  highest  in  him  receives  vivid  illustration  from 
that  which  limited  and  controlled  it.  If  he  had  measured  everything 
less  by  his  own  unaided  impressions,  if  he  had  consented  at  times  to 
judge  himself  by  others  instead  of  always  judging  others  by  himself, 
the  originality  that  distinguishes  all  his  books  might  have  been  less 
intensely  marked.  It  is  a  great  power,  as  solitude  itself  is,  if  a  man 
chooses  to  risk  the  danger  attending  it.  To  refuse  also  to  l'ecognize 
any  strength  but  in  one's  self,  to  exalt  continually  one's  individual 
prowess,  and  to  rest  all  claim  to  magnanimity  and  honor  on  self-asser- 
tion rather  than  self-denial,  cannot  but  be  a  grave  fault  in  the  conduct 
of  life  in  modern  time  ;  but  shift  it  back  into  classic  ages,  and  the 
heroes  of  Greece  and  Rome  take  visible  shape  once  more.  Yet  was 
this  only  a  part  of  Landor's  happiest  achievement,  which  was  not  so 
circumscribed  within  Paganism  as  the  general  character  of  his  genius 
and  method  has  led  many  to  suppose.  The  source  from  which  he 
drew  his  inspiration  had  not  so  confined  him  in  applying  it.  Though 
his  mind  was  cast  in  the  antique  mould,  it  had  opened  itself  to  every 
kind  of  impression  through  a  long  and  varied  life  ;  he  has  written 
with  equal  excellence  in  both  poetry  and  prose,  which  can  hardly  be 
said  of  any  of  his  contemporaries  ;  and  perhaps  the  single  epithet 
by  which  his  books  would  be  best  described  is  that  reserved  exclusive- 
ly for  books  not  characterized  only  by  genius,  but  also  by  special  in- 
dividuality. They  are  unique.  Having  possessed  them,  we  should 
miss  them.  Their  place  would  be  supplied  by  no  others.  They  have 
that  about  them,  moreover,  which  renders  it  almost  certain  that  they 
will  frequently  be  resorted  to  in  future  time.  There  are  none  in  the 
language  more  quotable.  Even  where  impulsiveness  and  want  of 
patience  have  left  them  most  fragmentary,  this  rich  compensation  is 


G78  LAST    SIX    YEARS    IN    ITALY.  '^s-ei"' 

offered  to  the  reader.  There  is  hardly  a  conccivahle  subject,  in  life 
or  literature,  which  they  do  not  illustrate  by  striking  aphorisms,  by 
concise  and  profound  observations,  by  wisdom  ever  applicable  to  the 
needs  of  men,  and  by  wit  as  available  for  their  enjoyment.  Nor, 
above  all,  will  there  anywhere  be  found  a  more  pervading  passion  for 
liberty,  a  fiercer  hatred  of  the  base,  a  wider  sympathy  with  the 
wronged  and  the  oppressed,  or  help  more  ready  at  all  times  for  those 
who  fight  at  odds  and  disadvantage  against  the  powerful  and  the 
fortunate,  than  in  the  writings  of  Walter  Savage  Landor. 


INDEX  TO  THE  BIOGRAPHY. 


"  A  bit  of  ribbon,"  38. 

Ablett,  Mr.,  of  Llanbedr  Hall,  398,  451; 
Landor's  bust,  442;  Landor's  visit  to 
England  with,  458,  459;  Landor's  ode  to, 
468;  death  of,  605. 

Absence  of  mind.  435. 

Adair,  Robert,  takes  Landor  to  the  House 
of  Commons,  74;  introductions  to  the 
press,  75 ;  his  correspondence  with  Lan- 
dor, 100-102;  on  the  Fox  administra- 
tion, 123,  124. 

Addington  administration,  93. 

Addison,  Landor's  estimate  of,  83;  praise 
of  Milton,  632 ;  and  see  631. 

iEschines  and  Phocion  (Imag.  Con.),  336. 

iEschylus,  418,  492,  494,  511,  542,  637,  666. 

Alexander,  Emperor,  and  Capo  d'Istrias 
(Imag.  Con.;,  346. 

Alexander  and  the  priest  of  Hammon 
(Imag.  Con.),  425. 

Alfieri  and  Metastasio  (Imag.  Con.),  355, 
564;  Carlyle  on  same,  564. 

Alfieri,  Landor's  liking  for,  356,  and  note; 
Salomon  the  Florentine  Jew  and  (Imag. 
Con.),  356. 

American  War  of  1812,  view  of,  221;  as  to 
Americans,  222;  Southey's  grudge 
against,  276  note. 

Anacreon  and  Folycrates  (Imag.  Con.), 
426. 

Andrea  of  Hungary,  &c,  Landor's,  524- 
529,  and  352 -354;  critical  remarks  on, 
529-532;  opinions  of  friends,  533. 

Anecdotes  of  Landor  at  Rugby,  11. 

Angelo,  Michael,  and  Vittoria  Colonna 
(Imag.  Con.),  564. 

Anne  of  Swansea,  47. 

Annual  Review,  110. 

Anti-Jacobin,  the,  75 ;  its  attack  on  Landor, 
76. 

Antoir,  M.,  Landor's  dispute  with,  454. 

Antonelli  and  Gemeau  (Imag.  Con.),  563; 
and  Pio  Nono  (Imag.  Con.),  ibid. 

Antonv  and  Octavius,  scenes  for  a  study, 
620-626. 

Aristoteles  and  Calisthenes  (Imag.  Con.), 
358. 

Arnold  of  Rugby,  441,  449,  453,  601.  628. 

Artigas,  a  South  American  leader,  281,  282. 

Asciiam,  Roger,  and  Lady  Jane  Grev 
(Imag.  ConO,  349. 


Athenamm,  appearance  of  Landor's  odes  to 
Southey  and  Wordsworth  in,  463;  publi- 
cation of  Conversations  in,  664. 

Athenians,  laws  of  the,  discussed  (Imag. 
Con.),  336. 

Atkins,  Captain,  137  and  note,  240. 

Atlantic  Monthly  quoted,  105  note,  662- 
664. 

Aurora  Leigh,  Landor's  opinion  of,  64 
note. 

Aylmer,  Rose,  47  and  305,  321  note,  459. 

Bacon,  Lord,  and  Richard  Hooker  (Imag. 

Con.),  349. 
Banos.  Lopez,  and  Romero  Alpuente  (Imag. 

Con.).  357. 
Barry  Cornwall  (B.  W.  Procter),  571. 
Bath,   521;    a    sunset,   608;    a    miserable 

squabble,  647;  and  see  656-661. 
Beaufort,  Duke  of,  lines  by  Landor  on,  211. 
Beauties  of  England  and  Wales,  error  as  to 

Llanthony  corrected,  189,  190. 
Beddoes,  his  Death's  Jest-Book,  614. 
Belmore,  Lady,  608. 
Beniowski  and  Aphanasia  (Imag.  Con.), 

Ben  well,  Landor's  tutor  at  Oxford,  25. 

Bernadotte,  345. 

Betham,  202,  203 ;  Landor's  tenant  at  Llan- 
thonv,  234,  241 :  Lttmb's  recollections  of 
the  Betham  family,  235;  their  system 
of  annoyance,  245-247. 

Birch,  Walter,  Landor's  friend  at  Rugby, 
14  and  note,  and  113  note;  at  Oxford.  25; 
Robert  Landor's  recollection  of,  112, 113; 
on  the  Latin  Gebirus,  114;  correspondence 
with  Landor,  112-119;  on  Pasley's  Es- 
say, &c,  155,  156  note:  on  Landor's  mar- 
riage, 197;  notices  of  later  life,  279. 

Blackwood's  Magazine  and  Lnndor,  505. 

Blake,  Wm.,  Landor  attracted  bv  writings 
of,  508. 

Blake  and  his  brother  Humphrey  (Imag. 
Con.),  564. 

Blessington,  Lord  and  Lady,  318,  B«5,  396, 
442  and  note:  the  Shakespeare  M  '.  for- 
warded to  the  latter,  476,  477;  vi  -its  to 
Gore  House,  510;  letter  from  Landor  to, 
584;  death  of.  606;  and  see  663. 

Boecnceio  and  Petrarch  (Imag.  Con.),  424. 

Boileau,  345. 


G80 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


Bonaparte  the  one  Frenchman  Landor 
care  I  to  see,  103;  his  reception  at  Paris 
described  by  Landor,  104,  105;  note  on, 
to  a  passage  in  Gebir,  107  (see  also  387 
note);  in  Spain,  188,  134;  Landor's  later 
opinion  of  litiii  and  his  work,  165,226; 
Southey  on  the  last  move  of,  233;  the 
President  of  the  Senate  and  (Imag.  Con.), 
345:  Landor's  view  of,  345,  568;  visit  to 
Landor  of  Prince  Louis  Napoleon,  597; 
author's  note  on  latter,  599. 

Bonaparte,  King  Louis,  345. 

Book  of  the  Church,  Southey's,  380,  559. 

Books',  the  first  two  bought  by  Landor,  13. 

Bossuet  and  the  Duchess  de  Fontanges 
(Imag.  Con.),  424. 

Boulter,  Archbishop,  and  Philip  Savage 
(Imag.  Con.),  423. 

Bowles,  Caroline,  second  wife  of  Southey, 
557,  587. 

Boxall's  portrait  of  Landor,  10. 

British  and  Foreign  Quarterly  on  the  Pen- 
lameron,  538;  Landor's  reply  (unpub- 
lished). 539-547. 

Broderick,  General,  140  and  note. 

Brown,  Mr.  Annitage,  the  friend  of  Keats, 
436,  437,  549;  letter  in  justification  of 
Landor's  departure  from  Fiesole,  499; 
dedicates  his  book  to  Landor,  549;  his 
death,  ibid. 

Browning,  E.  Barrett,  64,  492,  516,  569,  626, 
642,  660. 

Browning,  Robert,  524;  letters  quoted  from, 
571,572,657-660. 

Brace,  the  traveller,  Landor's  obligation  to, 
58  note. 

Bugeaud,  Marshal,  and  an  Arab  chieftain 
(Imag.  Con.),  563. 

Bunsen,  601. 

Burden,  Sir  F.,  letter  to,  149. 

Burgess.  Bishop,  correspondence  with  Lan- 
dor on  Llanthony  abbey  church,  190-192. 

Burnet,  Bishop,  and  Humphrey  Hardcastle 
(Imag.  Con.),  341. 

Butler,  Bishop,  at  Rugby,  11. 

Byron,  Lord,  and  Gebir,  51  note;  his  opin- 
ion of  Southey.  265  note;  of  Landor,  375 
and  note.  376  and  note;  remark  of  Lan- 
dor's mother  on,  389;  for  Landor's  por- 
trait of,  see  341,  342. 

C.Tsars,  the.  339;  as  to  Tiberius,  339,  340. 

Caldwell,  Miss,  60S. 

Cairns,  Landor's  signature  in  the  Courier, 
229. 

Cam, in-   75.  222,  377,  416.  512,  &c. 

Carlo-Alberto,  King,  and  the  Duchess  Bel- 
gioi<o  (Imag.  Con.).  563. 

Carlyle  on  a  passage  by  Landor  on  lan- 
guage, 355;  Southey  and  the  French  Rev- 
olution, 562:  on  tin1  Petrarcn  Ettav.  583; 
visits  Landor,  597;  on  Last  Fruit,  626; 
and  see  474. 

Carmen  triumphale,  Southey's.  229  and  note. 

Carrick,  Mrs.,  a  friend  of  Southey,  125, 
215. 


Cary  and  Birch  at  Rugby,  14  and  note,  and 
li3  note;  his  translation  of  Dante,  113 

and  116;   and  B 199. 

Catherine  ami  l)aschkotl'(  Imag.  Con.),  424. 
Catholic   emancipation,   Adair  to  Landor, 
lul;  and  see  303,  370,  373,  374. 

Calo,  Addison's,  referred  to,  178. 

Catullus,  Parr  and  Landor  in  correspond- 
ence on  a  word  in,  98;  and  see  211,  512, 
520,  546,  569,  580,  646,  653. 

Chapman,  Dr.  of  Trinity.  Oxford,  33,  34. 

Charitable,  Dowayer,  Landor's  comedy,  235- 
239,  348. 

Chatham,  267.  512. 

Chaucer  and  Spenser,  Landor  and  Southey 
on,  155,  156. 

Chaucer,  Boccaccio,  and  Petrarch  (Imag. 
Con.),  184. 

Chesterfie'd,  Lord,  and  Lord  Chatham 
(Imag.  Con.)  358. 

Children,  pleasure  derived  from,  382  and 
note;  Landor's  fondness  for  his,  392. 

Cicero,  Marcus  Tullius,  and  Quinctus 
(Imag.  Con.),  359. 

Clarke  and  Landor,  35-37. 

Cleopatra,  question  of  her  age,  621. 

Clerke,  Captain  Shadwell,  378,  407  note. 

Coleraine,  Lord,  Rev.  Mr.  Bloomsbury,  and 
Rev.  Mr.  Swan  (Imag  Con.),  418. 

Coleridge  on  Gebir,  64 ;  Southey's  letters  to 
on  the  same,  66;  connection  with  the 
press,  74;  letter  to  Cottle  from,  215  note; 
Landor's  visit  to  him  at  Highgate,  458, 
466;  unpublished  lines  on  his  death,  468; 
Landor  on  hi-;  lav  sermon,  567. 

Colli  quies,  Southey's,  282,  294,  298,  313, 
387-403. 

Commonwealth,  English,  heroes  of,  506. 

Competition,  Landor's  dislike  to,  12,  25, 
196. 

Conolly,  Dr.  John,  449. 

Conspiracy  of  Gowrie,  Rough's,  86. 

Convention  of  Cintra,  142. 

Gmversathms,  the,  Landor's,  223,  224. 

Copley,  Lord  Lyndhurst,  86,  88,  89,  91,  92. 

Corunna,  Landor's  description  of  his  voy- 
age to,  137. 

Con/thus,  240. 

Cottle,  Southey's  letter  to,  on  Gebir,  66; 
and  see  507,  561. 

Count  Julian,  Landor's,  137  ;  conception  of 
the  tragedy,  163-166;  De  Quincey's  re- 
marks on,"  163,169,  170,  and  171  note; 
examination  or  the  work  in  detail,  165- 
173.  Correspondence  with  Southey  con- 
cerning it:  first  plan  of  the  work,  173; 
sketch  of  the  final  scene.  174;  first  act 
finished,  175;  note  on  the  method  of  the 
ancients,  &c,  176;  the  work  completed, 
176;  revision,  178;  alteration-  and  addi- 
tions, 179;  on  it<  chances  of  representa- 
tion, 181;  further  interpolations,  182, 
183;  difficulties  of  publication,  183- 
185. 

Cowper,  William,  Landor's  estimate  of, 
633. 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


681 


Critical  Review  on  Gebir,  65. 

Croker(J.  W.),  219,  &c. 

Cromwell   and   Noble   (Imsig.    Con.),  335; 

and  Sir  Oliver  Cromwell  (Imag.  Con.), 

564. 
Curse  of  Kehama,  Southey's,  126-129  and 

note,  130,  148,  149,  150;  its  publication, 

151. 
Cymodameia,  Landor's,  585,  586. 
Czartoryski,  Prince  and  Princess,  Landor's 

interview  with,  555. 

Dan  Stewart,  74. 

Dante,  Landor's  opinion  of  Carv's  transla- 
tion of,  14;  Wordsworth  to  Landor  on, 
332;  and  see  514-523,  637,  &c. 

Darlev,  George,  533. 

Dash  wood,  Mrs.,  398;  and  Landor's  do- 
mestic affairs,  501,  502  note. 

Davies,  Mr.,  of  Court-y-Gollen,  206. 

Davis,  Thomas,  and  Landor,  578,  579. 

Death,  as  to  choice  of,  402;  antedated, 
651. 

De  Foe,  Landor  to  the  Times  on,  593. 

De  Quincey  and  Gebir,  65;  on  Dr.  Parr, 
72,  73;  his  remarks  on  Count  Julian, 
163,  169,  170,  and  171  note. 

De  Vere,  Aubrey,  590,  634. 

Delille,  Abb£,  Adair's  intercession  for,  102 ; 
Landor  and  (Imag.  Con.),  345. 

Demosthenes  discussed  (Imag.  Con.),  336; 
Eubulides  and  (Imag.  Con.),  344,  427. 

Dickens,  Charles,  on  Landor's  villa  at  Fie- 
sole,  447 ;  first  message  to,  553 ;  his  Boy- 
thorn  in  Bleak  House  suggested  by 
Landor,  553,  556,  592;  visits  to  Landor, 
592;  his  opinion  of  De  Foe,  593;  last 
message  of  Landor  to,  674. 

Dillon,  Lord,  437 

Diogenes  and  Plato  (Imag.  Con.),  427. 

Disraeli,  Mr.,  his  estate  of  Hughenden,  4. 

Disraeli,  Isaac,  77,  84  and  note;  letter  to 
Landor  on  the  Pentameron,  523. 

Donne,  Dr.,  style  happily  caught,  423  note. 

Dry  Sticks,  Landor's,  611,  649,  651;  see  also 
Last  Fruit,  &c. 

Dudley,  Lord;  and  the  Cicero  Conversation, 
361;  Hallam  and,  539. 

Earl  of  Brecon,  tragedy  by  Kobert  Landor, 

534. 
Edgeworth,  Miss,  356. 
Edinburgh  Register,  the,  145,  148,  214  and 

note,  and  221  note. 
Eldon  and  Elcombe  (Imag.  Con.),  564. 
Eldon,  Lord  Chancellor,  Landor's  letter  to, 

208-210. 
Elizabeth  and  Burleigh  (Imag.  Con.),  337. 
Emerson  on  Landor  and  the  Imag.  Con., 

363  -  365,  418,  470  -  472 ;  present  of  books 

to  Landor  from,  470;  published  account 

of  his  meeting  with  Landor,  473-475; 

Landor's  reply  to,  473-475. 
Emigration.  Landor  on,  372. 
Empress  of  France,  597  note,  also  666. 
Endymion  and  Selene,  Landor's,  667. 


English  visitor,  Florentine  visitor,  and  Lan- 
dor (Imag.  Con.),  419. 

Epictetus  and  Seneca  (Imag.  Con.),  430. 

Epicurus  and  Metrodorus  (Imag.  Con.), 
565. 

Epicurus,  Leontion,  and  Ternissa  (Imag. 
Con.),  427;  and  see  647. 

Essex  and  Spenser  (Imag.  Con.),  487. 

Examination  of  William  Shakespeare  before 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy  touching  Deer-Stealing, 
Landor's,  466,  469,  477-489. 

Fame,  Landor's,  sure,  483,  676. 

Fawn  of  Sertorius,  Robert   Landor's,  575, 

619,  620. 
Ferdinand,  Don,  and  Don  John-Mary  Luis 

(Imag.  Con.),  415. 
Ferrand  and  Giulio,  Landor's,  183, 184,  and 

308;  some  extracts  from,  310-312. 
Fielding's  remark  about  Warburton,  20. 
Fiesole,   Landor's   villa  at,  357,  445,  663, 

664. 
Fisher's  portrait  of  Landor,  557. 
Florence,   archbishop   of,   and    Francesco 

Madiai  (Imag.  Con.).  563. 
Florentine  art,  a  doubtful  phase  of,  472. 
Flowers,  Landor's  love  for,  8. 
Fonblanque,  Albany,  referred  to,  612. 
Fox,  Charles,  Landor  and  Napier  on,  602; 

and  see  123,  124,  215,  &c. 
France  and  the  French,  Landor's  view  of, 

104-107,  and  133;  and  see  664. 
French  Revolution,  influence  upon  Landor, 

24,  107 ;  Alfieri  on,  356. 
Frere,  on  Southey's  defence  of,  144,  145, 

247. 
Friend,  the,  Coleridge's,  147. 

Garibaldi  and  Mazzini  (Tmag.  Con.),  563. 

Gebir,  germ  of,  where,  47;  Quarterly  Re- 
view on,  49;  intention  of  the  poem  indi- 
cated, 49,  50;  effect  of,  on  his  fame,  50, 
69;  analytical  summary  of,  50-64;  Scott 
deeply  impressed  by,  50  note;  a  passage 
from,  used  by  Byron  and  Wordsworth,  51 
note;  note  from  the  first  edition  of,  54 
note;  lines  specially  quoted  by  Shelley, 
Davy,  and  Scott  from,  57:  also  by  Lamb, 
459;'  the  early  and  later  editions  of,  62- 
64;  loss  and  recovery  of  the  manuscript 
of,  63  and  note;  manner  of  publication, 
64;  extract  from  preface  to,  65;  De 
Quincey,  65;  Shelley's  fondness  for,  69; 
Landor's  letter  to  Parr  about,  73;  cri- 
tique in  the  Monthly  Review,  76;  the  sup- 
pressed postscript  to,  77;  Rough's  imita- 
tion of,  86  and  158;  note  to  passage  on 
Bonaparte  in,  107;  see  also  387  note; 
Landor  to  Southey  on  the  reception  of, 
108  and  note,  and  157;  production  of  a 
carefully  edited  edition,  111;  alterations 
in  new  edition,  387. 

Gibson's  bust  of  Landor,  399. 

Gifford  and  his  Juvenal,  158  and  note;  dis- 
like of  Southey,  214;  and  see  625. 

Giovanna  of  Naples,  529. 


682 


INDEX   TO    THE   BIOGRAPHY. 


Gleichem,  Count  and  Countess  (Imag. 
Con.),  564. 

Godica,  19. 

Goethe,  275,  609,  510,  631. 

Gomez,  Don  Josef  Manuel,  138. 

Gray's  Elegy,  570. 

Greenough,  the  American  sculptor,  and 
Lander  on  Florentine  art,  472. 

Guizot  and  Louis  Philippe  (Imag.  Con.), 
563. 

Gunlaug  and  Ilelga,  112,  113;  and  see  672. 

Guy's  Porridge-Pot,  a  squib  wrongly  at- 
tributed to  Landor,  195  note. 

Hallam,  review  of  the  Penlnmeron  in  Brit- 
ish and  Portion  Quarterly,  attributed  to, 
539. 

Hamadryad,  poem  of,  581,  582. 

Hare,  Augustus,  318  and  note;  and  see  465. 

Hare,  Julius,  317,  318;  on  the  Imaqinavy 
Conversations,  309,  328,  334,  340,  342, 
347,  360,  367;  Landor  to  Southey  on, 
325,327;  finds  a  publisher  for  the  imagi- 
nary Conversations,  327;  his  connection 
with  the  publication.  325-330;  article  in 
London  Magazine,  367,  412  note;  letter  to 
Landor  on  the  same,  368;  to  the  same  on 
the  note  on  Byron,  376  note;  to  the  same 
on  the  sale  of  the  first  series  (Imag. 
Con.),  401 ;  letters  from  Landor  on  Imagi- 
nary Conversations,  405 ;  letters  to  Landor 
on  imaginary  Conversations,  404,  405,  409, 
411-413;  to  Landor,  on  the  visit  to 
Wordsworth,  461;  to  the  same,  on  the 
effect  of  the  reform  agitation  upon 
Wordsworth,  461,462;  returns  to  Italy 
with  Landor,  462;  opinion  of  the  Pcntam- 
eron,  516 ;  opinion  of  the  Trilogy,  533 ;  on 
Landor's  collected  works,  589;  visits  to. 
601;  lines  to  Landor,  609;  last  letter 
and  death,  609-611;  and  see,  for  letters 
of  Landor  to  Hare  on  the  Imaginary 
Conversations,  under  title"  Landor  ";  see 
also  466. 

Hare,  Francis,  character,  and  friendship 
with  Landor,  317,  318;  new  edition  of 
Landor's  poems  dedicated  to,  388,  413 
note;  his  marriage, 400 ;  letter  to  Landor 
urging  him  to  keep  the  peace  at  Flor- 
ence, 446 :  hjg  interest  in  Landor's  domes- 
tic affairs,  502  note;  a  conversation  sug- 
gested  by,  502;  last  visit  to,  553. 

Hazlitt  on  the  Imaqinary  Conversations,  809, 
888-840,846,849,860;  on  the  same,  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review.  3«i7,  36!i.  439  note; 
with  Leigh  Hunt  in  Florence,  404;  visit 
to  Landor,  484;  story ofhis  divorce,  438; 
his  attempt  to  paint  Wordsworth's  por- 
trait, 439;  letters  to  Landor,  439  note; 
Landor  on  his  works,  445;  and  see  411 
note. 

Hellenics,  Landor's  (see  Last  Fruit,  &c), 
591,  626,  &c;  severity  of  style  in  writing, 
626. 

Henry  VIII.  and  Anne  Boleyn  (Imag.  Con.), 
360. 


Henry  IV.  and  Sir  Arnold  Savage  (Imae. 

Con.),  334.  * 

Herbert,  William,  113. 
High  and  low  Life,  in  Italy,  Landor's,  444 

note. 
Hillard,  Mr.,  of  Boston,  495  and  note. 
"  Hints  to  a  Junta,"  148. 
History  of  Brazil,  Southey's,  148. 
Hofer,    Andrew,    and    Count    Metternich 

(Imag.  Con.),  356;  see  also  462. 
Hogarth,  600. 
Hogg,  Jefferson,  author  of  Shelley's  Life, 

on  Shelley's  liking  for  Gebir,  69;  with 

Lambe  and   Hare,  392;  on  Dr.  Lambe, 

459  note. 
Homer,  13,  493,  495,  542,  637,  651,  662,  663. 
Horace,  509,  545,  580,  664. 
Home  Tooke  and  Imaginary  Conversations, 

351. 
Houghton,  Lord,  470. 
Hugnenden  manor,  4. 
Hume,   David,   and    John    Home    (Imag. 

Con.),  356. 
Hunt,    Leigh,   225;     on    Landor    and    his 

friends,  305,  437,  440;   his  residence  in 

Italy,  447 ;  opinion  of  the  Pentameron,  516. 

Icelandic  poetry,  179. 

Imaginary  Convevsations,  Landor's,  some 
characteristics  of,  309,  313;  dialogue  a 
form  of  writing  suited  to  Landor,  298, 
313;  the  plan  confided  to  Southev.  314; 
the  first  portion,  323-326;  a  publisher 
found,  327;  preparing  for  press,  326- 
332 ;  Southey  and  Porson  on  Words- 
worth, first  published  in  London  Maga- 
zine, 330;  summary  of  the  first  volume, 
332-347;  of  the  second  volume,  347- 
364;  their  reception,  364-369;  publica- 
tion urged  by  Francis  Hare,  388;  opinion 
of  Landor's  mother,  389;  Dr.  Parr  and, 
391 ;  3d,  4th.  and  5th  volumes  in  progress, 
397;  sum  realized  to  author  by  the  first 
two,  3H9 ;  the  second  series.  401-415; 
a  volume  of  in  MS.  destroyed  by  Landor, 
403,  406;  second  edition  published  in 
1826,411;  contents  of  second  series,  415- 
431;  additional  series,  432  note;  the 
shortest  one,  555  and  note;  contents  of 
the  last  series,  563-567;  final  unpub- 
lished scenes,  666-'  71. 

Impious  Feast,  the,  Robert  Landor's  poem, 
399. 

Inez  de  Castro,  Landor's,  431. 

Ion,  Talfourd's  first  night  of,  504. 

Ipsley  Court,  and  estate,  3  note,  256,  453, 
654. 

Ireland,  Southey  and  Landor  on  the  errore 
and  grievances  of,  372-375. 

Irish  church  establishment,  Landor  on, 
348  (Imag.  Con.).  564;  and  see  630. 

Italy,  273,  287,  294;  as  to  Italians,  342- 
344.  476;  a  free  Italy,  346,  660;  hi  1823, 
371;  in  1831,  456. 

Jacobinism  at  Oxford,  28,  29. 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


G83 


James,  G.  P.  R.,489,  501,552;  on  Landor's 

trilogy,  533. 
James  i.  and  Isaac  Casaubon  (Imag.  Con.), 

338. 
James,  Doctor,  master  of  Rugby  School,  8 ; 

Landor's    dispute    with,    18;     Landor's 

verses  to,  178  note;  Jeffrey,  Francis,  215, 

330,  561. 
Jephthah,  Buchanan's,  Landor's  translation 

of,  21. 
John  of  Gaunt  and  Joanna  of  Kent  (Imag. 

Con.),  422. 
Johnson,  Dr.,  his  interview  with  Dr.  Parr, 

70. 
Jones,  Nancy,  120,  321  note. 
Julian,  Count.     See  Count  Julian. 

Keats,  John,  399,  411  note;  Landor's  in- 
terest in,  414;  and  Shelley, 419  and  note; 
and  see  635. 

Kemble  suggested  to  represent  Count 
Julian,  181. 

Kenyon,  John,  317-319,  327,  384;  char- 
acter of,  550;  receives  Landor's  odes  to 
Souther  and  Words"worth,  462,  463;  on 
the  Pentameron,  550;  to  Landor  describ- 
ing excursion  with  Southey,  556 ;  as  to 
second  Sirs.  Southey,  557 ;  his  death, 
611,  648;  see  also  452,  505. 

King  of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  Mr.  Peel, 
Mi-.  Croker,  and  Interpreter  (Imag. 
Con.).  416. 

King  of  Ava  and  Rao-Gong-Fao  (Imag. 
Con.),  416. 

Kirkup,  Mr.  Sevmour,  recollections  of 
Hare  and  Landor  at  Florence,  318,  433, 
434,  454,  657,  674,  675;  and  see  as  to 
Dante,  514. 

Kosciusko  and  Poniatowski  (Imag.  Con.), 
346. 

La  Fontaine,  Landor  likens  himself  to,  392. 

Ladv  Lisle  and  Elizabeth  Gaunt  (Imag. 
Cbn.),  422. 

Lamartine,  Landor's  introduction  to,  437. 

Lamb,  Charles,  74,  155;  his  recollections 
of  the  Betham  family,  235 ;  letter  to  Lan- 
dor, 305;  Landor's  visit  to  him  at  Enfield, 
458 :  letter  to  Landor,  with  copy  of  Elia, 
459;  lines  by  Landor  on  the  death  of, 
470;  opinion  of  Landor's  Examination  of 
Shakespeare,  477 ;  and  see  509,  516. 

Lambe,  Dr.,  of  Warwick,  87,  88,  395 ;  Lan- 
dor's grief  at  death  of  Mrs.  Lambe,  121 ; 
visit  to  him  in  London,  439  and  note. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage. 

Character  and  writings,  2,  298  -  314,  366  - 
368,  588 -592,  676-678;  his  claim  to  an- 
cestry, 4;  born  30th  of  January,  1775,  5; 
early  want  of  restraining  influences,  6; 
lost  reminiscences  of  his  childhood,  6; 
sent  first  to  school  at  Knowle,  7 ;  his  love 
for  flowers,  8;  dislike  of  grammar,  &c, 
8,  379;  at  Rugby  School,  8;  his  appear- 
ance when  first  seen  by  the  author,  10, 
504;  secret  of  his  scholarship,  12;  his 
excellence  in  Latin  verse,  11-13;  pecu- 


liar constitution  of  his  mind,  11,  12;  his 
knowledge  of  Greek.  13;  Baker's  Chron- 
icle and  Drayton's  Polyolbion  his  first  two 
books,  13;  not  unpopular  at  school,  15, 
17;  removal  from  Rugby,  18;  a  tribute 
to  his  tutor,  19;  his  progress  at  Ash- 
bourne, 21;  Medea  at  Corinth,  21;  his 
early  poems,  22 ;  his  excellence  in  trans- 
lation, 24;  entered  Trinity  College,  Ox- 
ford, 1793,  24;  not  much  moved  by  the 
French  Revolution,  24;  a  toast  of  his,  24 
note;  life  at  Oxford,  25,  28;  his  satire  on 
the  affairs  of  1794,  26,  27 ;  other  poems 
of  the  same  date,  27;  close  of  his  Oxford 
career,  29  and  note,  and  31-34;  deceived 
himself  first,  then  others,  30 ;  his  first  vol- 
ume of  Poems,  published  1795,  31  and 
note,  35-37;  his  relations  with  his  father, 
30,  31,  33,  34,  40;  A  Moral  Epistle  to  Earl 
Stanhope,  41;  his  "pious  wish"  as  to 
George  the  Third,  44  and  note;  was  never 
offered  a  commission  in  the  army,  44;  ex- 
aggeration in  urging  his  opinions,  45;  at 
Tenby  and  Swansea,  46;  Gebir,  49;  a 
descriptive  survey  of  the  poem,  49-64; 
his  own  estimate  of  Gebir,  65 ;  lack  of 
courtesy  to  his  father's  friends,  67;  his 
impatience  of  argument,  69;  friendship 
with  Dr.  Parr,  69;  his  remark  to  Hogg 
about  Gebir,  69;  his  introduction  of  the 
same  to  Parr,  73 ;  letters  to  the  Courier, 
74,  96;  correspondence  with  Robert 
Adair,  74,  100-102,  123;  urged  to  con- 
tribute to  the  Morning  Chronicle,  75, 101 
unpublished  postscript  to  Gebir,  77-85 
self-confidence  illustrated,  79  and  note 
friendship  with  Sergeant  Rough,  86-92 
his  imitations  of  Oriental  literature,  93 
correspondence  with  Parr,  93  - 100 :  visits 
Paris,  1802,  103;  his  estimate  of  Bona- 
parte and  the  French  people,  104,  133; 
note  to  a  passage  in  Gebir,  written  on  his 
return  from  France,  107;  the  Phocwans, 
108-111, 178;  some  characteristics  of  his 
style,  110;  arranges  with  his  brother  a 
new  and  fuller  edition  of  Gebir,  111 ;  Gun- 
laug  and  Helga,  112,  113;  correspondence 
with  Birch,  112-119;  on  pastoral  poetry, 
114;  mode  of  life  (1805),  115;  epigram  on 
the  "Carlton  House"  rumors,  115;  lines 
from  an  address  to  the  fellows  of  Trinity 
(suppressed),  115  note;  moved  to  enthusi- 
asm by  the  prospect  of  Trafalgar,  116;  his 
tribute  in  Latin  verse  to  Birch,  117  note; 
his  accession  to  property,  118;  his  verses 
to  the  memory  of  Dr.  James,  118  note; 
life  at  Bath,  120;  various  love  affairs, 
46,  121,  122,  143;  instance  of  Parr's  af- 
fection for  him,  124,  391;  leading  fea- 
tures of  his  character  sketched  by  Parr, 
124;  his  introduction  to  Southey,  125; 
friendship  with  Southey  begun,  126; 
their  correspondence,  126 ;  characters  of 
the  two  men  compared,  127-129;  Let- 
ters quoted:  on  Kehama,  130;  on  metre, 
131 ;  in  reply  to  an  appeal  to  write  more 


C84 


INDEX   TO   THE    BIOGRArilY. 


foehy,  &c,  132;  on  France  and  the 
Tench,  ana  his  sudden  departure  for 
Spain,  132  ;  in  Spain,  133;  his  share  in  the 
revolution,  135-137,  139, 140;  resigns  his 
Spanish  commission  on  the  restoration 
ot  the  Jesuits,  142;  on  the  convention  of 
Cintra,  142  ;  on  the  Stuart  affair,  143  note ; 
on  some  personal  hopes  and  regrets,  143; 
on  Sir  John  Moore  and  the  attack  by 
Frere,  144;  on  Spanish  affairs,  146;  on 
the  same,  146;  on  Coleridge  and  tax- 
ation, 147;  on  "  Hints  to  a  Junta,"  148; 
on  history-writing,  148;  a  note  on  Eng- 
lish pronunciation,  149;  objection  to  a 
passage  in  Kehama,  149;  on  Euripides, 
151;  on  themes  tor  epic  poets,  152;  on 
his  own  Simonidea,  &c,  164  note;  ac- 
knowledgment of  Kehama  and  its  dedi- 
cation, 155;  note  on  Spenser  and  Chau- 
cer, 155:  on  the  same,  and  Southey's 
double  project,  156;  on  the  reception  of 
Gebir,  and  its  effects  upon  himself,  157 ; 
on- the  first  portion  of  Pelayo  (afterwards 
Roderick),  159;  on  the  progress  and  com- 
pletion of  the  same,  160  ;  the  nature  and 
extent  of  his  power  in  drama,  162,  163, 
178;  Count  Julian,  163-  186;  storvofthe 
tragedy  followed  and  illustrated,  163- 
173;  original  plan  of  Count  Julian,  173; 
the  last  scene  arranged  first,  174;  the 
first  act  finished,  175;  note  on  Roderick 
and  the  method  of  the  ancients,  176; 
the  work  completed,  176;  revision,  178; 
alterations  and  additions.  179;  on  its 
chances  of  representation,  181 ;  further 
interpolations,  182,  183;  difficulties  of 
publication,  183-185;  confessions  of 
personal  weakness,  187;  the  Llanthony 
estate  and  abbey,  8,  188-196;  letter  to 
the  author  on  the  same,  188;  letters  to 
Bishop  Burgess  on  restoration  of  the 
abbey  chapel,  190-192;  his  Letters  of  a 
Conservative,  192  note ;  letters  to  Southey 
on  affairs  at  Llanthony,  186,  187,  190, 
192,  193,  195;  his  estimate  of  the  Welsh, 
191,  193;  letter  on  a  reply  to  an  attack 
on  Wordsworth,  194;  his  marriage,  196, 
197  ;  receives  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Southey  at 
Llanthony,  199  ;  his  line  of  conduct  as 
grand  juryman,  203-206;  is  desired  to 
become  a  magistrate,  206;  offers  him- 
self to  the  lord-lieutenant,  206;  corre- 
spondence incident  upon  this,  206 -211; 
influence  of  the  affair  upon  him,  212;  let- 
ter from  Robert  Landor  dissuading  him 
from  leaving  England,  212;  on  Jeffrey, 
Pitt,  and  Pox,  216;  State  of  the  govern- 
ment, 216;  and  of  the  people",  217;  on  his 
Observations    oti     Trotter's    Life   of  Fox, 

218;  his  commentary  and  parallel,  218- 

224;  cm  America  and  its  relation-  (1S12), 
221;  on  liberty,  and  other  matters, 
223;  on  Bonaparte  and  hi-  work.  226; 
on  his  enclosure  bill,  228;  on  Southey's 

appointment  to  the  laureate-hip,  280;  on 
Southey's  Carmen   Triumphale,  230;  on 


the  conduct  of  Austria,  231 ;  his  address 
to  the  freeholders  of  Monmouthshire, 
227;  troubles  at  Llanthony,  234,  241;  his 
Charitable  Doiraytr,  235-239;  Corythus, 
240;  Jdyl/ia  I/erovm  ofuiie  fferottfrnn,  240; 
persecution  at  Llanthony,  241  -  244 ;  letter 
to  Mr.  Jarvis  on  the  Betham  action,  246, 
247  ;  notes  for  Southey  prefixed  thereto, 
246;  his  departure  from  England,  247- 
250  ;  explanatory  letter  to  Southey,  248; 
further  domestic  confusion,  250;  a  domes- 
tic quarrel,  251 ;  acknowledgment  of  sym- 
pathy, 252;  on  the  desolation  of  Llan- 
thony, 253;  domestic  reconciliation,  253; 
on  some  Latin  poems,  253;  return  of  Na- 
poleon, 255 ;  at  Tours,'  257 ;  journey  to 
Italy,  257-260;  wishes,  regrets,  and 
experiences,  261;  on  Lake  Como,  261; 
troubled  that  Southey  has  not  written, 
260;  verses  on  his  laureateship,  &c, 
266;  books,  booksellers,  and  polities, 
266,  267  :  Italian  censorship.  Words- 
worth, &c.  267;  birth  of  his  first  child, 
&c,  269-271;  hut  incident-  at  Como, 
271;  going  to  Pisa,  272;  ode  to  Berna- 
dotte,274;  on  Byron,  himself,  and  Goethe. 
&c,  275 -278;  birthday  letter  to  Southey, 
280;  about  Artigas,  a  South  American 
leader,  281;  some  old  books,  &c,  282- 
284;  his  letter  to  the  Times  in  reply  to 
Wolseley's,  286  ;  birth  of  a  daughter,  and 
various  matters  political  and  social,  289; 
on  the  rising  of  the  Greeks.  &c,  294;  at 
work  on  a  Latin  dissertation,  278,288 
note;  his  orations  in  Italian,  291,  293; 
sympathy  with  the  Neapolitans,  291;  let- 
ter to  his  mother  about  hi*  family,  292; 
letters  from  his  mother,  292,  293',  388  - 
395,441;  letter  from  Wordsworth.  296- 
298  and  note;  in  the  palazzo  Medici  in 
Florence,  298;  his  wish  to  be  remembered 
in  connection  with  Southey.  299;  illustra- 
tions of  his  character,  301 ;  advantages 
from  his  self-banishment,  303-309;  his 
gentleness  as  well  as  strength,  305-308; 
plan  of  the  Imaginary  Conversations  con- 
fided to  Southey.  314  :  influenced  by  in- 
tercourse with  Francis  Hare.  317;  first 
portion  of  the  Conversation?,  323-326;  let- 
ters to  Southey  on  the  publication  of 
same.  319.  323.  324,  326,  328  note;  in  reply 
to  objections,  828, 829;  his  Tmag.  Con.  on 
Wordsworth's  poetry,  331 ;  contents  of  the 
first  series,  882-864;  English  language, 
a  favorite  study  with  him,  351-355  and 
note;  his  liking  for  Alfieri, 366  and  note; 
reception  of  the  Conversations.  364-369; 
in  dispute  with  the  secretary  of  the  Flor- 
ence legation,  869;  writing  to  Southey: 
upon  forms  of  government,  371;  on 
colonization,  872  ;  on  Irish  grievances 
and  errors,  372-374;  on  Byron's  at- 
tacks, 375;  a  history-writing  project, 
376,  377,  note  also,  525,520;  on  Can- 
ning. 377;  on  dome-tic  affairs,  &c,  878, 
and   382,   385  ;   on   the    Vision  of  Judg- 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


G85 


merit,  379;  on  the  proposal  to  write  in 
hexameters,  381;  on  the  Tale  of  Para- 
guay, 381,  386;  further  grievances,  pub- 
lic and  private,  383;  a  parcel  of  books 
from  Italy,  384;  on  the  death  of  South- 
er's uncle  Hill,  387 ;  on  republishing  his 
poems,  387;  family  letters,  388-401; 
fondness  for  his  children,  389,  437,  453 ; 
first  letter  from  his  son,  and  reply,  393; 
at  Rome,  393;  illness  of  his  children, 
396,  400;  account  of  his  Neapolitan  voy- 
age, 397;  collecting  pictures,  397,  399; 
Gibson's  bust  of  him,  399;  as  to  second 
series  of  Gmversations,  401-404;  to  Ju- 
lius Hare,  405;  contents  of  new  series, 
415-438;  passage  from  cancelled  pref- 
ace, 417;  English  visitor,  Florentine  vis- 
itor, and  himself  (Imag.  Con.),  419;  at 
Fiesole,  447,  451;  his  absence  of  mind, 
435;  closing  years  in  palazzo  Medici, 
433-443;  family  epitaphs,  443  note;  or- 
dered to  leave  Tuscany,  444;  his  High 
and  Low  Life  in  Italy,  444  note ;  on  his 
manner  of  life,  445 ;  his  dispute  with  M. 
Antoir,  454  ;  the  publication  of  his  col- 
lected poems  (1831),  455;  on  the  condi- 
tion of  Italy  (1831),  456;  revisits  Eng- 
land, 458 ;  interview  with  Coleridge  and 
Lamb,  458;  visits  Julius  Hare  and  War- 
wick, 459;  at  the  Lakes  with  Southey 
and  Wordsworth, '  460  ;  his  argument 
with  Southey  about  the  word  impugn, 
461;  return  to  Italy,  462  ;  his  odes  to 
Southey  and  Wordsworth,  463;  ode  to 
Joseph  Ablett,  468  ;  Emerson  at  Fiesole, 
470-472;  on  the  House  of  Lords,  475; 
on  republicanism,  475  ;  his  Examina- 
tion of  Wm.  Shakespeare  for  Deer-Steal- 
ing, 466,  469;  story  of  the  publication 
and  contents,  477  -  489  ;  Pericles  and 
Aspasia,  letters  to  Southey  about,  489, 
490  ;  review  of  the  plan,  &c,  490-497; 
another  domestic  breach,  and  departure 
from  Fiesole,  499-502;  his  Satire  on  Sat- 
irists, 504;  refunds  to  the  publisher  the 
money  paid  for  Pericles,  505 ;  letters  to 
Southey,  from  Llanbedr,  on  the  Pericles, 
&c,  506;  from  Clifton,  on  his  visit  to 
Germany,  505-507;  last  days  with 
Southey,  507  ;  visits  to  friends,  508;  Lady 
Blessington,  510;  letters  to  author,  511- 
513;  the  Pentameron,  513-523;  settled 
at  Bath,  521;  Andrea  of  Hungary.  &c, 
524-529,  532  -  534 ;  error  as  to  Greek  tril- 
ogies, 534;  failures  of  memory,  536- 
538  and  note;  unpublished  criticism  of 
a  review  of  the  Pentameron,  539-548; 
glimpses  of  his  friends,  549-555;  his  re- 
ception in  Paris  (1S41),  554;  last  letter  to 
Southey,  558;  lines  on  the  death  of 
Southey,  559 ;  his  inscription  for  bust  of 
the  same,  560;  last  series  of  Conversa- 
tions, 563;  Southey  and  himself  (Imag. 
Con. ),  566  ;  selected  passages  from  his  let- 
ters to  the  author  ( 1843  -  1845 ),  567  -  572 ; 
his  dog  Pomero,  11  note,  572-574  and 


note,  576;  letters  from  Bath  to  his  sister 
Elizabeth,  575, 576 ;  his  essays  on  Catullus, 
Theocritus,  and  Petrarca,  &c,  579-584; 
collection  and  revision  of  his  works,  584  - 
589 ;  his  Poemata,  581-591 ;  the  Hellenics, 
591;  letter  to  the  Times  on  De  Foe,  593; 
at  the  author's,  599,  &c. ;  at  Hurstmon- 
ceaux,  601 ;  last  visit  to  London,  603 ;  last 
visit  to  Llanthony,  604 ;  grief  for  deaths 
of  old  friends,  605-611 ;  his  verses  on  an 
unpublished  poem  of  Wordsworth's,  609; 
also  on  Julius  Hare,  610.  Pomero,  611; 
his  Last  Fruit,  &c,  611-626 ;  on  Beatrice 
Cenci,  613;  lines  on  Wordsworth,  617; 
poem  to  his  brother  Robert,  618;  pas- 
sages from  letters  to  the  author  on  the 
Life  and  Letters  of  Blanco  White,  627  - 
632.  Notes  on  books  and  men,  from  let- 
ters to  the  author:  of  Milton's  poetry, 
632 ;  of  himself  as  he  appears  in  Southey' s 
Letters,  633 ;  of  the  great  masters  of  our 
language,  ibid. ;  of  Southev  and  Cowper, 
ibid.;  of  William  Giflbrd,  &c,  634;  of 
Tennyson's  Maud,  ibid.;  of  Aubrey  de 
Vere's  Masque,  ibid. ;  of  Scott  and  Keats, 
ibid. ;  of  Sydney  and  Bobus  Smith,  635 ;  a 
preferment  unsought,  636 ;  De  Quincey's 
Essays  and  Recollections,  ibid. ;  of  some 
novels,  636 ;  of  the  Edinburgh  on  his  Hel- 
lenics, 637 ;  of  the  Quarterly  on  Steele, 
638;  of  the  dramatists  of  Elizabeth  and 
James,  638;  of  some  recent  poems  (1856), 
638;  of  Sir  Cloudesley  Shovel,  638;  a 
strange  storv,  639 ;  of  the  Apple  of  Dis- 
cord, 639 ;  of  Mrs.  Barbauld  on  Collins, 
640;  of  Cobbett's  Register,  640 ;  of  Swift's 
Tale  of  a  Tub,  641;  of  Shellev  and  him- 
self, 641:  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  posthu- 
mous memoir,  642;  of  Grote's  history, 
644;  of  parts  of  speech,  644;  of  corrup- 
tions of  language,  645;  of  his  own  pro- 
posed amendments,  645;  the  action  for 
libel  at  Bath,  647-653,  655;  his  Dry 
Sticks,  649,  651 ;  last  visit  to  the  author, 
653;  return  to  Italv.  654-658;  at  Siena, 
658-660;  again  at  Florence,  660;  last 
Dramatic  Scenes,  666  -  681 ;  last  pub- 
lished Conversations,  664:  his  Heroic 
Idyls,  665;  five  unpublished  scenes  and 
Conversations,  666-671:  last  letters  to 
author,  672-674;  his  death.  675:  Swin- 
burne's verses  to  his  memory,  676;  con- 
clusion, 676-678. 


Subjoined  are  references  to  where 
letters  from  Landor  to  the  author  are 
quoted:  10  note,  14,  15,  19  note,  20  and 
note,  37,  46,  47,  51  note,  64  and  note,  65, 
119,  188,  417  note,  435  note,  438  note, 
442  note,  502  note,  505,  509,  510,  511,  512, 
521,  523,  524,  525,  527,  528,  529,  532,  538 
and  note,  553,  554,  559,  567-572,  573, 
574,  576,  580,  581,  584,  586,  587,594,  597, 
599,  600,  601,  605,  607,  608,  610,  611,  613, 
614.  621  note,  627,  629  -  645,  647,  650,  651, 
652,  656,  660,  661,  664,  672,  673. 


086 


IXDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


Landor,  Doctor,  Landor's  father,  2,  5,  16, 
17,  30,  34,  43-45,  71,  118. 

Landor,  Rev.  Robert  Eyres,  2,  617-620; 
similarity  of  his  genius  to  his  brother's, 
2,  537,  538,  575.  Subjoined  are  the  sub- 
jects of  his  letters  to  the  author  con- 
tained in  this  work:  Dr.  Landor,  2,30; 
the  Landor  family,  4,  5;  Walter  at 
school,  &c,  13;  Walter's  temperance, 
16;  Walter  at  Ashbourne,  10;  Walter 
at  Trinity,  29;  Walter's  first  book,  35; 
General  Powell,  43;  Walter's  allowance, 
45,46;  G'ebir,  105;  Landor's  impatience 
of  controversy,  69  and  301  note;  Dr. 
Parr,  72,  73;"  Sergeant  Rough,  86,  88, 
91;  Landor  and  his  critics,  111 ;  Walter 
Birch,  112,  116 j  Landor's  extravagance 
of  talk,  123 ;  Landor's  young  wife,  197 ; 
the  sale  at  Llanthonv,  256;  on  his 
brother's  tragedies  and  his  own  Count 
Arezzi,  &c  ,  534  -  537  ;  on  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Rosenhagen,  550.  As  to  other  letters, 
not  to  the  author:  to  his  brother  Walter, 
dissuading  him  from  leaving  England, 
212;  to  Southey,  on  his  brother's  sudden 
departure  for  France,  249 ;  to  his  mother, 
descriptive  of  their  journey  to  Italy, 
257-260;  to  Southey,  on  the  "  Como 
scandal,"  269;  to  his  brother  Walter  on 
his  Andrea,  &c,  533,  534;  to  the  same, 
on  some  essavs  by  him,  579. 

Landor,  Charles  and  Henry,  2,  6,  9,  45,  46, 
293,  606,  617,  647. 

Landor,  Mrs.  W.  S.,  196-199,  246,  248, 
250  -  253,  258  -  260,  392,  395,  396,  433,  452. 
499-502,654-658,675;  allusion  to  her 
father,  197,  216. 

Landor,  Arnold,  382;  letter  from  his  grand- 
mother to,  390  note;  her  wish  to  be  in- 
trusted with  his  education,  ibid. ;  first  let- 
ter to  his  father,  and  reply,  393;  question 
of  his  education,  451;  a  fool's  paradise, 
453 ;  and  see  654,  655. 

Landor,  social  position  of  the  family  of, 
4,  5  and  note;  use  of  the  name  by  Rabe- 
lais, 5;  derivation  of  the  word,  5  note; 
Doctor  Walter,  3.  30;  the  Doctor's  family. 
5;  Henry,  46;  Landor's  mother,  46:  death 
of  his  father,  117  and  note:  Edward  Wil- 
son, 434  and  note;  longevity  of  the  fami- 
ly, 618  note.  See  under  ""Mother"  and 
,;Si>ters." 

Landseer,  Sir  Edwin,  600. 

Langley,  Mr.,  vicar  of  Ashbourne,  19. 

Language,  the  English,  and  orthography,  a 
favorite  study  of  Landor's,  351;  contri- 
butions to  reform  of,  351-356,  and  see 
687,  643,  647. 

Laodamia,  Wordsworth's,  331  and  note, 
369. 

Larochejaquelin  and  BeYanger  (Imag.  Con.) 
565. 

Lascv,  General,  and  Cura  Merino  (Imag. 
Con.),  350. 

Last  Fruit  from  an  Old  Tree,  Landor's, 
611-627. 


Latin  verse,  Landor's  excellence  in,  11,  12, 
17.  For  references  in  this  work  to  his 
Latin  poetry,  see  a  note,  591 ;  see  also 
589-591. 

Lavard,  Austen  H.,  516  note. 

Leckie,  Mr.,  436 

Leighton,  the  painter,  600. 

Leo  XII.,  pope,  and  his  valet  Gigi  (Imag. 
Con.),  415. 

Leofric  and  Godiva  (Imag.  Con.),  422. 

Leonora  and  Father  Panigarola  (Imag. 
Con.),  564. 

Leopold,  Peter,  and  Dupaty  (Imag.  Con.), 
342. 

Letters  of  a  Conservative,  Landor's,  192 
note. 

Letters  to  Charles  Butler,  Landor  on 
Southey's,  374. 

Lincoln,  President,  allusion  to  his  death,  304. 

Literary  fame,  643. 

Literature,  how  regarded  by  Landor,  2; 
and  see  644. 

Llanthonv  estate,  described  by  Landor  in 
a  letter  to  Southey,  8,  198;  "proposal  to 
plant  a  wood  of  cedar  of  Lebanon  on, 
187;  letter  to  the  author  descriptive  of, 
188;  author's  visit  to,  188;  letters  to 
Bishop  Burgess  about  the  abbey  chapel. 
190-192;  progress  of  repairs  and  plans, 
193,  195;  life  there,  196-213;  what  Lan- 
dor did  there,  208-210;  his  mother's 
management  of  the  estate,  256 ;  and  of 
Ipsley,  453;  and  see  654,  655. 

Locke, 'John,  222. 

Lockharton  a  passage  from  one  of  Southey's 
letters,  561. 

London  Journal,  Leigh  Hunt's,  469. 

London  Magazine,  first  Imaginary  Conver- 
sation published  in,  330. 

Lonsdale,  Lord,  in  Devil's  Walk,  614. 

Lough,  bust  and  statue  of  Southey,  562. 

Louis  XIV.  and  Father  la  Chaise  (Imag. 
Con.),  351. 

Louis  XVIII.  and  Talleyrand  (Imag.  Con.), 
563. 

Lowell,  Professor,  of  Boston,  opinion  of 
Landor,  2. 

Lucullus  and  Caesar  (Imag.  Con.),  430. 

Lucys,  the  old  and  young,  454. 

Lynn,  Miss.  614. 

Lyttelton,  Dorothea,  37-41. 

L'vtton,  Bulwer  (Lord),  464;   his  Caxtons, 

686. 
Lytton,  Robert,  Landor  on,  604. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  Landor  meets  at  the  au- 
thor's,'599. 

Macchiavelli  and  Michael  Angelo  (Imag. 
Con.),  664. 

Macdonnell,  Mr.,  436. 

Mackintosh  and  Dr.  Parr,  71,  100. 

Maclise,  Daniel,  600. 

Macready,  Mr.,  reform  of  theatre-lobbies, 
181;  on  Landor's   Trilogy,  683. 

Madrid  Gazette,  Landor's  services  to  Spain 
acknowledged  in,  141. 


INDEX   TO   THE   BIOGRAPHY. 


G87 


Mahomet  and  Sergius  (Tmag.  Con.),  425. 

Malesherbes  and  Rousseau  (Imag.  Con.), 
424. 

Marcellus  and  Hannibal  (Imag.  Con.), 
430. 

Marriaqe  of  Helena  and  Menelaos,  Lan- 
dor's,  668'. 

Marriage,  seriousness  of,  444  note. 

Martin  and  Jack,  Swift's  progeny  (Imag. 
Con.).  563. 

Marvel  and  Henry  Marten,  Landor's,  671. 

Masque  of  Proserpine,  Aubrey  De  Vere's, 
634. 

Mavrocordato  and  Colocotroni  (Imag.  Con. ), 
356. 

Menander  and  Epicurus  (Imag.  Con.),  564. 

Metellus  and  Marius  (Imag.  Con.),  430. 

Middleton  and  Magliabechi  (Imag.  Con.), 
347. 

Mignet,  his  courtesy  to  Landor  in  Paris, 
554. 

Miguel  and  his  mother  (Imag.  Con.),  415. 

Milmaii,  Dean,  600. 

Milnes,  Pi.  Monckton,  poems  on  Landor's 
children,  470;  friendship  with  Landor, 
470,  489,  490;  his  Life  of  Keats,  549. 

Milton,  Landor's  study  of  Paradise  Lost, 
47;  Landor  charged  with  imitating,  47; 
Landor's  veneration  for,  78  ;  Words- 
worth on  the  sonnets  of,  321;  Landor  on 
the  poetry  of,  566,  632;  and  see  646;  and 
Marvel  (Imag.  Con.),  347;  and  see  665. 

Mina,  408  note,  and  409  note;  and  see 
587. 

M'Kenzie,  Miss,  of  Seaforth,  452,  501. 

Mocatta,  Isaac,  84-86. 

Modern  allusions  in  dialogues  of  ancients, 
418,  637,  &c. 

Molande\  Jane,  Countess  de,  120,  446,  448, 
458,  506,  573,  607. 

Molesworth,  Sir  William,  610. 

"  Molly  Perry  "  and  her  letter,  40,  41  note. 

Montaigne  and  Joseph  Scaliger  (hnag. 
Con.),  424. 

Monthly  Review  on  Gebir,  76. 

Moore  and  Landor,  293,  552. 

Moral  Epistle  to  Earl  Stanhope,  40  -  43. 

Morgan,  Lady,  356. 

Morning  Chronicle,  Landor  solicited  for 
contributions  to,  75,  101. 

Morning  Post  and  Courier,  early  contribu- 
tors to,  74. 

Mother,  Landor's,  3,  45,  46,  196,  199,  248, 
257-269,  270,  292,  293,  314,  388-401, 
441-443;  and  see  445. 

Mureta,  Juan  Santos  de,  239. 

Napier,  Gen.  Sir  Wm.,  474,  529,  576,  577, 
and  587,  588,  602,  603;  defence  of  Lan- 
dor, 603;  Landor's  last  meeting  with, 
604. 

Napier,  Gen.  Sir  Charles,  601. 

Napoleon,  568. 

Napoleon,  President  Louis,  and  M.  de 
Mo'.6'(Imag.  Con.),  563;  note  of  author 
upon,  599. 


Newton  and  Barrow  (Imag.  Con.),  420  and 

note. 
Nichol,  Mr.,  of  Edinburgh,  and  the  Dry 

Sticks,  563. 
Nicholas  and  Michael  (Imag.  Con.),  417; 

and  Nesselrode  (Imag.  Con.),  563. 
Noble,   Michael,   Christian   name  wrongly 

given  by  Landor  (Imag.  Con.).  335. 
Norris,  Miss,  letter  to  Landor  from,  1790, 

17.  • 

Nugent,  Lord,  594,  605. 

Observations  on  Trotter's  Life  of  Fox,  Lan- 
dor's, 218  and  note. 

O'Connell  and  Landor,  464,  578  and  note. 

Ode  to  General  Washington,  27,  28. 

Ode  to  Gustavus,  Landor's,  154  note. 

Odvsseus,  Tersitza,  Acrive,  and  Trelawney 
(Imag.  Con.),  417. 

Odyssey,  the,  read  in  the  original  Greek  by 
Landor  at  85,  13:  and  see  651,  661. 

Old  Man  and  a  Child,  Landor's,  670. 

One  life,  incidents  embraced  by,  20. 

Oratory,  danger  of,  349. 

Orense,  bishop  of,  140. 

Oriental  literature,  Landor's  imitations  of, 
92;  his  studies  in,  152. 

Orsini,  598,  599  and  note. 

Ovid,  440,  543-545,  &c. 

.Oxford  Review,  the,  112. 

Pallavicini,  Marchese,  and  Landor,  339. 

Parallel,  the.  Landor's,  218,  223. 

Parents  of  Luther,  a  scene,  520. 

Parkhurst  family,  their  friendship  for  Lan- 
dor, 15,  16  and  note. 

Parr,  Dr.,  25,  26  and  note,  70;  Landor's 
friendship  with,  69;  his  threefold  claim 
to  the  admiration  of  Landor,  70;  John- 
son's story  of  him,  70;  some  of  his 
peculiarities,  71;  in  controversv  with 
Mackintosh,  72;  Mr.  Robert  Landor  on, 
72,  73;  his  taste  for  poetry,  74;  a  note 
to  Landor,  93;  obscurity  of  his  hand- 
writing,  94   and  note;    his   "charges" 

-  against  Pitt,  94.  97;  habit  of  exaggerat- 
ing unimportant  things,  97 ;  an  epitaph 
in  praise  of  the  Doctor,  72  note;  selec- 
tions from  his  correspondence,  99,  100; 
Adair  to  Landor  on  a  sermon  by,  101; 
instance  of  his  friendship  for  Landor, 
123 ;  acknowledgment  of  a  letter  of  con- 
dolence from  Landor,  195;  letter  to  Lan- 
dor on  his  marriage,  198;  note  to  the 
same  on  his  enclosure  bill,  228  note; 
Imaginary  Conversations  and,  391 ;  Lan- 
dor's objection  to  the  portrait  of,  397. 

Pasley,  Captain,  R.  E.,  Essay  on  the  Mili- 
tary Policy,  <fc.  of  the  British  Empire, 
155  note. 

Paynter,  Miss  Rose,  afterwards  Lady  Sawle, 
521,  585,  594. 

Pelayo,  Southey's.     See  Roderick. 

Penn  and  Peterborough  (Imag.  Con.),  421. 

Pentameron.  Landor's,  513  -  523. 

Pericles  and  Aspasia,  Landor's  letters  to 


C88 


IXDEX   TO   THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


Strathey  on,  489,  490;  account  of,  &c, 

490  -4'.)7. 
Pericles  and  Sophocles  (Imag.  Con.),  350. 
Peter  the  Great  and  Alexis  (Imag.  Con.), 

420. 
Phucieans,  the,  from  whence  derived,  108; 

some  extracts  from,  109;  Southey's  arti- 
cle in  the  Annual  Review  on,  110;  com- 
menced in  Latin,  179. 
Photo,  Lavellas,  and  Kaido  (Imag.  Con.), 

417. 
Pictures,  old  and  new,  and  picture-dealers, 

465  -  467,  476. 
Pitt  and  Canning  (Imag.  Con.),  417. 
Pitt,  William,  state  of  the  newspaper  press 

in  the  <lavs  of,  74-76;  Dr.  Parr's  opinion 

of  him,  94,  97;  results  from   him   and 

Fox,  204. 
Plato,  imperfect  estimate  of,  by  Landor, 

13;   explanation  of,  428;   see  also  358, 

540,  541,  633,  &c. 
Pluck,  Landor's  horror  of  the  word,  355 

note. 
Poetry,  danger  in  modern  criticism  of,  to 

poets,  419. 
Poets    what  they  think  of  poets,  426,  566, 

640;  four  magic  ones,  632. 
Pollio,  Asinius,  and  Liciuius  Calnis  (Imag. 

Con.),  565. 
Pomare,  queen  of  Tahiti,  and  others' (Imag. 

Con.),  563. 
Pomero,  Landor's  dog,  572-574,577,611. 
Popery,    British    and    Foreign,    Landor's, 

611,*  612. 
Popular  writers,  1. 

Porson.  Parr's  remark  about,  70  note. 
Portland,  Duke  of,  Adair  to  Landor  on  his 

defection,  100. 
Postscript  (unpublished)  to  Gebir,  80-85. 
Powell,  General,  44. 
Pride  and  Prejudice,  Miss  Austen's,  650, 

659. 
Puntomichino,  Cavaliere,  and  Mr.   Denis 

Ensebius  Salcranagh  (Imag.  Con.),  355. 
Pybus,  Mr.,  77. 
Pythagoras   and  the  beans.  43  and  note. 

'The  Priest  of  /sis  and,  666. 

Quarterly  Review,  notice  of  Gebir,  49; 
Southey's  connection  with,  214,  370; 
Imaginary  Conversations  and,  886;  its  in- 
tended notice  anticipated  by  Hare,  367. 

Rabelais'  use  of  the  name  Landore,  6. 

Haw-on,  Mr.,  of  Wastwater,  460. 

Reeve,  Clara,  the  poem  of  Gebir  in  her  book 

on  romance,  49. 
Reminiscences,  Landor's  proposal  to  write 

his  own,  6. 
Reviewers,  challenge  to,  410. 
Richard  Coenr  de  Lion  and  the  abbot  of 

Boxley  (Imag.  Con.),  333. 
Richelieu,    Due   de,    Sir   Firebrace   Cotes, 

Lady  Glengrin,  and  Mr.  Nonnanby  (Imag. 

Con.),  418  and  notes. 
Rickman,  clerk  to  parliament,  187. 


Piguelme,  General,  1 '  t  "nd  note,  640. 

Robert,  William,  of  urisioi,  157. 

Robinson,  Mr.  Crabb,  452,  501 ;  on  Lan- 
dor's Satire  on  Satirists,  504;  letters  to 
Landor  on  the  Pericles,  &c.,  509;  opinion 
of  the  Pentameron,  516;  opinion  of  An- 
drea, Sec,  533. 

Roderick.  Southey's,  155;  plan  of  the  poem 
expounded  to  "Landor,  158,  160;  R.  and 
Landor's  Count  Julian,  173. 

Roderigo,  the  theme  of  Scott,  Southey,  and 
Landor  simultaneously,  182. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  600. 

Komillv  and  Perceval  (Imag.  Con.),  423; 
and  Wilberforce  (Imag.  Con.).  564. 

Homillv.  Sir  Samuel.  30,  513,  564. 

Rose,  George,  219,  220. 

Rosenhagen.  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  34  and  note, 
550;  his  death,  608. 

Rough,  Sergeant,  85-92;  his  imitation  of 
Gebir,  86 ;  his  anxiety  to  retain  the  friend- 
ship of  Landor,  87,-  his  visit  to  Robert 
Landor,  88-92;  Sir  Frederick  Pollock's 
recollections  of,  91  note;  end  of  the 
friendship  with  Landor,  89,  399. 

Saez,  Don  Victor,  and  El  Rey  Nette  (Imag. 
Con.),  415. 

Sandford,  William,  598,  653. 

Sanford  and  Merton,  Landor's  estimate  of, 
9  note. 

Satire  on  Satirists,  Landor's,  504. 

Savage,  P^lizabeth,  Doctor  Landor's  second 
wife,  3. 

Savonarola  and  the  prior  of  Florence,  Italian 
dialogue  by  Landor,  664. 

Scott,  Walter,  50  note,  57,  155,  181,  182, 
185.  238,  460,  634. 

Self-portraiture,  touches  of,  183,  392,  396, 
406,  474. 

Seward,  Miss,  of  Staffordshire,  67  and  note; 
Landor's  anger  at  her  attack  upon  him, 
67;  consoled  by  Kellowes,  68  note. 

Shaftesbury,  Karl  of,  561. 

Shakespeare,  20,  515,  566;  Examination  of, 
before  Sir  Th.  Lucy  touching  Deer-Steal- 
ing, Landor's,  466,  469,  477-489  (see  also 
Examination,  &c);  a  Shakespeare  cele- 
bration, 571;  his  chronicles,  346;  and  see 
403,  511,  549;  a  remark  of  Landor's  on, 
629,  638;  allusion  to,  as  "perfect  poet," 
676. 

Shelley,  his  favorite  passages  in  Gebir,  58; 
his  'passion  for  that  work,  related  by 
Hog2,  69;  Landor  disappointed  in,  414, 
419;'  on  Plato.  541:  Mrs.  Shelley  to  Lan- 
dor on  his  Collected  Works,  589*;  and  see 
641. 

Sheridan,  a  glimpse  of,  100. 

Simonidea,  Landor's,  154  and  note;  321  and 
note. 

Sisters,  Landor's,  chieflv  Elizabeth,  6,  37, 
38,  105-107,  121.  122,  199,  317,388-401, 
442,  446,  448-458,  462-469,  574-577, 
608. 

Slavery,  Landor's  abhorrence  of,  108. 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


G89 


Sleath,  Dr.  Landor's  Latin  tutor  at  Rugby, 
12. 

Smith,  Sydney,  and  Dr.  Parr,  70,  71 ;  Bo- 
bus  and,  635 ;  on  Demosthenes,  635. 
Soliman  and  Mufti  (Imag.  Con.),  426. 
Sophocles,  note  on,  42,  560. 
Southey  on  a  passage  in  Gehir,o3:  lines 
now  omitted  especially  liked  by,  63  note; 
his  notice  of  Gebir  in  the  Critical  Review, 
65;  and  to  his  private  friends,  66;  his 
connection  with  the  Morning  Post,  74; 
his   review  of  Landor's   Phocceans,  110; 
his  Modoc,  125 ;  letter  to  Grosvenor  Bed- 
lord  on  his  introduction  to  Landor,  125; 
Curse  of  Kelmma,  126-  152;  commence- 
ment   of    his    friendship  with    Landor, 
126;  its   progress  and  importance,  126- 
129;   his  poetry,  129;  first  letters   from 
Landor,  130-  133;  letters  on  Spain,  142- 
149;  on  the  convention  of  Cintra,  142; 
on  Spanish  affairs,  147;  misgivings  about 
his  own  work,  148;  his  reply  to  Landor's 
suggestion  about  Kehama,   150;  on  the 
publication  of  the  same,  151;    proposes 
Pel'tyo  as   a   subject  for  his  new  epic 
poem,  152;  on   the   same,  and   a   Latin 
idyl  of  Landoi-'s,  153;    on  early  poetry 
and  poets,  155;  on  a  peculiarity  of  his 
own  temperament  in  writing  two  poems 
concurrently,  157 ;  on  Roderick  and  fur- 
ther plans,  158,  159  and  note;  a  comment 
on  the  critical  part  of  Roderick,  160;  let- 
ters from  Landor  on  Count  Julian,  173- 
186;  his  opinion  of  that  work,  178,  185; 
on  its  unfitness  for  the  stage,  180;  settles 
the   difficulties  of  its   publication,  184; 
letters  from  Landor  concerning  the  Llan- 
thony   estate,    187,   188,   190,   193,    195; 
reminiscences  of  Hath  in  a  letter  to  Lan- 
dor, 202;  Landor's  reply,  203;  at  work 
on  the  Quarterly,  214;  letters  from  Lan- 
dor on  public  men  and  affairs,  215  -218, 
221,   223,   226,    228-231;    on    Landor's 
"  Observations  on  Trotter's  Life  of  Fox," 
218,   220,   222;   on  America,   and   some 
questions   of  policy,  220,  225,    226;   re- 
ceives  the   laureateship,   229;    to    Lan- 
dor on  the   position   of   affairs   (1814), 
231;   to   the   same   on   Bonaparte's   last 
move,  233 ;  to  the  same  on  the  Charitable 
Dowtger,  235,  240;  from  Landor  on  his 
troubles   at   Llanthony,  242,  245;    from 
the  same,  explaining  his  sudden  depart- 
ure from  England,  248;  letters  from  Lan- 
dor in  Italy,  261,  262,  265-267,  269,  271, 
272,  274,  275,  277,  280-282,  286,  289,  292, 
294,  314,  317,  318,  366,  369,  371  and  note, 
372  -  375,  377,  378   and  note,  379   note, 
381,    382    note,    383,    385,    386;    surrep- 
titious  publication   of    Wat    Tyler,  262; 
to   Landor,  on  his  return  from  visiting 
him    in    Italy,    264;    to    the    same    on 
the   "  amusements   of  Como,"   269  ;   to 
the    same   on    the    Byron    furore,    275; 
to    the    same    on    Sir    Charles    Wolse- 
ley's  letter,  284 ;  to  the  same  on  his  Vis- 
44 


ion  of  Judgment,  &c,  289;  to  the  same, 
on  the  advantages  of  a  House  of  Lords, 
303;  to  the  same,  on  his  own  dialogues, 
313;  to  the  same,  on  Wordsworth's  po- 
etry, 319;  letters  from  Landor  on  the 
Imaginary  Conversations,  &c,  319,322- 
324,  326,  327  note,  328;  to  Landor  on 
the  revision  of  the  same,  328;  on  the 
Wordsworth  conversation,  335,  365;  on 
the  theology  of  the  eighth  conversation, 
338;  to  Landor  on  the  first  series,  364, 
365;  to  the  same  on  political  affairs 
(1822),  370;  to  the  same,  on  the  state  of 
Ireland,  373 ;  from  Landor  on  the  Letters 
to  Charles  Butler,  374;  to  the  same,  on 
the  history-writing  project,  377;  from 
Landor  on  the  Vision  of  Judgment,  378; 
to  Landor,  on  the  same,  380;  letters  to 
Landor  on  the  Imaginary  Conversations, 
407,  414;  letters  from  Landor  on  the 
same,  402-405,  411-413;  elected  to 
parliament,  412;  dispute  with  Landor 
on  the  word  impugn,  460;  letters  from 
Landor  on  Pericles  and  Aspasia,  &c, 
489,  490;  last  visit  to  Bristol,  507;  last 
letter  to  Landor,  557  ;  marriage  with 
Caroline  Bowles,  556 ;  Landor's  last  let- 
ter to  him,  558;  Mrs.  Southev  to  Lan- 
dor, 558,  559,562;  his  death,  559;  Lan- 
dor's lines  thereupon,  ibid. ;  and  inscrip- 
tion, 560;  disposition  of  the  materials 
for  his  life,  560;  Jeffrey's  encomium, 
561;  retrospective,  561-563;  Porson  and 
(Imag.  Con.),  565;  Landor  and  (Imag. 
Con.),  506;  Landor  on  his  minor  pieces, 
570;  efforts  on  behalf  of  his  family,  613; 
Landor  on  his  Life  and  Letters,  632; 
Landor  on  Cowper  and,  633. 

Southey  and  Porson  (Imag.  Con.),  325,  329, 
334;  and  see  565,  also  566. 

Southey's  son,  a  living  obtained  for,  632. 

Spain,  the  invasion  of,  134;  Landor  at 
Coruima  during,  135. 

Spenser  and  Chaucer,  Landor  and  Southey 
on,  155-156;  defended  by  Elizabeth 
(Imag.  Con.),  337;  sketch  of  a  scene  at 
his  burial,  487;  conference  with  Essex, 
488. 

Sponsalia  Polyxence,  Landor's,  267,  280. 

St.  Clair,  Landor's,  47. 

Stanfield,  Clarkson,  600. 

Stoneleigh  living,  Parr  to  Landor  on, 
99. 

Stopfords;  the,  379  note,  576  and  665. 

Story,  William,  Landor's  visit  to,  658. 

Stuart,  Charles,  envoy  at  Corunna,  135; 
misunderstanding  between  Landor  and, 
136,  139-142;  letter  to  Vaughan  about 
this,  140;  explanatory  letter  to  Landor 
from,  141. 

Swansea,  Landor's  liking  for,  47,  394. 

Swift,  style  of,  641. 

Swinburne,  A.  C,  visit  to  Landor,  675; 
verses  in  memory  of  Landor,  676. 

Sydnev,  Sir  Philip,  and  Lord  Brooke 
"(Imag.  Con.),  333. 


GOO 


1XDEX    TO    TIIE    BIOGRAPHY. 


Tachbrooke,  the  Savages  of,  3;  Landor's 
attachment  to,  6. 

Tale  of  Paraguay,  Southey's,  378,  379, 
881. 

Talleyrand  ami  Archbishop  of  Paris  (Imag. 
Con.),  668. 

Talma,  346. 

Taxation.  Landor  on,  147. 

Taylor,  John,  first  publisher  of  the  Imagi- 
nary Conversations,  327-330;  Landor's 
charges  against,  404  -  408;  Hare's  vindi- 
cation of,  408,  409;  his  own  letter  to 
Hare,  409. 

Tavlor,  Wm.,  of  Norwich,  66,  71;  on  Gebir, 
110  note. 

Tavlor,  Henry,  author  of  Philip  Van  Arte- 
vdde,  466,  633,  560. 

Tennyson,  Landor  on  his  Heath  of  Arthur, 
509;  and  see  570,  634.  640. 

Terence  and  Plautus,  646. 

Thiers  and  Lamartine  (Imag.  Con.),  563. 

Thomson,  some  characteristics  of  his  po- 
etry, 114. 

Tiberius  and  Vipsania  (Imag.  Con.),  430. 

Titian  and  Cornaro  (Imag.  Con.),  564. 

Truro,  Lord  Chancellor,  613. 

Twisleton,  Mr.,  665. 

Tyrannicide,  143,  216,  304,  577,  603. 

Vaughan,  Charles  Robert,  and  the  Spanish 
mission,  136,  139;  letter  to  Landor  on  the 
misunderstanding  with  Stuart,  140. 

Venice,  462,  475.  &c. 

Venturada,  Landor's  gift  to  the  inhabitants 
of.  135. 

Villa  Gherardesea.  last  look  at,  663. 

Villele  and  Corbiere  (Imag.  Con.),  416. 

Virgil,  a  translation  from,  by  Landor,  23; 
Horace  and  (Imag.  Con.),  674;  and  see 
544,  545,  &c. 

Vision  of  Judgment,  Southey's,  375,  380; 
Landor  on,  379. 

Voltaire  referred  to,  17*,  192;  and  see  646. 

Yyner,  Captain,  323  and  325. 

Walker,  Hattaji,  Gonda,  and  Dewah  (Imag. 
Con.),  564.  ' 

Wallace,  William,  and  Edward  the  First 
(Imag.  Con.).  426. 

Walton,  Cotton,  and  Oldways  (Imag.  Con.), 
422. 

Waiter,  Rev.  J.  Wood.  560. 

Washington  and  Franklin  (Imag.  Con.), 
348. 

Wat  Ti/ler,  Southey's,  surreptitiously  pub- 
lished, 202. 

Wellington,  Lord,  219,  223-226;  and  see 
668,  601. 

Wellington  and  Inglis  (Imag.  Con.),  664. 

Wesley  and  Methodism,  612. 

White'.  Blanco.  627.  032. 

William  the  Deliverer,  one  of  the  Landora  a 
high-sheriff  during  his  reign,  5;  Adair  to 
Landor  on,  101. 

Willis,  X.  1\,  visit  to  Landor  in  Italy,  476; 
letter  to  Landor,  503. 


Wolfgang  and  Henrv  of  Mclchtal  (Imag. 
Con.),  424. 

Wolseley,  Sir  Charles,  284. 

Wordsworth  and  Gebir,  51  note;  Landor  on  a 
reply  to  an  attack  upon,  193;  remarks  by 
Landor  on,  268,  273.  279,  287:  slow  pro- 
gress to  lame.  279  :  letters  to  Landor  from, 
296-298  and  note.  318.  319,  321,  886; 
Southey  to  Landor  on,  319;  urges  Lan- 
dor to  write  in  English,  297,  320;  on  the 
writing  of  sonnets,  321;  proposed  dedica- 
tion to  him  of  the  Imaginary  Conversa- 
tions, 323,  325,  326;  Southey  and  Porson 
(Imag.  Con.)  on,  331;  letter  to  Landor  on 
the  same,  331,  332;  letter  on  completion 
of  first  series,  365;  letter  of  thanks  for 
books.  384;  praise  of,  in  early  days,  387; 
lla/.litt,  description  of,  489;  visit  to,  and 
lines  by  Landor  in  album  of  W.'s  daugh- 
ter, 460;  effect  of  reform  agitation  (1832) 
upon  him.  462;  ode  to,  463;  difference 
with,  504-509,  565;  his  grave.  563:  po- 
sition as  a  poet,  567;  lines  upon,  571,  617; 
on  his  prelude,  570;  and  see  646. 

Wyndham  and  Sheridan  (Imag.  Con.),  564. 

Zenophon  and  Cyrus  the  Younger  (Imag. 
Con.),  427  and  note. 


Subjoined  is  a  list  of  all  the  letters  of  Lan- 
dor printed,  or  quoted,  in  this  work,  in  the 
order  in  which  they  appear. 

To  Henry  Landor,  1852,  6. 

Ellen  Landor,  1831,  7  and  note. 
Southey,  1811,  8. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1831,  9  note, 
the  author.  1852,  10  note. 
I        Lady  Sawle,  1858,  11. 
Southey,  1811,  13. 

Mr.  Robert  Lytton,  1860,  14  and  note 
Dr.  Birch,  1846,  14  note, 
the  author,  1854,  14. 
the  same,  1851,  15  note. 
Mrs.  Rosenhagen,  1889,  16  note. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1830,  16  note. 
Henry  Landor,  1847,  16. 
Southey,  1824,  17. 
the  author,  1851,  19  note, 
the  same,  20  and  note. 
Dr.  Daw,  1857,  25. 
Sir  II.  Daw,  1867,  29  note. 
Walter  Birch,  1795,32-34. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  34  note, 
the  author,  37. 
the  same,  46. 
"       "       1857,  47. 
"        "       51  note. 
"       "      1857,  64  and  note. 
"       "       1868,  ''.•".. 
Southey,  1811,  68. 
the  same,  68. 
"         "       1832,  72. 
Parr,  76. 
the  same,  96. 
"       "       98. 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


G91 


To  Henry  Landor,  103,  104. 

Elizabeth  Landor,  105. 
•    the  same,  106,  107  note. 
Southey,  1809,  108. 
the  same,  1810,  108  note. 
Browning,  108. 
Robert  Lvtton,  113. 
Walter  Birch,  114. 
Henry  Landor,  1805,  117  note, 
the  author,  1 19. 
Dr.  Parr,  121. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  121. 
the  same,  121. 
Southey,  1808,  130. 
the  same,  1808,  131. 
"       '"       1808,  132.    ■ 
"        "       1808,  132. 
A.  Alcedo,  governor  of  Corunna,  135 

note. 
Southev,  135. 
the  same,  137,  138. 
Charles  Robert  Vaughan,  139. 
Southey,  140  note, 
the  same,  142. 

"       1809,  143  note. 
"        "       1808,  143. 
"       "       1819,  144  note. 
"       "       1809,  144,  145. 

"       1809,  146. 
"       "       1809,  146,  147. 
"       "       1810,  148. 
"       "       1810,  148. 
"       "       1809,  149. 
"        "       149. 
"        "       151. 
"       "       1809,  151. 
"       "       153. 
"       "       154  note,  155. 
"       "       155. 
"       "       156. 
"       "       1810,  157. 
"       "       1810,  157. 
"       "       1810,  159. 
"       "       1812,  160,  161. 
"       "       161. 
"       "       1810,  173. 
"       "       1810,  174. 
"       "       175,  176. 
"       "       176. 
"       "      177  note. 
"       "      1811,  178. 
"       "      1811,  178. 
"       "       1811,  179. 
"       "       1811,  181. 
"       "       1811,  181. 
"       "       1811,  182. 
"       "       1811,  183. 
"       "       1811,  184. 
"       "       1812,  185. 
"       "       1809,  186. 
"       "       1809,  187. 
the  author,  188. 
Southey,  1809,  190. 
Bishop  Burgess,  191. 
the  same,  192. 
Southev,  193. 


To  the  same,  193. 
Miss  Holford,  194. 
Southey,  195. 
the  same,  196. 
his  mother,  196. 
Southey,  198. 
the  same,  199. 

"       199,  200. 
"       "       201. 
"        "       202. 
"        "       203. 
"        "       203. 

Baron  Thompson,  1812,  205. 
the  same,  1812,  205. 
the  Duke  of  Beaufort,  1812,  207. 
the  Lord  Chancellor  Eldon,  1812,  208. 
the  same,  1812,  208. 
Southev,  1812,  211  and  note. 
.  the  same,  1811,  215. 
"       "       1812,  216. 
"       "       1812,  217. 
"       "       218. 
"       "       221. 
"       "       1812,  223. 
"        "       226. 
"       "       1813,  228. 
"       "       1813,  229. 
"       "       1813,  230. 
"       "       1814,  230. 
"       "       1814,  231. 
"       "       1813,  233,  234. 
"       "       1813,  236. 
"       "       239. 
"        "       240. 
"       "       240. 

Mr.  Richard  Lewis,  241  note. 
Southey,  242. 
the  same,  244. 
Mr.  Jervis,  245. 
Southey,  1814,  248. 
the  same.  248. 
"       "     '  1814,  251. 
"       "       1814,  252. 
"       "       1815,  253,  254  and  note. 
"       "       1815,  255. 
"       "       1816,  260. 
"       "       1816,  261. 
"        "       262. 
"        "       1816,  265. 
"        "       1817,  266. 
"       "       1817,  267. 
"        "       1818,269-271. 
his  mother,  1818,  270. 
Southey,  1818,  271. 
the  same,  272. 
"       "       1819,  274. 
"       "       1819,  275. 
"       "       1819,  277. 
"       "       1820,  280. 
"        "       1820,  281. 
"       "       1820,  282,  283. 
"       "       1820.  286. 
"        "       1821,  289. 
his  mother,  1821,  292. 
Southev.  1821,  294. 
the  same,  1822,  314. 


G92 


INDEX   TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


To  the  same,  1822,  317,  371  note, 
his  Bister,  L883,  317. 
Southey,  1827,  818. 
the  Bame,  1822,  319. 
ii       u       (822J  322. 

"        "       1*22,  323. 

"       "       1822,  324. 

"        "       1822,  321. 

"       "       1S23."  826, 327. 

ii       i.      1822, 328  note. 

"       "       1823,  328. 

"       "       1823,  329. 

"       "       1825,366. 

"       "       1 822,  369. 

"        "        1*23.  371. 

"       "       1S23.  372. 
"       1N23,  373. 

"        "       1824,  373. 

"       "       1824,  374. 

"       "       1827,  374. 

"       "       1822,  375. 

"        "        1-23.375. 

"       "       1829,377. 

"       "       1*27,  377. 

"        "       1*24,  378. 

"      1822,  378  note. 

"       "       1824.  378. 

"       "       1824,379. 

"       "       1825,  379  note. 

"       •'      1825,  381,  382  note. 

"       "       1825,381. 

"       "       1823,  383. 

"       "       1825,  383. 

"       "       1824,  385. 

"       "       1829,  386. 

"       "       1829, 387  note. 

"       "       1827,  387. 
his  mother,  1824.  390. 
Dr.  Parr,  1^24.  391. 
his  mother,  1825,  392. 
the  same,  1825,  392. 

"       "       1826,  393. 
hi-  sen  Arm. 1.1.  1826,  393. 
hi-  mother,  1826,  394. 
the  same,  1*27,  394. 
Ellen  Landor,  1*27.  395. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1*27.  396. 
Ellen  Landor,  1827,  397. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1*27.  397. 
his  mother  and  sisters.  1827,  397. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1-27.  398  note. 
Ellen  Landor,  1828,  339. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1828,  399. 
Ellen  Landor,  1828,  399. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1828,  400. 
Ellen  and  Elizabeth  Landor,  1828,  400. 
Southey,  I  -21,  4o2  note, 
the  same,  402. 

"       "       1824,  lo2. 

"       "       1824,  403. 

"       "       1826,  404. 
Julius  Bare,  1825.  405. 
Southey,  1825,  !"■">. 
the  sane'.  1825,  407  note. 

"       "      1825, 408  note. 

"       "       1825,  411  and  note. 


To  the  same,  1827,  412. 
'•       1828,  413. 
the  author,  417  note, 
the  same,  435  note. 

"       "       1854,  438  note, 
his  mother,  1829,  441. 
his  sisters,  1829,  442. 
the  author.  1856,  442  note. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1829,  443. 
Southey,  1829,  444. 
the  same,  1829,  445. 
Ellen  Landor,  446. 
Ins  sisters,  1830,  448. 
the  same,  1830,  449. 

"       "       1830,  449. 

"        "       1830,  449. 

"       "       1830,450-452. 

'•       "       1831,  453. 

"       "       1831,  453. 

"       "       1831,  455. 

"       "       1831,  456. 

"        "       1831,  457. 

"        i;       1832.  458. 

"        "       1832,  459. 
Southey,  1832,  461. 
the  same,  1832,  461. 
his  sifters,  1832,  462. 
the  same,  1832,  462. 

"   "   1833,  463. 

"   "   1833,  463. 

"   "   1833,  464. 

"   "   1833,  464. 

"   "   1834,  465. 

"   "   1834,  466. 

"   "   1834,  417. 

"   "   1831,468. 

"       "       1835,  469. 
Lady  Blessington,  1834,  477. 
the  same,  1834,  488. 
Southey,  1835,  489. 
the  same,  1836,  490. 

"       "       1836,  498. 
Carey,  499. 
Southey,  1835,  501. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  502  note, 
the  author,  502. 
the  same,  1836,  505. 

"        "       1836,  505. 
Southev,  1836,  506. 
the  same,  1836,  506. 
the  author,  1837,  509. 
Crabb  Robinson,  1837,509. 
the  author,  1837,  510. 
the  same,  1837,  511. 
1837,  512. 
"        "       1837,  512. 
"       "       1837,  513. 
"       "       1837,  521. 
Southey,  1837,  521. 
the  author,  1838,  523. 
the  same,  1838,  521. 
"       1838,524. 
"       "       1838,  525. 
"       "       1838,  525. 
"        "       1838,  527. 
"       "       1838,  528. 


INDEX    TO    THE    BIOGRAPHY. 


G93 


To  the  same,  1838,  529. 

"        "       1840,  532. 

"        "       1840,  533. 

"        "       538. 

"       "       1838,  538. 

"       "      538  note. 

"        "       1839,  553. 

"        "       553. 

"        "       1S40,  554. 

"        "       1841,  554. 
Miss  Paynter,  555. 
Mr.  Kenyon,  556. 
the  same,  1839,  557. 
Southev,  1839,  558. 
the  author,  1843,  559. 
the  Southey  Memorial  Committee,  560 

note, 
the  author,  1843-1845,  567,  572. 
the  same,  1844,  572. 

"       "       1844,  573. 

"       "       1844,  574. 
Elizabeth  Landor,  1845,  574. 
the  same,  1845,  575. 

"   "   1845,  575. 

"   "   1841,  575. 

"   ''   1841,  576. 

"   "   1842,  576. 
the  author,  1844,  576. 
the  s.une,  1842,  580. 

"   "   1842,  581. 

"   "   1842,  581. 

"   "   5S2. 

Lady  Biessington,  1844,  584. 
the  author,  1*44,  584. 
Lady  Sawle,  1846,  5S5. 
the  author,  586. 
the  same,  587. 
.the  Times,  593. 
the  author,  1849,  594. 
the  same,  1850,  597. 

"        "       1852,  597. 

"       "       1S46,  597. 

"        "       1846,  597. 

"       "       1858,  598. 

"        "       600. 

"        "       1843,  601. 
Ladv  Sawle,  1855,  604. 
the  author.  1856,  605. 
the  same,  605. 


To  the  same,  1848,  605. 

"       "  1849,  606. 

"        '•'  1851,  607. 

"       "  1853,  60S. 

"  1854,  608. 

"        "  1854,  608. 

"        "  1855,  610. 

"        "  1855,  610. 

"       "  1856,  610. 

"        "  1856,  611. 

"       "  1850,  613. 

"       "  614. 

"        "  621. 

"       "  628,629-632. 

"       "  1850,  632. 

"       "  1850,  633. 

"       "  1856,  633. 

"        "  1856,  634. 

"        "  1855,  634. 

"       "  1848,  634. 

"       "  1850,  634. 

"        "  1855,  635. 

"        "  1855,  635. 

"        "  1856,  636. 

"       "  1850,  637. 

"       "  1855,  638. 

"        "  1856,  638. 

"        "  1854,  638. 

"        "  1850,  639. 

"  1851,  639. 

"        "  1851,  640. 

"        "  1858,  641. 

"  1858,  641. 

"  1853,  642. 

"        "  1852,  644. 

"  1853,  644,  645. 

"        "  1854,  645. 

"        "  1856,  647. 

Walter  Landor  of  Rugely,  1856,  648. 

the  author,  lb57,  650. 

the  same,  1858,  651. 

"       "  1858,  652. 

"       "  1858,  655. 

"        "  1859,  t.60 

"        "  1859,  661. 

"        "  1863,  664. 

"        "  1863,  672. 

"        "  1864,  673. 

"       "  lb64,  674. 


THE    END. 


Cambridge  :  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  and  Company. 


